Van Madonna tot Maradona

In this research I tried to describe the development of women’s soccer in a cultural context. The main question is if the development of Dutch women’s soccer can be seen as a process of emancipation. The emphasis lays on the importance of the media, especially on sports programmes on the Dutch television. At first, women’s sports in general are put in a cultural and a historical context. Dutch women were not able to practice a sport until beginning of the 20th century. Soccer was, compared to individual sports as cricket and feminine team sports as hockey, one of the most difficult fields for women to enter. The reason for the harsh acceptation of feminine football players is because of the origin of the sport: it traditionally started as a masculine sport in Europe. The only exception is North America: in the United States football (or soccer) can be defined as a feminine sport. The second chapter describes the development of women’s soccer in a chronological way. A short layout of men’s football and women’s football abroad is followed by a chronological explanation of the development of Dutch feminine soccer. The most important change is the start of the first professional feminine football competition in the Netherlands. Chapter three is a lay out of the influence of the written and the digital media. The attention for feminine football in Dutch newspapers, magazines and on internet sites is compared to the attention in foreign newspapers, magazines and internet sites. Feminine football namely is already more popular in other nations as Germany, Norway, Sweden and England. Does the sport get more attention since the beginning of the professional league? The last chapters are$ the essence of the research: the attention for women’s soccer on television. Television is the most important medium for sports. Ruud Stokvis, a sociologist of sports, introduced the term ‘mediasport’: according to him, media (especially television) is connected to sports nowadays because of its commercial character. A sport needs sponsor money and media attention to grow. The question is if feminine football in the Netherlands gets the media attention it needs in order to grow. The sport has an own programme on the Dutch commercial television, but is that enough to become more popular? How many people watch the programme? And are the sport programmes on the Dutch public service giving attention to feminine football? For over a month, all the sport programmes on the Dutch television are analyzed in order to see wheather if feminine football gets enough attention to develop itself. Finally, the case of feminine football will be related to gender constructions: has the (lack of) acceptation and popularity of feminine football anything to do with gender roles?