“(Indigenous) Women Who Love Football”: Play, Sociability, and Political Participation in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil

ABSTRACT:

While there is a well-established body of studies on women’s football, its practice in Indigenous contexts still lacks sustained anthropological attention. The first women’s football team in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Upper Rio Negro region, Brazilian Amazon - known as the most indigenous Brazilian city) was created in 1991, and since then, the number of teams has grown alongside a gradual conquest of spaces for training, participation in championships, and women in leadership roles. The study traces the history of women’s football in the Upper Rio Negro region. The methodology consisted of identifying and interviewing the women who created the first female football teams. The results show that they learned football in the streets, alongside boys, and in the face of restrictions from families and male players. Competitive experience in the sport strengthened the women as a group, fostering bonds and generating a sense of belonging. In adulthood, a notable effort toward institutionalizing the practice can be observed, along with the pursuit of occupying public spaces and engaging in the regional football politics. Thus, the history of women’s football in the Rio Negro region also reveals dimensions of broader political transformations in the region, where women strive to occupy positions of power and public visibility, despite predominantly adverse reactions from their social environment.

Keywords:
Indigenous football; Women; Learning processes; Politics; Upper Rio Negro

RESUMO:

Se já existe uma tradição consolidada de estudos sobre o futebol de mulheres, sua prática em contextos indígenas ainda carece de maior investimento antropológico. A primeira equipe de futebol de mulheres em São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM) foi criada em 1991 e, desde então, os times vêm aumentando, com conquista gradual de espaços de treino, participação nos campeonatos e em funções de liderança. Esta pesquisa retraçou a história do futebol jogado por mulheres naquela região. A metodologia consistiu em identificar e entrevistar as mulheres que estiveram na iniciativa da criação dos primeiros times de futebol feminino. Os resultados mostram que a aprendizagem da prática se deu na rua, jogando com meninos e enfrentando restrições familiares e dos meninos jogadores. A experiência competitiva com o esporte as fortaleceu como grupo, promovendo vínculos e criando sentimento de pertencimento. Na vida adulta, identificamos um esforço notório de institucionalização da prática, uma busca por ocupar espaços públicos e a participação na política do futebol regional. A pesquisa mostra que a história do futebol jogado por mulheres no Rio Negro revela também aspectos das transformações políticas na região, onde se veem mulheres buscando ocupar espaços de poder e de destaque público, a despeito de reações majoritariamente adversas das pessoas de seu entorno.

Palavras-chave:
Futebol indígena; Mulheres; Aprendizagem; Política; Alto Rio Negro

INTRODUCTION

On May 20, 2022, at 7:00 p.m., the Arnaldo Coimbra sports complex, in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, a city in the Upper Rio Negro region of the Brazilian Amazon, was filled to capacity. The opening of the IV São Gabriel Futsal Cup was about to begin. According to the Municipal Department of Youth, Sport and Leisure, more than a thousand people were gathered to attend the event. To the loud sound of techno music, the audience awaited the parade of the 77 futsal teams, including 16 women’s teams. Team names combined local references, such as São Gabriel Esporte Clube, Dabarú Esporte Clube, and Esporte Clube Amigos do Joelson, or local references but written in English, like Black River Futebol Clube, as well as tributes to international clubs (without any reference to local names), such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), and Liverpool. There were also teams that explicitly referred to their female composition, such as As Patroas and MAF - Mulheres que Amam Futebol (Women Who Love Football, as referenced in the title of this paper).

At 7:45 p.m., the orchestra composed of members of the 5th Jungle Infantry Battalion of the Brazilian Army, based in what is known as the most Indigenous city in Brazil, lent a solemn tone to the entrance of each team into the arena. The teams entered the court preceded by a “miss,” a young lady who held and presented the team’s flag to the audience. All players (men and women) wore uniforms customized for each team. (Figure 1 & Figure 2)

Figure 1
Futsal teams assembled in the Arnaldo Coimbra sports arena in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, May 20, 2022. Photograph by Chantal Medaets.

Figure 2
Women’s team of São Gabriel Esporte Clube, May 20, 2022. Photograph by Chantal Medaets

The first women’s football team in São Gabriel da Cachoeira was created in 1991, when a group of women players founded Dabaru Esporte Clube (DEC). Since then, the number of teams has grown, and women have gradually secured spaces for training and participation in championships, as well as taken on leadership roles. Since 2007, the women’s category has been included in the municipal futsal championship, bringing together 15 to 20 women’s teams annually, and since 2014, in field football, bringing together 10 to 15 teams⁵. In 2015, the first women coaches emerged, and in 2022, a woman assumed the presidency of the Municipal Sports League, becoming the first woman in the state of Amazonas to hold such a position. These changes resulted from the mobilization of women players, who, throughout the process, confronted disputes over space and recognition vis-à-vis men. Our research sought to understand how this scenario became possible, examining the process and the challenges these women faced in achieving this level of institutionalization of women’s football in the region.

While there is already a well-established tradition of studies on women’s football (Altmann and Reis 2013; Goellner 2005; Moraes 2012; Rial 2013, among others), the practice of this sport in Indigenous contexts still lacks greater anthropological investment, according to researchers who have surveyed the field (Erikson 2013; Costa and Toledo 2009; Flamini 2025; Toledo and Costa 2023). There are, of course, important studies that have focused primarily on football played by Indigenous men. In Brazil, one may cite the pioneering research of José Ronaldo Fassheber (2006, 2016) among the Kaingang; that of Fernando Vianna (2008) among the Xavante, that of Rodrigo Chiquetto (2014) about a championship in Manaus, that of Ángel Delgado (2010) among the Yanomami, or that of Carlos Eduardo Costa (2013, 2021) in the interethnic context of the Upper Xingu. All of these focus on men’s play.

We did not find, in the scientific literature, studies whose central focus is the practice of football played by Indigenous women in Brazil. The game as played by girls and women is mentioned in the studies listed above, or in monographs on specific Indigenous peoples. Despite the value of the information presented in these works, we emphasize the lack of studies that take women’s football among Indigenous populations as their central object. In conversations with various anthropologist colleagues during the preparation of this text, nearly all reported having observed, in their respective fieldwork, frequent and lively matches involving Indigenous women, as well as the participation of women’s teams in local championships. Analyzing this practice from an anthropological perspective remains a task yet to be undertaken.

Our study involved an Indigenous undergraduate student - herself a football player in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (the first author) - and two faculty members (the co-authors) from the State University of Campinas. It constitutes an initial approach to the topic, based on the case of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in the Upper Rio Negro. For this first analysis, we chose to retrace the history of women’s football in the region through interviews with the founders of the first women’s teams. This choice stems from the fact that, from the outset of the research, we observed that the women involved with football in the region did not want merely to play, to “have fun” (brincar), as they often put it. The practice could have remained informal, but they quickly mobilized to create teams, secure training spaces, participate in championships, and establish the women’s category within existing competitions. There is thus a clear effort to institutionalize the practice, along with a pursuit of occupying public spaces and participating in what can be understood as the politics of regional football; for this reason, we focus on the dynamics of team formation and their modes of action.

The methodology consisted of identifying and interviewing the women who were involved in the creation of the first women’s football teams in the region, describing players’ trajectories and football learning processes, as well as their efforts toward its institutionalization. Eight women were identified, all Indigenous, from different peoples of the region (Arapaço, Baré, Tariano, and Tukano), of whom six were interviewed. We sought to understand what motivated them, the ways in which they related to - and continue to relate to - football, as well as the reactions of those around them to their engagement in the sport. We also sought to grasp what can be inferred, through women’s football, about broader social and political dynamics in the region.

The interviews were conducted between January and February 2023 by the first author, herself Indigenous and from the Wanano people, as part of an undergraduate research project carried out under the supervision of the second and third authors at the State University of Campinas. This work thus emerged from an encounter made possible by affirmative action policies for Indigenous peoples that have been increasingly developed by Brazilian public universities.⁶ At the time, an undergraduate student in Sport Sciences, the first author - who entered the university through an Indigenous entrance exam created in 2018 - joined a research group and sought collaboration with the other authors, whose research focuses, respectively, on gender and sport and on learning in Indigenous contexts (Altmann et al. 2018; Medaets 2020). The scene described in the introduction was recorded by the second author during her fieldwork in the region, which addresses youth, learning, and post-secondary educational trajectories.

The article is organized into an initial section of contextualization, in which we briefly situate the study within the body of work on women’s football and present readers with the characteristics of the study region, the Upper Rio Negro, in the state of Amazonas. The data produced are then analyzed across four sections: the first describes how the interviewed women learned to play football; the second addresses the formation of women’s teams and shows how competition operates as a vector of sociability, a point also emphasized in studies on football played by Indigenous men; the third explores the perception of sport as a right and the resulting political mobilization to secure this right, particularly in improving training conditions and participation in championships; finally, the fourth and last section portrays the growing involvement of women in the politics of regional football, as well as their participation in other spheres of regional political life.

The history of women’s football in the Rio Negro region is, therefore, also the history of women’s political participation in the region, as it can be read through the movements they have made to occupy spaces of power and public prominence, and through the reactions to these movements by those around them.

SITUATING THE STUDY

WOMEN’S FOOTBALL

For a long time, football was regarded as a virile sport, to be practiced by men. In Brazil, its practice was even prohibited for women, on the grounds that football was incompatible with their nature (Brazil 1941; National Sports Council 1965). Considered fragile, women were thought to be at risk of harming their reproductive capacity and their responsibilities toward the future of the nation by playing football. Despite these prohibitions and their negative impacts on the institutionalization of the sport, research shows that women were already playing football before the 1980s (Goellner 2005; Moraes 2012) and gradually challenged a social imaginary that restricted their sporting possibilities and devalued women who practiced it, for instance through its association with masculinity and homosexuality, among other factors (Altmann and Reis 2013; Rial and Almeida 2024).

In Brazil, national statistics show that girls and women participate less in sports than men; participation is also shaped by race, income, and level of education (IBGE 2021; PNUD 2017). With regard to football, women’s participation in the sport has been increasing. In a study conducted in public schools in the metropolitan region of the city of Campinas, it was already the second most practiced sport among girls in the final years of elementary school (Altmann et al. 2018). Moreover, an analysis based on the National Household Sample Survey found a predominance of Black, poor, young women with lower levels of schooling and living far from the country’s major population and economic centers among those who play football, highlighting the need for “future research that investigates the reasons and causes contributing to greater participation in the sport among individuals who accumulate disadvantages arising from the intersection of these identities” (Martins et al. 2024, 8). Indigenous populations, in turn, are not even accounted for in these analyses.

THE UPPER RIO NEGRO REGION

The northwestern Brazilian Amazon borders Colombia and Venezuela, in a region known as Cabeça do Cachorro (“Dog’s Head”) due to its geographic shape. Covering an area of approximately 189,000 km² - larger than Portugal - around 90-95% of the population identifies as Indigenous. The region is inhabited by more than twenty ethnic groups and characterized by remarkable linguistic diversity. Located approximately 850 km from Manaus, São Gabriel da Cachoeira is the main urban center of the region. It receives Indigenous families from different ethnic groups who come in search of work, healthcare, or expanded educational opportunities⁷. This was also the case for most of our interviewees, who were either born in the city or arrived there as children.

The inhabitants of the region organize politically through a dense network of Indigenous associations. These associations may bring together members of a single people or be multiethnic, such as the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN) and the Association of Indigenous Communities of the Middle Rio Negro (ACIMRN) (Andrello 2009; Iubel and Leirner 2019). From the mid-2000s onward, many of these organizations began to include departments for women and youth. The entry of these two groups into the political landscape of the Rio Negro is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon. In 2002, the Women’s Department was created within the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Rio Negro (FOIRN). In 2007, the First Conference of Indigenous Adolescents and Youth was held, organized jointly by FOIRN, ACIMRN, and the Catholic Church’s Youth Pastoral (PJ). From the mobilizations that emerged from this conference, the Departments of Indigenous Adolescents and Youth within FOIRN and ACIMRN were established in 2007, as well as the Municipal Secretariat of Youth, Sport and Leisure of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (SEMJEL).

It is worth noting that public policies for youth were chosen as the central theme of discussion by the Catholic Church’s Youth Pastoral (Pastoral da Juventude) from 2001 to 2006 at the national level. There was, therefore, as shown by Claudina Maximiano (2021), a clear encouragement from this Catholic organization - identified by young people in the Rio Negro region themselves as a “locus of political formation” (Maximiano 2021, 88) - for young people to organize their demands and bring them to instances of public administration. As we will see, one of the young women most involved with football, and with efforts toward institutionalization, mobilizes a set of actions and a vocabulary acquired through her participation in the Catholic Youth Pastoral.

WOMEN’S FOOTBALL IN SÃO GABRIEL DA CACHOEIRA

LEARNING IN THE STREETS

Through conversations with members of current teams in the city, observations of matches, and also the first author’s memories, it was possible to identify the women who created and played in the first women’s teams in the city in the 1990s, playing an active role in giving visibility and space to the practice . We identified eight women and two Indigenous men, husbands of two of these players, who were the first coaches and supporters of women’s football.

We were able to interview six female players who, at the time of the interviews, were between 29 and 48 years old. With the exception of one interviewee who spent her childhood in a rural community and moved to São Gabriel during adolescence (Clarissa, 29 years old, Tukano people), the others were born or grew up in the city. They report having started playing as children and, during adolescence and youth, between the ages of 13 and 20, they participated in the creation of the teams. All of them were still playing football at the time of the interviews, with varying levels of commitment. Two of them, aged 42 and 48, even formed a new team, “As Centenárias” (“The Centenarians”), which, with the humor typical of the region, playfully refers to their distance from the group they call the “novinhas” (“the young ones”).

In all interviews, the script included questions about how the women started playing and where they learned the game, and for most of them, the street was the most important school.

I was 12 years old [in 1991]. We used to play with the boys on an earthen pitch, and then some girls started joining together, so we began playing among ourselves. We had to arrive early at the pitch, before the boys, so they would let us play there. (Maria Sandra, Tukano people, 45 years old)

The theme of the struggle over playing spaces with boys, and later with male players, is a constant in the accounts of the women players.

First, we were not allowed to play, no. It was only the boys. But even so, we formed our own team and played. It was good. I always played among the boys; I always liked football. I was always in the middle, like a curumin [local word to boy, from indigenous origin] - I was a little curumin (laughs). (Gicélia, Baré people, 48 years old)

Non-formal practices in public places can generate a “street pedagogy” (Scaglia 2021), playing a formative role in these playful activities that unfold without the mediation of adults or educators guiding them for explicitly educational purposes.

It was my neighbor who invited me. She started taking me along to play. At that time, the girls were more welcoming to those who were learning, so we were inexperienced, but they let us join in so we could learn. And then I started to really enjoy football and kept going; I also began to stand out. (Solange, Baré people, 40 years old)

Physical education classes in school do not emerge as an important learning space, as football was primarily directed toward boys: “At school, for girls, they encouraged more volleyball, handball, those other sports. I think maybe that’s why we did not receive much encouragement at school” (Solange).

Research on school physical education has highlighted gender inequalities in classes and other spaces for sports practice within schools. However, these studies have been conducted predominantly in urban contexts and without specific research among Indigenous populations in mainstream schools or in Indigenous schools, thus revealing another gap in scientific production. Participation in class is associated with bodily and sporting experiences outside school, which favor and enhance the participation of more skilled bodies in class, during recess, and in extracurricular spaces (Jacó and Altmann 2016; Martins et al. 2023).

In Indigenous contexts, peer learning and “learning by participation” in different activities are predominant (Medaets 2020; Silva and Gomes 2015). Specifically in studies on Indigenous men’s football, after an initial transmission of the practice by non-Indigenous actors, informal learning also appears to be the most common among different peoples (Fassheber 2006; Fermino 2012; Nascimento 2015; Vianna 2008). This initial learning takes place in childhood and is mostly situated outside school, physical education classes, as well as outside more formal spaces.

Once adults, however, we observed - similarly to authors who have studied Indigenous men’s football - strategies adopted by players to improve their performance, which move away from informality, or at least from the lack of pedagogical intentionality that characterizes these moments of play in childhood. To improve their performance in regional championships with non-Indigenous teams, Bororo Indigenous players in Mato Grosso would watch and analyse football matches on television (Almeida 2013). Various groups organize training sessions, as well as collective fundraising such as raffles and contributions to buy uniforms and to hold championships on a regular basis (Fassheber 2006; Nascimento 2015; Vianna 2008).

In the case of women football players in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, after this initial moment of learning the game in the streets, those who continued playing into adulthood organized themselves to train on a weekly basis, with physical conditioning exercises and technical skill development. According to all the interviewees, their main goal was competitive participation in regional championships, which thus appears as the main motivation for their practice.

COMPETING AS A FORM OF COLLECTIVE ORGANIZATION

In the early 1990s, the first women’s teams emerged in the city of São Gabriel, training regularly under the supervision of a coach. According to the accounts, the coaches at that time were exclusively men, husbands of some of the players. In 1991, the first women’s team was founded: Dabaru Esporte Clube (DEC), with “Dabaru” being the name of a neighborhood.

According to the accounts of the interviewees, these male supporters were a minority, while most of the people with whom they interacted - both men and women - did not support them. Clarissa (Tukano people, 29 years old) explains: “My father supported it…, or rather, he allowed it, in fact. But when we were children, my grandmother on my father’s side had this kind of prejudice, you know, the idea that women could not play…”. Clécia also refers to this resistance and reports that she had to leave home secretly in order to play.

To be very honest, my family never supported me in sports practices (…) they never supported me because, in their view, football is for men. So my father would say: “How can a woman be playing football instead of men, instead of playing with my children?” Sometimes I would sneak out to play football because my father would not allow it. I would just pack my things and go without telling him, but I was there. And it really became a confrontation, me against my family… Not to mention the prejudice outside the home, there was the whole society judging me.” (Clécia)

Even so, they persisted, driven by the pleasure of playing, of “playing around,” and supported by those who were the first coaches of women’s teams. These coaches organized training sessions that, according to the accounts, were not limited to friendly matches. “We had training from Monday to Thursday - training and endurance, training to learn how to dribble, how to take the ball, how to take penalty kicks,” explains Clécia, lamenting that today some teams, in her view, fall short by holding practices that are only “a casual kickabout,” without working on specific technical aspects. Clearly concerned with improving the teams in order to participate in competitions, “tournaments,” she also recalls that, at that time, team names were not fixed, being formed anew for each tournament. They would sometimes adopt a well-known male player as a reference.

It was “The Ronaldinhas,” because Ronaldinho was very successful at the time, right? Then another tournament came up and it was “The Brazilians,” and then another one had a different name, and so on. For each tournament, we would come up with a name; there was no official team name.” (Clécia)

The formation of a team and their involvement in training strengthened them in the struggle for access to regular practice spaces and opportunities to compete: “Then it was when we started fighting for these spaces - for example, when a futsal cup was organized, the focus was mainly on men, so we began to fight to be able to include girls in these competitions” (Solange).

These efforts took place both in the private sphere (family life) and the public sphere (regional social life): they unfolded in attempts to individually confront family resistance when necessary in order to train, and in collective mobilizations to secure training spaces in the city and ensure participation in regional tournaments. The invitations they received to play as a “women’s team” in other municipalities show that this movement of women’s football occurs throughout the region. This frequency of Indigenous women’s participation in football is corroborated by the literature that examines the game among Indigenous men in Brazil, although it is not analyzed in its specificity, as already noted.

However, once invitations were received from municipalities near São Gabriel da Cachoeira, the women still had to struggle for support in order to participate, as Clécia reports:

Then, whenever invitations came from the municipalities, we would go to participate, but not because the mayor wanted to take us - rather, we would invite ourselves and go speak to the mayor: ‘Mayor, we have rights, why do you only take the men?’ And then he would take us, under free and spontaneous pressure (laughs). He would take us to Santa Isabel, Barcelos, and other places like that.

It is worth noting that football appears among other forms of competition that mobilize the inhabitants of the region. We can mention, for example, the largest regional festival, the Festribal, held since 1996, where three dance groups compete with one another: the Cultural Association Filhos do Rio Negro, the Tribo Tukano association, and the Tribo Baré association (Souza, 2019; Montardo and Schneider, 2012). These groups develop dance choreographies within a competitive and festive dynamic that resembles other Amazonian festivals, such as the Boi de Parintins (Parintins, Amazonas) and the Sairé of Alter do Chão (Santarém, Pará).

Regarding competition, anthropological analyses of men’s football offer relevant insights for understanding our own materials. In the literature on Indigenous peoples of Lowland South America, many rituals involving bodily competitions have been interpreted as attenuated substitutes for warfare practices; they would allow interethnic rivalries to be experienced and updated in ways more appropriate to the post-contact context (Hugh-Jones et al. 2015). There would thus be a “pacification of relations through the sportification of practices” (Costa 2021, 13). In the Upper Xingu region, Costa argues that football is embedded within this logic.

(...) bodily disputes and native sporting practices would cease to be oriented toward the elimination of the enemy, and would instead be directed toward the pursuit of victory over an adversary, whether through weapons or through bodily combat. It is within this regional context of pacification that football expands this model of relations. (Costa 2021, 14)

Working among the Kakataibo of Peru, Magda Dziubinska (2013) observed that the name given to the team captain, ain kushi (“the strong one”), is very similar to the term used to refer to former war leaders, uni kushi (“strong man”). The association between football and the updating of a warrior ethos is also made by Harry Walker (2013) in relation to the Urarina, also in the Peruvian Amazon.

To fully grasp the meanings of women’s football, and of football more broadly, within the network of interethnic relations in the Upper Rio Negro, it would be necessary to pursue this initial research further through an ethnography of games in the region. What our work already indicates, however, is that participation in championships is highly valued; we did not find any mention of groups that came together to play without the intention of competing in tournaments. An ethnography of matches and of the unfolding of a championship could show how rivalry is expressed among women’s teams and players. For now, the conflicting and competitive relations that appear in the accounts we recorded refer more explicitly to the men with whom they coexist.

SPORT AS A RIGHT

CONQUERING SPACES

The perception that sports practice constitutes a “right” (Korsakas et al. 2021) was gradually constructed and claimed by women from the Rio Negro region in dialogue with other social movements, especially through their participation in the Catholic Church’s Youth Pastoral. One of the women who played a leading role in the struggle for training and playing spaces for women, Clécia, clearly establishes the link between what she learned in the Youth Pastoral and her engagement in football, highlighting the circulation of a repertoire of action grounded in the notion of “rights.”

I used to play football and take part in the Youth Pastoral movement, where various topics were discussed, including youth public policies. There, I began to understand what our rights were - as women, as young people at the time - what our rights actually were. From there, I learned the importance of us, women, fighting for our own spaces. In this case, the girls who played football were interested in fighting for their space, in being able to play, to train…” (Clécia)

The Catholic Church, following the significant shift in its orientation introduced by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), played an important role in Brazil in supporting Indigenous political organization from the late 1980s onward (Munduruku 2012; Rufino 2006). Ariana dos Santos and Tadeu Lopes Machado (2019), in their analysis of the organization of Karipuna women in Amapá - the Indigenous group to which the first author belongs - show how the associational impetus of the Church’s progressive wings also supported the political organization of Indigenous women. In the Rio Negro region, where Salesian boarding schools marked the history of the generation of the interviewees’ grandparents or parents in some cases, with the prohibition of Indigenous languages and customs, the Church’s renewed stance came to encourage the revitalization of cultural practices and Indigenous political organization, drawing precisely on the notion of rights.

In the case of football, women’s struggle for training and playing spaces, understood as a right, required confronting men. These, in turn, saw themselves as authorities and owners of these sporting spaces, expressing reluctance to cede them to women for training: “And when they let us play, it was at one o’clock in the afternoon, under a blazing sun, with girls feeling sick, fainting.” (Clécia). Jéssica (Tariano people, 35 years old) has a similar recollection.

We heard a lot of criticism, but positive things that lifted us up - like saying, ‘you play well,’ and so on - we only said among ourselves. Among the men, it was very difficult for us to play; it was like, ‘come on, you don’t play at all!’ When we were on the field, or on the court wanting to play, they would say, ‘You’re just stealing our time here on the court!’ So we had to divide the court, the field, and they would say that we were just taking away their time to play.” (Jéssica).

In 1995, Clécia managed to negotiate with the Sports League of the municipality of São Gabriel a training schedule for women, from 7 to 9 a.m., twice a week, at the Arnaldo Coimbra Sports Arena, which at the time was not covered. In this space, training among women became regular, creating a safer and more protected environment for practice, an aspect also identified as important in other studies (Martins et al. 2023).

Although, in general, the scientific literature on gender and physical education adopts a favourable position towards co-educational practices, in which boys and girls experience the same activity together, we also find accounts and studies that highlight the advantages of women-only practice environments. Based on an ethnography conducted in a girls’ football school, Martins, Souza Jr., and Reverdito report that: “The decision to establish girls-only teams within the football school was an effective way of providing this safe environment, as it allowed them to engage in which they were protagonists” (Martins, Souza Jr. and Reverdito 2023, 5).

This group of women that gathered to play also engaged in other activities that were, in some way, derived from or associated with football, such as building wooden benches so that women and children could watch the games, or organizing communal meals (“sopões”) and other gatherings at the end of matches. During the fieldwork, on one occasion after a game, they all met at the bar owned by the husband of one of the team members. Clécia emphasized the importance of these post-game moments, which she described as creating spaces for speaking and listening, for “chatting,” strengthening their bonds.

In 2007, as a result of youth organization efforts supported by the Youth Pastoral and by existing Indigenous organizations such as FOIRN, the Municipal Youth Secretariat (SEMJEL) was created. In the same year, the “women’s” category in the municipal futsal championship became permanent. The registration fee paid by each team, along with donations from the municipal government, were used as prizes awarded to the best-ranked teams at the end of the event. In 2008, Clécia succeeded in negotiating with the mayor a time slot for the use of the municipal field (campo do Quirinão), allowing them to train on a full-sized football pitch rather than being restricted to smaller fields. She recounts this episode, highlighting the “very strong struggle” it involved.

In 2007 and 2008, the youth struggle was very strong. I participated as an activist, as a young woman. (…) We submitted our petition, we asked for space so we would not be expelled by men. Every time, we were driven out, and we did not push back because we believed we did not have rights to that space. And then, at the time, Juscelino (the mayor) granted us permission to play. (…) After that, we started playing football on the field, but it was only from noon until two o’clock, so it did not go beyond that.” (Clécia)

Increasingly engaged in the public life of the city, Clécia also joined the Workers’ Party during this period. Supported by the reflections she was encouraged to develop within the Youth Pastoral and other activist circles, in 2014 she was invited to take on the position of deputy secretary of the Municipal Youth Secretariat (SEMJEL). Clécia was a permanent municipal employee, having held different positions in schools, which facilitated her appointment to SEMJEL. In this role, she succeeded in integrating women’s teams into the Municipal Sports League, enabling them to participate in the football championship - rather than only in futsal competitions. That year thus marked the first municipal field football championship for “women’s football,” which did not occur without resistance.

It was a struggle to include women within the Sports League. The League had existed for more than 50 years, and there had never been any women. So they did not want to make space for women. The president of the League did not want to accept it; he said: ‘They can come here if they want, but they will not be included in the Sports League.’” (Clécia)

Clécia then drew on the norms and notions of rights she had learned through the Catholic Youth Pastoral and other political spaces she attended.

I brought the Statute of Public Servants, I brought everything I needed, the youth rights, you know? At the time, there were many young women, and we managed to include them and organize the first women’s football championship. It was a success - 11 teams came, no, 12. The first championship was successfully launched, with 12 teams already formed to take part in the tournament in 2014.

And she goes on to emphasize the entire effort to maintain the official status and institutionalized character of the practice.

Then we set up the organizing committee, we did everything properly and neatly, and that’s how we went about it… That was the first flag raised for the women’s championship. Since we were within the Secretariat, we supported them with balls and prizes, because the League itself did not provide them, due to this situation in which, as he said, they did not want women, you know?

At that time, many teams had already adopted stable names, and some women also became team coaches, working in partnership with men. In 2015, Clécia founded the Boa Esperança team, becoming the first woman to preside over a football team.

In 2022, another woman, Clécia’s friend Solange, assumed the presidency of the Sports League. She had been vice-president on a ticket led by a man and took over the position when, a few months after the election, the president resigned. Solange, who worked professionally as a municipal police officer, was the first woman in the state of Amazonas to hold this position, which she occupied until early 2024.

PLAYERS, REFEREES, AND MANAGERS: WOMEN IN REGIONAL FOOTBALL POLITICS

Gradually, women began to claim leadership positions in sport, such as technical, refereeing, and administrative roles. As shown by other studies, leadership positions in sport have been predominantly occupied by men - white and heterosexual - not only in Brazil, but in many parts of the world (Barreira 2021). In the research presented here, the fact that two Indigenous women became managers - one in the Secretariat of Youth, Sport and Leisure and, later, another in the Municipal Sports League - opened new pathways for the participation of other women.

During her tenure at the Sports League, Solange introduced the first women referees in the region, once again encountering resistance from men.

It was also a rejection of their inclusion. Because they are women, men say, “they don’t know how to referee, they don’t know how to run the lines”, then I said: “It’s not that they don’t know, no one has ever given them the opportunity to learn. So they do know the practice, and they will gain experience through practice. If we don’t give them the opportunity, how will they learn?” But you know, a man can make mistakes, but if a girl makes a mistake, then it’s because she is a woman… And that’s how it goes. (Solange)

Clécia, commenting on the difficulties experienced by her colleague, reflects on the reasons for this resistance.

I think that when you take a leading role like that, they feel belittled. I don’t know, it’s a feeling of: how is a woman there? I’m going to have to obey, I’m going to have to follow her instructions, follow what she is leading. (Clécia)

Studies addressing football among Indigenous men show that this practice has a political dimension, in the sense that it is an important vector of sociability and of the maintenance or creation of alliances, both within each people and in interethnic relations among different Indigenous peoples, as well as in those established with non-Indigenous people. It can be understood as a “strategic game in interethnic relations,” in the words of Ronaldo Nascimento (2015), referring to the Munduruku. Or, as Antonella Tassinari presents in her monograph on the Karipuna:

The formation of teams and the role of team captain, in addition to providing status and a sense of ease in social interaction, often accompany the beginning of younger leaders’ political participation. On certain occasions, football becomes an important moment of encounter and exchange between villages and among neighbouring peoples, during tournaments, championships, and friendly matches, when there are supporters, trophies, and celebratory dances. (Tassinari 1998, 316).

Women’s participation in the region’s party-political life in the Upper Rio Negro is still limited, with this field remaining predominantly male (Iubel 2018). However, as also shown by Francineia Fontes (2020), better known as Francy Baniwa, a Baniwa and Rio Negro woman, women in the region have always played a political role in a broad sense, not limited to party politics, acting as diplomatic links between different peoples in a region where interethnic marriages are predominant.

The history of women’s football in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira reveals a contemporary movement among Indigenous women from different peoples in this multi-ethnic region, seeking to occupy the public arena and to “fight for our spaces,” as Clécia puts it. More than simply playing football and engaging in play among themselves, they work to train and prepare in order to compete in tournaments. They organize themselves so that the “women’s” category can gain space and become established in competitions. They also seek to occupy, and to create opportunities for other women to occupy paid positions linked to football, such as refereeing or managerial roles.

This movement is very likely strengthened by the growing participation of Indigenous women in national party politics and in Indigenous associations, as well as by incentives from the Indigenous advocacy field for the political participation of Indigenous women. (Figure 3)

Figure 3
Uniformed training session, May 20, 2023. Photograph by Adilce Ferraz.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Women’s Indigenous football in São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM) has undergone remarkable expansion and institutionalisation, resulting from women’s collective organisation. Their participation in football initially took shape as players. They began playing in the streets with boys and, over time, created spaces to play among girls. They often faced family restrictions, as well as resistance from boys and men, who rarely accepted to ceding spaces where they could play. Only one interviewee mentions physical education classes as a space of learning, given the lack of association between this practice and women - a perception rooted in the historical formation of Brazilian society.

Gradually, women claimed spaces for training and participation in championships. Competitive experience in sport strengthened them as a group, fostering bonds and creating a sense of belonging. The experience of some of them in other forms of collective organisation, such as the Catholic Youth Pastoral or party activism, was then mobilised, enabling an understanding of sport as a right.

As a result, the visibility and scope of women’s football increased, and women began to take on more responsible - and at times leadership - roles within the institutions that regulate organised football in the region, as in the case of Clécia, who assumed the position of deputy secretary in the Municipal Secretariat of Youth, and Solange, who took on a leadership role in the Municipal Sports League. Despite resistance from a significant number of men, they also received support from others which enabled them to reach these positions.

This growth, as well as male resistance, is not disconnected from other spheres of social life in the region, and we can see how participation in the Youth Pastoral was important for Clécia to acquire a discursive repertoire centred on the notion of “rights” and to assert herself vis-à-vis male leaders in decision-making arenas of football in the city, as well as to join a political party, expanding her political fields of action. In addition to playing, women made significant efforts to institutionalise the “women’s football” category in various ways.

The participation of women in football - as players and, later, as referees or in management positions within the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira - reveals thus important aspects of the region’s social dynamics and political life. Women’s football emerges as a lens through which to understand contemporary tensions and transformations in political and gender relations among Indigenous peoples of the Upper Rio Negro.

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• 5
  In Portuguese, the most used term in the field of sports is “female soccer (futebol feminino).” However, the term “women’s soccer” (futebol de mulheres) was proposed by Cláudia Kessler (2015), with the aim of decoupling the practice from normative gender thinking, which is held hostage by the “male/female” dichotomy that the expression “female soccer” conveys. Women’s soccer is then widely used in Brazilian academic circles (Goellner 2021).
• 6
  For a national overview of these policies, see Medaets, Longo, and Arruti (2025). For a description of the State University of Campinas, see Medaets, Arruti, and Fonseca (2024).
• 7
  Primary education is offered in all communities in the region, and secondary education in most of them, but it is common to hear that “schooling is of better quality in the city”; São Gabriel also offers technical education and some higher education options that attract many residents (Pellegrini et al. 2021).
• Financial Disclosure Statement
  This research was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), grant No. 2018/25259-0, and by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), through an undergraduate research scholarship.
• Data availability statement
  We declare, for all due purposes, that the data underlying this article are partially available in the first author’s undergraduate thesis, which can be accessed in the State University of Campinas library.

• Chief-editor
  Carlos Sautchuk (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2427-2153)

• Associate Editors
  Rosana Castro (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1069-4785)
  Sara Morais (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1490-1232)
  Jose Arenas Gómez (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2159-0527)
  Alberto Fidalgo Castro (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0538-5582)
  Elisabeth Defreyne (https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2559-0047)

• Approved by the editor Carlos Sautchuk (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2427-2153)

Data availability

We declare, for all due purposes, that the data underlying this article are partially available in the first author’s undergraduate thesis, which can be accessed in the State University of Campinas library.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 July 2026
• Date of issue
  2026

History

• Received
  03 Nov 2025
• Accepted
  03 May 2026