Visions of Gender Justice

Introduction

This is a brief tale about the dreams, political views and actions of Juliana Cabral, the captain and leader of the Brazilian national football team that won the silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. When I interviewed Juliana in 2005 she made it clear that while participating in the 2004 Olympics she was deeply conscious that she was playing not only to achieve her best possible performance, but also on behalf of many thousands of Brazilian girls and women who love to play football ¹ but who suffer gender injustice within the “sport nexus” (Burstyn, 1999; Travers, 2008, p. 80).

I have met many Brazilian sportswomen throughout my career as both a coach for women’s teams as well as an academic in Brazil; Juliana’s political fight, however, drew my attention as it has all the components of the liberating struggle against oppressive life described and actualized by Paulo Freire.

Gender justice seeking sportswomen such as Juliana demonstrate that they have the consciousness to speak the “language of possibility” (Freire, 2003, p. 87). They can not only perceive and critique current limitations, but they can imagine a reality that lies beyond such limit situations and can undertake historical actions (or limit-actions) to create contexts of freedom and dignity for all. They can thereby make changes in material life or “reality,” creating what Brazilian educator, philosopher and social-activist, Freire, termed untested feasibility (2000).

Accounts of Brazilian women who have stood up for the rights of sportswomen are lacking in the scholarly literature and this article is intended as an important corrective to that silence. In the words of Brazilian feminist activist Sandra Unbehaum, “sport has been considered a minor space in women’s struggle for autonomy and social equity” ² in Brazil. The main purpose of this article is to chronical Juliana Cabral’s political struggle in the world of Brazilian football. The data forming the basis of this analysis comes from five in-depth interviews I conducted with her in 2005. The main theoretical framework underlying this article is grounded in the educational ideas and concepts developed by Paulo Freire. I attempt to establish a dialogue between Freire’s theoretical concepts—such as untested feasibility and dialogical education—and Juliana’s ³ process of conscientization or conscientização. I seek to demonstrate how Freire’s concepts can be powerful and practical tools to assess what athletes have been doing. In this case, it means documenting Juliana’s fight for gender justice on the football field and to increase women’s access to fundamental cultural human rights.

In his work Freire has many times pointed to the several dimensions of the existent “culture of silence” (Shor & Freire, 1987), one way oppressors keep the oppressed “submerged.” As he states, “denouncing transgressions against human values” is an important part of the reality changing process (2004, p. 105). By presenting the beliefs and practices of Juliana and her teammates, I hope to help to break this culture of silence, to support gender justice on Brazilian football fields and to encourage human rights within the wider sporting arena.

Before presenting Juliana’s dreams and visions, I provide some understanding of the Brazilian social context and relate it to a brief historical background regarding female sports, particularly football, in the nation. I then outline the main points of the Freirean theoretical framework that subsequently employ to highlight Juliana’s voice. I conclude by suggesting that Juliana’s dreams and visions find powerful focus when viewed through a Freirean conceptual lens.

Brazil, an Unequal Country

Brazil is a country of nearly 200 million people in South America. Despite a growing economy and affirmative action policies in place that are designed to improve the socioeconomic status of those who are poor and/or black and/or women, Brazil is still a country characterized by a high level of social inequality. According to official government data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2007), half of Brazilian families live with a monthly income of less than US$180.00 and there are 2.5 million working children aged 10-17, 235,000 of whom are living on the streets. Racial inequalities are also deeply present in Brazilian society. Brazil’s economy was heavily dependent on African slaves between 1559 and 1888 and this 300 year legacy of slavery has left profound scars on the country’s social and economic life. In their report, The Summary of Social Indicators 2007—an Analysis of Life Conditions of the Brazilian Population, the IBGE found that the “illiteracy rate of black and brown [or mulattos: mixed race] people is more than twice that of white persons.” They also report that “white persons earned, on average, 40% more than black or brown people with the same level of schooling.”

Brazil’s racial inequality also intersects significantly with fundamental gender injustice. In 2010, Brazilians elected their first woman—Dilma Roussef—President. Despite this symbolic and important act, the data outlined below indicates the significant nature of gender inequality in Brazil:

From 1996 to 2006, the number of women who declared to be head of the household increased from 10.3 million to 18.5 million all over the country. Between the same years, there was an increase of the proportion of women with children who lived with a monthly family income of up to ½ a minimum wage per capita. About 31% of families in which a woman was the reference person lived with monthly income of up to ½ of a minimum wage per capita. In families headed by a man, this percentage was lower (26.8%; IBGE, 2007).

Football and Gender Injustice in Brazil

Football is one of the major national symbols of Brazil. The importance and power of football in Brazilian society can be seen in the following blog note during the FIFA World Cup in South Africa in 2010 from Juca Kfouri, ⁴ one of the most heralded Brazilian sports journalists:

Today I did not go to a game. I went to the Apartheid Museum, which to South Africa’s history is the same as the Football Museum in Sao Paulo is to Brazilian history.

It is worth noting, however, that even though football is clearly central to the country’s history and social life (Aquino, 2002; Bellos, 2002; Natali, 2007; Pardue, 2002), there is no coverage of women’s participation in football in Brazil in the Football Museum in Sao Paulo; there is not a single mention of women’s achievements in this symbolic expression of the essence of Brazilian culture. This is in spite of significant achievements by women in football over the last two decades and their significant participation in Brazilian football in the first half of the last century. In a comprehensive study on the recreational and sport experiences of early American women, Struna (1994) has pointed to a similar invisibility even though women have been “omnipresent” since the early stages of recreational sports in that country.

Over the last 40 years, though, critical analysis and research on women and sport by social scientists has increased exponentially. Thorpe (2005, p. 58) affirms that since the 1970s, women’s achievements in all sporting spheres “has directed attention to sport’s considerable role in the reproduction and transformation of contemporary relations between and within the sexes.” Dunning and Maguire (2010) have written a comprehensive historical account of the relationship between sports and hegemonic masculinity and Travers highlights how male-dominated sports settings contribute to gender injustice by excluding women from this “major form of social interaction” (2008, p. 80). In a ground-breaking transcultural critical analysis of women who play football in Europe, Scratton et al (1999) questioned whether football could still be seen as a “‘man’s’ game.”

Research on the Brazilian context includes an examination by Votre and Mourão’s (2003) of the social and historical obstacles faced by women who play football in that country. Goellner (2000; 2005) argued that women who play football live between the shadow and the light, because although they play the sport, they have to constantly fight prejudice, and deal with issues and gossip about their lifestyles and sexuality. Mourão and Morel (2005) investigated the prejudices and sexist language that the media consistently use when talking or writing about female football players. Researchers have also denounced the way the largest Brazilian football Federation organized a major female championship, selecting only “attractive” White players, and totally disregarding the human rights of the other players (Knijnik & Vasconcellos, 2005).

In a detailed study of female icons in twentieth century Brazilian sport, Mourão (1998) determined that women entered this arena not with political battles but rather, without making a noise, step by step, as though entering through the back door. And as Romero (2004) and Knijnik and Souza (2011) have pointed out, women are still far less visible than men in the sports press, occupying a role that Macedo ⁵ describes as that of a “cultural schizophrenic: being present and yet not visible; being visible and yet not present” (2000, p. 11).

Travers (2008) argues that a society in which women are materially and culturally marginalised in and through sport cannot be called a democracy. Gender injustice in Brazilian football is a central challenge for Brazil’s democracy and an obstacle to the country’s ability to follow through on the human rights commitments agreed to by the Brazilian Government in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW/UN, 1979). This convention clearly states that all signatories will ensure that:

(. . .) all appropriate measures [will be taken] to eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure to them equal rights with men . . . and in particular to ensure . . . the same opportunities to participate actively in sports and physical education (CEDAW, 1979, part III, article 10, item g).

An analysis of Juliana’s political struggle in the world of Brazilian football is one way to counter-act the invisibility of women in the nation sport and in the nation itself and to give space to an imagined and more just future.

Untested Feasibility—Paulo Freire’s Optimistic Pragmatism and the “Problematic” World

The pedagogical and political ideas of Paulo Freire remain influential among those who think critically about education and social issues. One of the outstanding features of Freire’s pedagogy is its hands-on perspective; his work is “rooted in concrete situations” (Freire, 2000, p. 37) of oppression. He himself taught illiterate adult sugarcane workers living in extreme poverty in order to enable them to develop their “voice and words,” the first step of the conscientização—the process of increasing critical consciousness needed by the oppressed to perceive and to stand up against the oppressive elements of life (Freire, 2000).

Freire believed that education was a social process and that the teacher’s role was not to transfer a body of prior knowledge. Rather, basing his ideas on a belief in the autonomy and freedom of each human being, Freire suggested that the learner should be responsible for her own learning by drawing on knowledge acquired from previous life experiences. Applying this approach, Freire achieved amazing results; illiterate adults, for example, learned to read and write in less than two months.

Freire was a fighter for social justice and original framer of the educational philosophy called teaching for social justice ⁶ which advocates that teachers focus on the creation of equity to change oppressive social systems (Freire, 2000). In order to restore their humanity and to change the oppressive reality, the oppressed, Freire affirms, cannot “become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both” (2000, p. 44). Freire described himself as a “radical” in the sense that a radical is committed to a position but is always creative and “not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them” (2000, p. 39). Humanization, the search for generosity, and the disposition to listen and to dialogue are constants in Freire’s philosophy.

Freire offers a prescription for freedom and humanization, the first being the basis of the second. He affirms that humanization is the vocation for all human beings but that it has, however, been “thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression and the violence of the oppressors” (2000, p. 44). To regain the necessary freedom and subsequent humanization, the oppressed must fight:

Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man[sic] ⁷ ; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion. (Freire, 2000, p. 47)

It is important to highlight that Freire possessed a dialectical vision of oppressors and the oppressed, affirming that they do not live apart but make only one world; the first exist only because of the second, even if they are in “contradiction.” This term, contradiction, was used by Freire to explain the dialectical conflict between these two social powers, “the deep-seated presence of the oppressor in the oppressed” (1997, p. 66).

Contradiction also explains how, in the first stages of their struggle for liberation, the perception held by the oppressed of themselves is “impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression” (2000, p. 45). Contradiction requires a dialogical education in which both teacher and students share and build their knowledge through “problem-posing education”:

The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student …In this way the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his [sic]reflections in the reflection of the students. The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher (Freire, 2000, pp. 80-81).

The contradiction (or dialectical process) is the reason Freire believed that a constant dialogue embedded in concrete situations would allow the oppressed to develop conscientização.

Freire’s concept of limit-situations (2000, p. 100) refers to events which are not boundaries but rather challenges that move individuals, communities and societies to see beyond events and to fulfil the conditions to achieve untested feasibility. When an individual can overcome a limit-situation by limit-acts, untested feasibility is achieved (Freire, 2000, p. 99). In a later definition, untested feasibility is used to refer to

The future which we have yet to create by transforming today, the present reality. It is something not yet here but a potential, something beyond the “limit situation” we face now, which must be created by us beyond the limits we discover (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 153).

So untested feasibility is the world of possibilities. It is prophetic thought, utopia, which implies both denouncing the oppressive conditions in which people are living, but also announcing a better life.

I believe part of the beautifulness of prophetic announcing lies in its announcing, not what necessarily will happen, but rather what may or may not come. Its announcing is not fatalistic or deterministic. In true prophecy, the future is not inexorable; it is problematic (Freire, 2004, p. 105).

There could be no better metaphor for someone like Juliana who, as will be seen in the following sections, is fighting to understand and overcome decades of oppression and prohibition, challenging years of gender inequity, and battling to promote human rights in Brazilian football and beyond.

As pointed out by Freire, Brazil is an authoritarian and “strong machista society” (1987, p. 165). The next section will show how this Brazilian machismo and the gender inequities it provoked throughout the history of football in Brazil led to an oppressive environment for women players at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries.

Oppressed Bodies, Women Forbidden: Juliana’s Heritage

Since the onset of modernity and the preeminent position of science, and the female body has been heavily scrutinized and disciplined by medical doctors, educators and lawmakers. Vertinsky (1994) affirms that, while women in the USA were finding new forms of freedom by participating in new sports such as cycling in the late 19th century, several doctors were debating and advising middle and upper class women about the negative effects of physical activity on the health of their bodies and that similar processes were occurring in Europe. According to Vertinsky (1994), the philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer was one of the biggest voices against the participation of women in any sort of physical activity. He campaigned against women’s participation in vigorous physical activity, claiming that it would not only bring about illness but also infertility and weaken future generations.

A parallel to such efforts to restrict the physical activity of women occurred in Brazil during the first half of the 20th century. During this time, the female body was the centre of intense public debate within Brazilian society. Legislators, educators, medical doctors, politicians and other specialists contributed to a heated discussion based on pseudo-scientific theories grounded in chauvinistic arguments that considered the female body—and women—as inferior to the male body—and therefore, to men—and consequently incapable of performing physical activities that demanded power or physical contact.

As a result of this debate, in 1941 the National Sports Council approved what we now consider to be utterly discriminatory legislation. ⁸ It forbade women from practising sports considered unsuitable to “feminine nature”; for example, from playing football or participating in physical activities such as martial arts, the pole vault, the triple jump, boxing, decathlon and pentathlon (Goellner, 2005; Mourão and Morel, 2005). While seen as absurd now, this legislation had disastrous consequences for the development of Brazilian women’s football. At the time, for example, there were several organized female teams, such as Vila Hilda Football Club and Corinthians football, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazilian South). These teams had many supporters and very intense press coverage. Women’s teams such as these practiced many times per week and travelled across the state to play once or twice a week. The new legislation meant that flourishing teams like these were forced to dismiss their players and close their doors (Rigo et al., 2008).

In an historical account of female football in Brazil, Votre and Mourão note that

only in 1979 did football stop being a forbidden sport for Brazilian women . . . Football quickly made its way among women throughout the country, and four years after liberation, women’s teams were organized, mainly in Brazilian state capitals. (2003, p. 254)

In spite of the re-emergence of women’s football and more than 3,000 women’s teams, ensuing prejudice and violence (verbal and physical offenses against “masculinized” women players) reversed some of these gains. Starting in the early 1990s,

Women’s football decayed year by year. Beyond first division clubs, second division clubs closed the doors to women’s football. Paradoxically, Brazilian players were recognized abroad, but there was no place for them in Brazil . . . The twentieth century ended with no women’s football team in Rio de Janeiro . . . Minimal conditions for a national team are non-existent. There is no movement in favour of professional preparation for women’s football, which struggles to survive even as an amateur sport . . . Whenever there is talk of women’s football, the erotic dimension again takes precedent over the technical . . . The state of women’s football today suggests that Brazil has little to be proud of and much to be ashamed of. (Votre & Mourão, 2003, p. 265)

This is the historical inheritance of women’s football in Brazil, a history marked by prejudice and prohibitions, where the female body has been reduced to either frailty or erotic beauty, never seen in terms of its potential for sporting achievement.

Social change in such a visible and important space as football is very difficult to achieve. In his acclaimed study of the history of one of the most important football teams in the Soviet Union, Spartak Moscow, Edelman states that

The powerful in any society have historically dominated big-time sport, and soccer, the most popular of sports, has always provided a space in which that power was both displayed and contested. (2009, p. 304)

A similar contest between antagonistic powers can be seen in Brazilian football. Conservative political forces have always controlled football at professional levels in the country. By putting in place Federal laws to increase morality within the football world, the left-oriented government of Lula, 2002-2010, attempted to decrease the political power of the archaic elites who control the sport and who oppress players and fans. A study by Jarvie has confirmed that

Football in Brazil was one of the key battlegrounds upon which the battle to make the country a fairer place was being fought. The sport had been run by a network of unaccountable largely corrupt figures known as cartolas or “top hats” who had become wealthy while the domestic football scene remained broke and demoralized. (2007, p. 414)

The social fairness that these Federal laws ⁹ were supposed to engender has not, however, reached women football players. The laws were aimed at football’s “big picture,” the managers of clubs and the fans; in other words, the laws were targeting men’s football. They were not, as exemplified in a number of cases studied by Jarvie “embracing certain egalitarian goals through provision for targeted or vulnerable sports groups” (2007, p. 416).

Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil on October 3, 1981, Juliana grew up against this background of gender prejudice towards sportswomen. She is a highly intelligent woman who attended college and travelled around the world playing football. She plays defence, where her main strengths have always been highly accurate passing and her ability to support and raise the level of play of her teammates; however, and most importantly, it has been the strong leadership that she has demonstrated everywhere she has played. It was her outstanding leadership and passing skills that enabled her to become a member of the Brazilian Team at the age of 15!

Juliana began her football career as a child playing with her three older brothers on the streets of a lower-middle-class neighbourhood in Sao Paulo. She says she started kicking a ball “at the same time I started to walk” (quoted in Knijnik, 2011). Her experience is not unlike that of many girls who play “male” sports, such as the female Australian Rules Football players studied by Wedgwood:

[L]iving in a male-dominated household in which male interests and activities prevailed, [the players] grew up learning to value what are considered masculine activities and values over those considered to be feminine. (2004, p. 146)

From an early time, fabricating small deceptions with her brothers to avoid her mother’s prohibitions about playing a “boys” game, Juliana forged her own path, facing barriers and prejudice, a path that led her to play for the National Women’s Football team. Juliana experienced a form of gendered sport education during her development as a football player. As she said during our interviews “I was focused on my career; however, I could see how the older men who controlled the teams and the Federation promoted the girls . . . always the beautiful ones.” As she honed her football skills, she learned by herself to develop what Freire terms “a vigilant attitude” to develop her know-how and at the same time a “critical reflection and wisdom concerning all the dehumanizing practices” (1996, p. 12). Juliana’s informal education within the football environment and combined with a critical perspective that she developed in response to the sexism she encountered. This led her to develop the necessary autonomy to later assume great responsibilities as a leader and, as well, to have something to teach individual players and, more broadly, society. Freire considers such informal and social learning essential for the life of any person. He argues that:

It goes unnoticed that it was in the social space where women and men, historically, realized that is possible to teach. If it was clear to us as a society that it was learning that we realized it was possible to teach, we would have easily understood the importance of informal experiences in the streets, squares (1996, p. 49).

The streets and the squares: these were the places where Juliana underwent her early gendered sport education. Later, this education, in addition to her perspicacity, critical awareness and courage would give her the opportunity to make a difference in her community. Juliana was undertaking her conscientização, a lesson that Freire states cannot be taught by another, but rather,

must come […] from the oppressed themselves and from those who are truly in solidarity with them. As individuals or peoples, by fighting for the restoration of their humanity they will be attempting the restoration of true generosity. (2000, p. 45)

In the following sections, the generosity embedded in Juliana’s actions will become clear.

Method

To explore Juliana’s political views about football in Brazil, I use excerpts from transcripts of my interviews with her. The interviews were conducted in Portuguese and translated by me afterwards. These are included with her consent. I first met Juliana in 2005, during a debate about women’s football held at the Sports Centre of the University of Sao Paulo (USP), the largest South American university and one that has a remarkable presence within the political and scientific arena of the continent. The organizers put together a roundtable discussing perspectives on women’s football on International Women’s Day (8th March). At that time, I was a lecturer at USP and I represented an academic point of view. Juliana spoke on behalf of women football players. There was also a representative of the Sao Paulo Football Federation and the Co-ordinator of sports at the Sao Paulo Sports Department, the lead government agency for sports policy and development in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s richest and most populous state.

In that debate I positioned myself in support of the women footballers. I did not claim a leadership role in their struggle, but I did have some expertise regarding gender issues in sports settings that I thought would be useful to share with the audience and the sports managers. My position there was similar to what Freire thought about the women’s struggle.

When Paulo Freire returned to Brazil after his political exile, ¹⁰ he was asked about women’s struggle for liberation. He answered by saying “I’m also woman!” By this he meant that,

if the women must have the main responsibility in their struggle, they have to know that their struggle also belongs to us, that is, to those men who don’t accept the machista position in the world. (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 166)

This is the position that I take with regard to women’s football in Brazil. It was not, and is not, my intention to take a leadership role in the political struggle for women’s football but I strongly disagreed with the machista positions of the football managers. In that roundtable, therefore, I advocated for women’s right to play football and to have their sport pursuits supported by both the national Federation and government agencies. Juliana, as a critical thinker, recognized that. We empathized with each other and forged a connection. After this event, I asked her if she would agree to be involved in face-to-face interviews and she promptly accepted, saying that she would do anything that might assist the cause of women’s football in Brazil.

Accordingly, we met five times during the remainder of 2005. All the interviews, which can be classified as in-depth mode (Denscombe, 2003), were taped. In the interviews we covered a range of subjects, from Juliana’s personal history in football to her life in the US. She told me about her parents, and how her mother did not want her to play football, and about how her brothers helped her to hide from their mother and to go to the streets to play, while her father was a silent accomplice. We talked about “hot issues” such as gender and sexuality in football; she told me about different phases of her career, her personal achievements, her dreams and her future. In the first interview I had a set of questions to guide me, which I subsequently abandoned. Instead, I started the conversations by referring to some issue in the previous interview, and I used probing questions to better understand her ideas and some responses which were not clear, as well as to engage with her and her ideas (Minichiello et al., 1995). I then analysed Juliana’s political perspectives on football through a Freirean conceptual lens.

First Dreams: All Together Now!

As stated earlier, by the end of the 1990s, women’s football had been all but abandoned in Brazil (Votre & Mourão, 2003). Even if Brazil’s women players were valued abroad, there was no space for them in Brazil, no clubs to play for, and the National Team had negligible support. Juliana confirmed these facts, stating that after the 2000 Sydney Olympics:

It was very sad, after Sydney the clubs closed their doors; sponsorships disappeared, and therefore the promoters of the championships. Our best players went to the U.S., and female football was almost extinguished here.

Juliana’s words were clearly sombre in tone, yet she was simply stating facts. The best Brazilian players, such as Pretinha and Sissi, ¹¹ went to play in the USA where there was a new professional women’s football league, the Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA). Outstanding players who stayed in Brazil, such as Soro, ¹² struggled to live, sometimes working as cleaning women to survive (Knijnik, 2011). The Sao Paulo Football Federation did organize a women’s championship in 2001 but it was one of the most discriminatory sports championships ever: only allowing young, white and stereotypically beautiful girls to play, cutting out those with short hair, who were older than 23, or had black skin. The managers were looking for a “technical but beauty game” (Knijnik & Vasconcellos, 2005).

With no opportunities to play football in Brazil, Juliana went to play in the USA where she stayed until 2003. But then something unusual happened back in Brazil: the Brazilian men’s team was beaten in the South American qualifying games and therefore lost the chance to compete in the 2004 Athens Olympics. This seemed to be the limit-situation that Juliana and her teammates had dreamt of.

The Brazilian Football Federation (CBF) was severely criticized in the press because of its lack of control over the men’s team and the loss of an opportunity to win a first football Olympic gold for Brazil. The managers of the CBF responded to this by turning their eyes to the women’s team: the women’s team was to be given extraordinary training opportunities and support in order to achieve what would be a first in Brazil’s football history: Olympic gold.

Juliana faced this opportunity for what it was: a limit-situation. Her dream had been to play on the National Team again, with all her teammates, the best players brought together. She knew that the 2004 Olympics were approaching and the CBF wanted to re-establish a Women’s National Team. She called her teammates, trying to convince them to respond to the Federation’s call. She had the critical consciousness to see the moment as a unique chance to fight for better conditions for the women football players of Brazil.

I was well paid in the U.S. but I decided to leave everything behind and come back to Brazil—less money or no money at all, but my dream might come true!

For both Freire and Juliana, there is a fundamental belief in hope. Freire emphasized that, in educational settings as well as in the broader society, hope is necessary to overcome obstacles and limit-situations:

Thus, it is not the limit-situations in and of themselves which create a climate of hopelessness, but rather how they are perceived by men and women at a given historical moment: whether they appear as fetters or as insurmountable barriers. As critical perception is embodied in action, a climate of hope and confidence develops which leads men to attempt to overcome the limit-situations. This objective can be achieved only through action upon the concrete, historical reality in which limit-situations historically are found. As reality is transformed and these situations are superseded, new ones will appear which in turn will evoke new limit-acts. (Freire, 2000, pp. 99-100).

It is important to note that the hope Juliana demonstrated was not individualistic. If her “exile” in the US was an individual attempt to continue to play and make money, her return to Brazil was a collective act of hope. She used her leadership and her critical consciousness to mobilize her teammates to come back to Brazil, to put together the best Women’s National Team they could and to fight for women’s football in Brazil. As described by Jacobs in his study of hope’s role in Freire’s work, Juliana’s hope was of the Freirean type, something that has

a social nature, rather than individual, and is wrapped up in the web of social relations that each of us inhabits. Hope is decidedly not about individual aims, desires or ambitions; it is not possible as an I but only as a we. (2005, p. 785)

This was the sort of hope in which Juliana was engaged. When Juliana and her compatriots returned to Brazil to play for the National Team, however, there was a surprise waiting: the CBF had hired a well-known male coach, René Simoes, who had never before worked with women. Juliana did not like this situation. She thought to herself: “who is this new ‘teacher’? Where are the others who have always coached us?” She began to think her dream was not turning into gold . . .

Professor Rene ¹³ : A Freirean Coach

The first meetings and training sessions with the new coach were clearly difficult. The players were suspicious, as everything was different. However, during the hard daily training and after a number of defeats in friendly games, the athletes’ minds and hearts were won over by Professor Rene’s style. He proved to be a Freirean coach. In the interviews, Juliana recalled that he was totally different from their former coaches: he wanted the “players not only to run, but also to read the game and understand what was going on during it”; “he wanted us to think and to decide by ourselves what the needed tactical modifications were” during the fast changing environment of a football game.

Simoes himself has written a book (2007) about his experience as a coach of this women’s team. In the book, he explains why his strategy of instituting the “Professor Simoes” School’ ¹⁴ —a 30-min meeting before every practice, when coach and players discussed what had happened in the previous games or training, and what would happen in the following ones—was successful: the players, who had previously run as “children behind the ball,” learned how to spread themselves across the field and to visualize and anticipate the moves of the game.

Whether consciously or not, the coach had a Freirean teaching style, trying to improve the athletes’ critical understanding of the game: “it’s only by the critical thinking of yesterday or today’s practice that it’s possible to improve the next ones” (Freire, 1996, p. 44). Discussing progressive education, Freire stated that the ground rule for every teacher is that “teaching is not the transfer of the knowledge” but seeks instead “to create the possibilities of its own production or construction” (1996, p. 52).

It was not only in his cognitive approach that Professor Rene proved to be a coach who employed Freirean principles. His affection, commitment and indeed love for the players was remarkable. He opened up dialogues and was extraordinarily open to showing his feelings to the players. During our interviews, Juliana gave me the letter Professor Rene gave to the players before they got on the plane to Athens. In it he wrote a brief text entitled “Women’s football, overcoming barriers and defeating prejudices” that tells the story of a girl who fell in love with a football ball “at first sight.” “Still during the innocence of my childhood, I found out at that moment, with my beloved ball, the meaning of passionate love.” The girl was constantly upset and frustrated, as everybody around her said that a football ball was not made for her, but only for boys. “What about her feelings?” she thought. Fighting against the obstacles, she confronted all those who ranged against her as she pursued her passion:

Now, my beloved football ball and I will fly to Athens, chasing Olympic gold … Football, football ball, my passion, I hope that the podium and/or Olympic gold will be the celebration of our marriage and the end of every neglect and prejudice against female football in Brazil. In an Olympic alchemy the dream comes true and turns into gold and prejudice becomes understanding, acceptance, and love. (Simoes, 2004)

Freire stated the importance of feelings, particularly love, for the process of real change, and indeed for revolution:

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for men [sic] . . . Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination . . . Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to other men [sic]. (2000, p. 89)

The dialogues and the openness of the coach, and the Freirean dimension in all spheres of his behaviour, influenced Juliana to take her next step and undertake the limit-actions needed for change.

A Quasi Musketeer: One for All and All for One

It was in the context of this dialogical and supportive atmosphere with their coach that Juliana and her teammates intensified their fight for Brazilian women who love football. They took each opportunity to talk about the importance of their team for women’s football in Brazil. Each round of conversation deepened their conscientização. And more, they were generous. They always thought about the other players, the millions of girls who were not on the team, who had no opportunities, who suffered prejudice and discrimination in Brazilian schools, parks and football fields. Juliana shows how the team’s political consciousness was increasingly clear:

This team was completely different; we had to win something, because women’s football was in the hands of 18 girls who played [in Athens]. The 18 of us were fighting for the rest who were in Brazil who wanted to play.

They looked to restore the dignity and humanity of all those players, and generosity (Freire, 2000) was embedded in their attempts. According to Juliana, this team was aiming not only for results on the field of play but also for social change.

As the new egalitarian laws governing Brazilian football passed by the Lula government did not extend to women or the women’s game, women had to battle for themselves. In fact, as Freire asks

Who are better prepared than the oppressed to understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society? Who suffer the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation? (2000, p. 45)

On the field in Athens, the National Women’s Team won the silver medal, losing the final to a US team full of football stars, such as Mia Hamm, in extra time. Juliana believes that, despite the team’s desire for the gold medal, it was better to take the silver; if they had won the gold medal, the president of the CBF would have used them for propaganda purposes, concealing the actual condition of women’s football in Brazil.

Off the field, with the silver medals around their necks, the women, having proved their value in terms of sport, could now undertake political action. Before leaving Athens, they pressured the president of the CBF to give more attention to women’s football; they sent him a letter, a manifesto emphasising the need for the Federation to properly organize women’s football in Brazil—by providing sponsorship and a permanent national team as well as a calendar with regional and national championships. In this manifesto, the women clearly stated that no athlete should be chosen based on her body shape, hair, skin colour or image, as had happened in 2001 (Knijnik & Vasconcellos, 2005). The manifesto also underlined the importance of including, as Juliana said in the interviews, the “trail-blazers, the players who were on the national teams at the Atlanta Olympics (1996) and at the Sydney Olympics (2000) who opened the room for us” but who were neglected for their failure to conform to sexist and racist mainstream standards of physical appearance.

Juliana spoke with a heightened tone while talking about this manifesto, its preparation, the moments when the players were together talking about its contents and writing it, the several drafts, the “night when we did not sleep, preparing this manifesto, the feelings we had while delivering it to the Federation’s President.” She said that the players had so much hope. The managers promised that things would change when they were back in Brazil. Juliana’s eyes shone while talking about these moments. She firmly believed that they were on the correct path, playing and protesting, not conforming to conservative rules. They wanted more. They wanted to produce changes within Brazilian football administration; they were “reformists who attempt[ed] to modify sport and/or produce difference in existing sport institutions and organizations” (Harvey, Horne, & Safai, 2009, p. 393).

There is a strong parallel between Juliana, her teammates and the 21 activist athletes studied by Kaufmann and Wolff (2010). Kaufman and Wolff define “activist athletes” as “individuals who use the playing field to advocate for political and social justice” (2010, p. 1). The players in this study joined their efforts to seek social change within the sports arena. The authors state that these efforts were effective because the players stood together:

social change does not happen with individuals working independently; any and all victories for social justice and human rights have come about because of the collaborative efforts of individuals (2010, p. 168).

Kaufmann and Wolff emphasise that the process of interdependence in social life occurs in sport as well as other spaces, and conclude that it is possible that sport “may increase the likelihood that one will develop a greater appreciation for the collective good” (2010, p. 168).

As a leader, Juliana encouraged her teammates to stick together and to look beyond the field, making “connections between playing and protesting.” She declared that they could not waste the opportunity that was given to them: “We [the players] were there as well as they [the managers] were; we took that medal, they had to listen to us.” They were in Athens, together, “fighting for the restoration of their humanity” (Freire, 2000, p. 45). They were actually fighting not only for themselves, but, as Juliana insisted, for the “thousands of girls who were putting their hopes on our shoulders.”

Juliana had overcome the limit-situation, she was not waiting for somebody to help the women players; on the contrary, she began to engage in limit-acts, seeking untested feasibility. In Freirean terms, for her it was no longer possible to be in the world without

assuming the right and the duty to choose, to decide, to fight, to act politically … And this brings us again to the radicalism of the hope … I cannot be in the world with gloves in my hands, only noting … I need to intervene in the reality (Freire, 1996, p. 58).

Juliana could have simply been a player who enjoyed a glorious moment on the Olympic stage and podium, coming back to Brazil, displaying her medal and having a period of public acclaim. Instead, she decided to battle for better conditions, and seek gender justice in football, fighting for untested feasibility for girls and women who love the game. Her concrete experiences in the football world, in addition to her ethical sense, formed the foundation of this pursuit

Visions of Gender Justice: Ethics First

Juliana had no idea whether her actions would have any impact on the managers of Brazilian football. However, what Juliana did have was a clear idea about what women in Brazil needed in order to play football. She insisted on an ethical position. She did not accept what was happening in mainstream men’s football:

I know what happens in men’s football. I have friends, I’m in the industry. There is a network of corruption and it’s a multibillionaire’s industry. We don’t need that; we just want to play our football, with dignity. We don’t want to earn millions but we can’t live earning nearly nothing, in poverty.

It is important to recognise this dignified ethical position. This is clearly an innovative position. Juliana could had stayed in the US, making money and playing football without the turbulence and prejudices that the football environment “offers” to women players in Brazil. Instead, she came back to her country to try to overcome this limit-situation. Her act, embedded in a dignifying ethics, was an act of hope, therefore love. As stated earlier, Freire advocates for love in his pedagogy.

No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love. (2000, p. 90)

Juliana was moved to act by her love for the game and for all women who share the same love. Her acts of leading her teammates with ethical principles in an attempt to overcome their collective oppression indicates that people can escape from a hegemonic viewpoint to build their unknown future—untested feasibility.

Several times in his work, Freire argues for the necessity of a renewed ethical approach to education to transform oppressive relationships. He writes about an ethical sense that always feels

affronted by the manifestation of racial, gender or class discrimination . . . And the best way to fight for this ethics is to live it in our practice, is to witness it . . . We cannot take ourselves as subjects of the revolution . . . as historical subjects, transformers, not to be taking ourselves as ethical subjects. In this sense, the transgression of ethical principles is a possibility but is not a virtue. We cannot accept it. (Freire, 1996, pp. 17-19)

Through her ideas, battles and political actions, Juliana was expressing this kind of ethic. She still did not clearly see her future, but she knew what she was looking for: a fair and safe place for Brazilian women to play their beloved football, to be part of Brazilian culture as active participants, not simply as beautiful and passive cheerleaders.

Paulo Freire and Juliana Cabral: An Encounter Towards Untested Feasibility

In another study about Brazilian sportswomen, my co-authors and I have argued that

Though the female surfers in Brazil are not conscious of the fact, they are already actively “doing” gender politics and are making strong ‘political’ statements on every . . . competition they take part in or personal appearance they make. Their very existence continually argues against the injustice extant in the polarized world of men and women. (Knijnik et al, 2010, p. 1180)

Juliana’s case, however, is different. She had already developed a critical mode of thought about her practice, the kind of thinking that Freire argues is an essential requirement to avoid both meaningless theory and practical but empty activism: “action for action’s sake that negates the true praxis and makes dialogue impossible” (2000, p. 88).

Juliana’s consciousness and acts, leading the team both on and beyond the football field, have reverberated across Brazilian football structures. In the years following the Athens Olympics, and as a direct result of Juliana and her teammates’ thoughts and activism, women’s football in Brazil has experienced a rebirth. The silver medal the team won in Athens as well as their political articulations and fights have stimulated the national Federation as well as numerous regional federations across the country to give more support to women players and teams. ¹⁵ Writing about human rights in sport, Donnelly argues that:

Gender equity campaigns and legislation in many countries have helped to increase women’s participation . . . and obliged patriarchal organizations such as the IOC to begin to deal with gender equity issues in sport. (2008, p. 388)

As Juliana’s own testimony demonstrates, therefore, she has taken several steps towards the creation of untested feasibility for women players on Brazilian football fields.

Freire firmly believes that people’s sensitivity towards and perceptions of their own oppression are fundamental to the overcoming of walls and barriers, in order to achieve better human conditions:

In sum limit-situations imply the existence of persons who are directly or indirectly served by these situations, and of those who are negated and curbed by them. Once the latter come to perceive these situations as the frontier between being and being more human, rather than between being and nothingness, they begin to direct their increasingly critical actions towards achieving the untested feasibility [my italics]implicit in that perception. (2000, p. 102)

My exploration of Juliana’s leadership and sensitivity through a Freirean lens was a creative exercise and an exploration of my own sociological imagination (Mills, 1959). By examining Juliana’s struggles through Freirean terms, I have been able to show how her perception of a limit-situation created the conditions to overcome gender barriers and move towards untested feasibility and more gender justice on the football field in Brazil. In this “encounter” that I generate between Juliana Cabral and Paulo Freire, we can witness the workings of a new and powerful untested feasibility, building a new and fairer gender order, not only on the football field, but one which, in future years, especially with major sports events scheduled to be held in Brazil (the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics) might spread across all aspects of life in this huge nation.