Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women's Professional Soccer

Critical Issues in Sport and Society

by Rachel Allison

Winner of the 2018 Early Career Gender Scholar Award from the Sociologists for Women in Society-South

Girls and young women participate in soccer at record levels and the Women’s National Team regularly draws media, corporate, and popular attention. Yet despite increased representation and visibility, gender disparities in opportunity, compensation, training resources, and media airtime persist in soccer, and two professional leagues for women have failed since 2000. 

In Kicking Center , Rachel Allison investigates a women’s soccer league seeking to break into the male-dominated center of U.S. professional sport. Through an examination of the challenges and opportunities identified by those working for and with this league, she demonstrates how gender inequality is both constructed and contested in professional sport. Allison details the complex constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the selling and marketing of women’s soccer in a half-changed sports landscape characterized by both progress and backlash, and where professional sports are still understood to be men’s territory. 

Genres: Nonfiction

220 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2018

About the author

Rachel Allison is a nineteen year old writer and photographer, living with Adrenal Fatigue (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and Dysautonomia since November 2010. She’s a lover of details, creativity, truth, understated elegance, words, and cheesy humor. She lives life with a passion for learning and a deep need for the God who created and cares for her.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lol I am literally next to Carli Lloyd in the bibliography.

[abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated Allison's analysis of women's soccer and how it presents itself as a product in the US. The parts about image politics particularly stuck out to me, as a masc lesbian, and I appreciated the context and commentary. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Reread: After getting so involved in fandom in the NSL, I really enjoyed the chapter on building and marketing to a fanbase. great insights!