Female football fans find being accepted by men hard in Brazil

Sao Paulo March 9 (IANS) Several female Brazilian soccer fans have created a project known as "Dibradoras" (Dribblers) in an effort to reduce male chauvinism in sports.

Roberta Nina Cardoso 35 is a Sao Paulo team fan and a regular at the local stadium where she and three friends experienced an unsavoury incident a while back reports Efe.

While looking for a spot in the stadium parking lot around 30 uniformed football hooligans approached them sticking their hands in the car windows touching their hair and calling them "cute " "wonderful" and "fine".

"Women are not seen as a gender that understands soccer they don t understand tactics " Nina said. "They don t know what offside means. They are here only to see the players. That is how we are pigeonholed."

Renata Mendonca 28 is also a Sao Paulo fan and goes to the stadium two or three times a month.

Even though she said that recently it has become "a little less tortuous " she added that wearing shorts still gets her catcalls.

Their passion for soccer later brought Nina and Renata together and -- along with Nayara Perone and Angelica Souza -- they decided to launch the "Dibradoras" project.

"We want to give women a voice and a place in the sport and erase the image of the woman who knows nothing about soccer " Nina told Efe.

Gender equality in football is still a long way off in the country of 200 million -- with women accounting for more than half the population -- and where 75 per cent are self-proclaimed fans according to a survey by the Parana Pesquisas Institute published in late 2016.

Difficulties in finding a suitable jersey also make it hard for women to join the ranks of fandom as some jerseys made for women have a bizarre cleavage or only come in pink.

"I don t want a pink jersey I want the one my team wears " Renata said.

--IANS
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