Women's football studies: an integrative review

Abstract

Purpose of this paper: Women’s football has received increasing attention in the academic literature, partly due to its growing popularity worldwide. However, women’s football research remains scattered across numerous academic domains. Focusing on the social sciences, humanities and management disciplines, this integrative literature review aims to map and organise contributions, and to identify research directions for future studies within these disciplines. Design/methodology/approach: Using the keywords "women", "girls", "female" and "football" or "soccer" to initially identify articles, an integrative approach was followed to evaluate and analyse relevant literature. 117 academic journals were classified and subsequently divided into 26 themes according to the subject area, topic and level examined. Findings: Results of this integrative review show an increasing trend of journal publications since 1998, with a large representation of studies related to historical and sociological research, where qualitative methods are dominant. Articles investigating economic, managerial and marketing areas appeared in more recent times. Women’s football has been researched from different perspectives (players, fans, sport organisations) and across various countries. Research limitations/implications: The restricted scope of this review (i.e. its focus on social sciences) and the manual classification of articles represent two limitations of this study. However, the synthesis of academic literature provided may assist scholars who are interested in women’s football and women’s sports research to fill identified research gaps and contribute to further advance academic investigations in this area. What is originality/value of paper: This paper provides an overview of salient research avenues and represents the first attempt to critically appraise the direction of academic contributions in women’s football for the purpose of advancing scholarly inquiry in this sport.