Invisible Champions: An Ethnography of Peruvian Women’s Football

Abstract

Measured by national titles won, JC Sport Girls of Lima remains the most successful club in Peruvian women’s football. The mere notion of ‘national’ titles in Peruvian women’s football remains problematic because indeed ‘national’ competition only exists each year as a 4- or 5-day haphazard knockout tournament between winners of amateur regional leagues. Inspired by the threadbare provision and indifference towards women’s football in Peru, the Sports Girls club was formed in 2003 by a group of determined women who wanted to challenge the ingrained and unacknowledged prejudices against female participation in football during that period. JC Sport Girls has consistently met their lofty ambitions, provided players for the Peruvian women’s national team, created various teams at various age levels and achieved a certain level of recognition at regional and national media levels. Despite being an entirely amateur concern that receives no remuneration for producing players for larger clubs at home and abroad, JC Sport Girls continues to operate in the transitional context that is now seeing larger professional clubs open women’s teams to meet CONMEBOL policy, obligating teams to have youth and women’s teams to compete in the men’s Copa Libertadores. This case study uses participant observation and interview material with players who represented JC Sport Girls at the 2018 Women’s Copa Libertadores in Manaus, Brazil; they captured a national setting where, in the absence of institutional support or significant interest from large clubs, a small independent club, as ‘national’ champions, was able to represent Peru at a continental level in the Women’s Copa Libertadores.