Dombrosky 1
Carrying memory into the future: Women’s sports, the digital realm, and the biopolitics of
worthiness
Abstract
To be seen is to be known. To be heard is to be understood. To be known is to be loved.
Such statements present a seemingly simple, logical progression, pipeline, or pathway, and yet:
notions of visibility, audibility, and comprehension are not as straightforward as they may
initially appear. What happens beneath the surface, in the in-between? How does power shape
our perceptions of who is worthy of being seen, heard, and known in the first place? Worthy of
being remembered? To problematize visibility, audibility, and comprehension within contextual
frames of history, memory, and worthiness is to expose a near-invisible nexus of power shaping
and directing our lives across time and space. This research aims to apply a multidimensional,
both/and framework to the realms of sport, media, and gender that simultaneously acknowledges
systemic, institutional barriers facing Western women’s sports and media coverage while
centering the collective agency, resistance, and joy of the women’s sports community, both
online and offline.
Introduction
Saturday, August 12th, 2023. The thrilling quarterfinal clash between the Women’s World
Cup co-hosts Australia and European giants France draws a sellout crowd to Suncorp Stadium in
Brisbane, Australia. A hard-fought battle through to the end of extra time, the teams aim to
outlast one another in what would become the longest penalty shootout in World Cup history,
women’s or men’s (Fox Sports, 2023). Pressure mounting, shot for shot, the squads are evenly
matched. However, even the great must fall: a devastating miss from France leaves the Matildas’
fate in the hands of their rising star striker, Cortnee Vine. Unfazed by the electrifying

Dombrosky 2
atmosphere, she steps up to the spot as 49,461 fans look on in awe (Mayne, 2023). Australia
holds its breath. The world trembles with anticipation. Inhale. Exhale. Laser-focus. She
advances; lightning-quick and laced with power, her clinical strike propels Australia into both
their first-ever World Cup semifinals and the history books as the stadium erupts in raucous
celebration.

Figure 1. William West, 2023 / AFP/File; Figure 2. Photo by AAP/Jono Searle Photo by Darren England.

To understand this record-breaking tournament and the crucial role of social media in generating
the sensational present of women’s soccer, we must first understand the past: simply put, “how a
world is shaped is memory” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 263). Through the naturalized association of sport
and masculinity that emerged in the early nineteenth century, the prevailing societal organization
of Western colonial, capitalist, white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy seeks to obscure the
history, memory, and truth of women’s soccer: if you do not know where you came from, those
who came before you, how can you know yourself? How can you know the full extent of your
power? Shifting away from this patriarchal paradigm to what Heide Goettner-Abendroth calls “a
theory of matriarchy” allows for the critical exploration of the patriarchy’s functions and its
institutions of power without being trapped in its confines: the transcendent nature of the
matriarchal paradigm offers a generative space in which we can illuminate the often censored or

Dombrosky 3
invisibilized knowledge and histories of those who came before us, thereby carrying memory
into the future (2023, pp. 2, 13).
To preface, women in this research “refer[s] to all those who travel under the sign
women”: to speak plainly, trans women are women (Ahmed, 2017, p. 14). The ‘sign women’
further includes all gender-diverse people who may not identify as women themselves, but find
safety and community within experiences of womanhood and women’s sports. In essence, “in a
world in which human is still defined as man, we have to fight for women and as women”
(Ahmed, 2017, p 15).
In contrast to what the patriarchy would have us believe, women’s soccer was a
historically thriving enterprise. Building off the 1881 efforts of Scotland’s Helen ‘Graham’
Matthews, Nettie Honeyball and Lady Florence Dixie founded the first “organized women’s
soccer league” in Britain with the establishment of their team, the British Ladies’ Football Club
(BLFC) in 1894 (Macfarlane, 2023; Wills, 2019, n.p.). For Honeyball and Dixie, the advent of
this organized league aimed to “provide football-playing opportunities for girls and young
women,” while simultaneously facilitating access to capital (Lee, 2012, p. 88). The BLFC’s
inaugural match took place on March 25th, 1895 at Alexandra Park in the northern London
neighbourhood of Crouch End, drawing more than 10,000 spectators to the event (Macfarlane,
2023; Wills, 2019). Such a crowd is attributed to the pre-match marketing efforts of Honeyball
and Dixie, who strategically utilized the sensationalist nature of mass media to generate publicity
through “several provocative newspaper articles and interviews” (Lee, 2012, p. 88).
Despite the BLFC’s eventual disbanding due to insufficient funding, the popular interest in
women’s soccer remained. The sport “saw a resurgence” during World War I, as women
organized matches to fundraise for the soldiers (Macfarlane, 2023). Primarily featuring Dick,

Dombrosky 4
Kerr Ladies, matches at Goodison Park, Manchester United’s Old Trafford, and Bolton’s
Burnden Park drew impressive crowds of 53,000+, 31,000, and 27,218 respectively (Skillen et
al., 2022). Despite these events being “one-off games,” they smashed the average attendances “of
men’s teams United and Bolton[, which] were 27,140 and 22,910 respectively in 1920” (Skillen
et al., 2022, p. 52). Furthermore, despite the significant portion of “remarkably mean-spirited and
sarcastic” reports, “the size of support for women’s games was frequently discussed in
contemporary newspapers, ensuring the wider population was aware of the game’s growth” (Lee,
2012, p. 90; Skillen et al., 2022, p. 52).
As these one-off women’s games in England continually surpassed the men’s games in
terms of popularity, attendances, and profit, women’s soccer posed a threat to not only the
continued survival and thriving of the men’s game, but to patriarchal power. In his work Society
must be defended (1976), Michel Foucault pinpoints the nineteenth century as a pivotal historical
juncture in the evolution of power: sovereign power’s individualized ‘anatomo-politics’ and its
“old right—to take life or let live—was [not] replaced, but… came to be complemented by a new
right[;] the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die” (Foucault, 1976, p. 241). This expresses the
expansion from what I conceptualize as hard power, forcibly acting on individualized bodies, to
soft power: a “massifying [power] that is directed… at man-as-species[,] a ‘biopolitics’ of the
human race,” which operates through the “power of regularization” (Foucault, 1976, pp. 243,
246-247). In contrast to hard power, soft power weaves through not only our bodies, but our
societies, relationships, lives, and everything around us with carefully constructed ease and
near-imperceptibility.
Foucault’s conceptualization of racism is also relevant here. Involving the “introduc[tion
of] a… break between what must live and what must die” within the “biological continuum of

Dombrosky 5
the human race of races,” this biopolitical racism reflects notions of nineteenth century
evolutionism such as “the hierarchy of species that grow from a common evolutionary tree, the
struggle for existence among species, [and] the selection that eliminates the less fit” (Foucault,
1976, pp. 254-256). Foucault’s racism expands on a “relationship of war[, that is,] ‘in order to
live, you must destroy your enemies’” to establish a “‘biological-type relationship’” between the
lives of one group and the deaths of another group (1976, p. 255, 256). That is to say, framing the
death, killing, and manufactured vulnerability of the ‘other’ as “something that will make life in
general… healthier and purer,” a natural phenomenon occurring as a result of a biological
hierarchy, works to guarantee safety for and reinforce the naturalization of the biological whole’s
supremacy through circumstances that continue to ‘make’ it live (Foucault, 1976, p. 255; Walia,
2021).
Foucault’s work with biopolitics and its components of regularization and racism exposes
a key implication: worthiness. Whose lives are deemed worthy of living? Whose lives are
deemed worthy of being seen, heard, and known? Of being remembered? Of having access to
resources necessary to not only survive, exist, or live, but to thrive? In short, the prevailing
systems of power protect those at the top of the hierarchy of domination, deeming that minority,
or biological whole, worthy. The massifying and divisive power within the biopolitics of
worthiness acts as an overarching theme; such amorphous power is embedded in the fabric of
society, subtle in its directing properties to the point of invisibilization.
Ultimately, the monumental success of the Dick, Kerr Ladies’ match at Goodison Park in
1920 triggered the wrath of soccer’s governing body in England. On December 5th, 1921, the
English Football Association (FA) banned women’s soccer “from FA affiliated grounds with the
reasons outlined being that the game could be harmful to female participants” (Skillen et al.,

Dombrosky 6
2022, p. 53). Standing for 50 years, this ban “prevented FA affiliated clubs from staging
women’s football on their pitches,” thereby eliminating “the possibility of playing and
developing the game in prominent venues in major footballing centres” and stripping women’s
soccer of further visibility in popular culture (Skillen et al., 2022, p. 53). While women’s
participation in soccer was not expressly forbidden, the ban curtailed the growth of women’s
football in England, intentionally hindering the development of the sport (Skillen et al., 2022, p.
53).
Across the pond, a similar sequence of events took place in Canada: “immediately
following the war, and throughout the 1920s, was a period of tremendous excitement for
Canadian sportswomen and the fans who supported them” (Hall, 2003, pp. 31-32). Commonly
referred to as the ‘golden age of women’s sport,’ this era saw increased organizing of women’s
sports teams in basketball, hockey, and softball, by women, for women (Hall, 2003). Comparable
to the English FA, the Canadian Dominion Football Association (DFA) stood in staunch
opposition to women’s participation in soccer. The DFA refused to allow “any clubs affiliated
with the DFA to play” in international friendlies against the English Dick, Kerr Ladies’ team
when they “proposed to tour Canada [and the United States]” after the English FA’s ban came
into effect in 1921 (Hall, 2003, p. 31).
Within a biopolitical context, the FA’s and DFA’s bans can be understood as interlocking
manifestations of hard and soft power. The rulings forcibly acted upon the women’s individual
bodies; in England, the ban prevented women from playing soccer in an officially recognized
way. In a post-structuralist sense, the bans exemplify Sara Ahmed’s conceptualization of “walls,
brick walls, institutional walls [as] those hardenings of histories into barriers in the present[;] a
materialism that shows how history becomes concrete” (2017, pp. 135-136). The hard power of

Dombrosky 7
the bans worked in tandem with ideological justification to sustain the perception of
non-belonging of women in the realm of sport. Such ideologies are pertinent examples of soft
power: “while they represent the world and its institutions, they also distort what is known about
social relations, especially power relations: ideologies legitimate power through both
representation and deception” (Lynch, 2022, p. 135).
The combination of ideology as soft power and Judith Butler’s concept of framing further
illuminate the violent, intersecting, far-reaching legacies of racist, colonial, capitalist
cisheteropatriarchy in shaping perceptions of worthiness. As “operations of power,” the resulting
frames reflect these divisive societal systems, working to subtly and strategically restrict and
mold memory, history, and perceptions of reality into a hollow, linear frame of domination and
white supremacy: “the truest memory is rarely the one that survives” (Butler, 2009, p. 1; Arthur
Riley, 2022, p. 175). With specificity to sport, ideology as soft power strategically employs
media framing to “decide, in a forceful way, what we can [see and] hear” (Butler, 2004, p. 5).
Interrogating this combination exposes the concept of articulation: Toni Bruce describes
articulation as “the process by which different discourses are conjoined, often to the point where
they become so taken-for-granted that the joining itself never comes into question” (2016, p.
363). Dominant articulations include that of “sport and masculinity” and femininity and fragility
(Bruce, 2016, p. 363). Such patriarchal frames reinforce and reflect mass media’s systemic
exclusion of and historically negative portrayals of women athletes (Butler, 2009, p. 1).
To once again preface: it is utterly crucial to note that the mutually reinforcing systems of
colonialism, racism, and white supremacy fundamentally inform the institutions of gender, sport,
and media, and irrefutably intersect with sexism and capitalism. Within the patriarchal paradigm
of domination, worthiness is conditional and inextricable from systems of power such as sexism

Dombrosky 8
and capitalism, as are the institutions of gender, sport, and media. In terms of gender, dominant
constructions of worthiness are predicated on the repudiation of all that is associated with
femininity. To Ahmed, “an institution typically refers to a persistent structure or mechanism of
social order governing the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community” (2017,
pp. 152-153). In her book The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014), Ahmed explains that
“metaphors of ‘softness’ and ‘hardness’ [are gendered, and can] show us how emotions become
attributes of collectives, which get constructed as ‘being’ through ‘feeling’” (2014, p. 2).
Softness is feminized, and predominantly linked with passivity. Within the patriarchal paradigm,
women, femininity, softness, passivity, and emotion are synonymous with weakness. The six
terms outlined above are diametrically opposed to traditional ideals of men, masculinity,
hardness, agency, and apathy, which are synonymous with strength. Ahmed speaks to the
association of femininity with fragility:
When femininity is registered as fragility, when that fragility is used to explain what
happens to her, or what she can or cannot do, a consequence of power is recruited as the
cause. She is treated with caution and care because she is fragile; because she is treated
with caution and care, she is fragile. (Ahmed, 2017, pp. 169-170).
Both the English FA and Canadian DFA weaponized the articulation of femininity and
fragility to prevent women’s participation in soccer. Though softer manifestations of power, such
ideologies still generate walls. The historical patriarchal privileging of men and their sports as
unconditionally worthy not only serves the naturalization of sport as a masculine realm, but also
acts as a defense mechanism: “a wall becomes necessary because the wrong bodies could pass
through” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 145). Further shaping perceptions of worthiness and belonging, this
organizing principle “has historically positioned women of all nations, races and ethnicities,

Dombrosky 9
sexual orientations and levels of able-bodiedness as ‘Other’ within the realm of mediated sport”
(Bruce, 2016, p. 363).
The role of the media in reifying gendered ideology of worthiness and belonging in sport,
as well as the governing bodies’ paternalistic claim of bans as harm prevention cannot be
overstated (Dworkin, 2020). In England, male reporters penned numerous articles declaring that
“‘it must be clear to everybody that girls are totally unfitted for the rough work of the
football-field’” (Lee, 2012, p. 91). In Canada, the men of the DFA provided no concrete rationale
“for preventing women from playing soccer, although one suggested ‘a woman was not built to
stand the bruises gotten in playing football’” (Hall, 2003, p. 31). Media messaging from
authority figures such as Dr. Arthur S. Lamb insisted that “‘highly undesirable forms of
competition are doing a great deal of harm, not only to the girls themselves, but to the promotion
of safe and sane participation for our women of tomorrow’” (Hall, 2003, p. 32).
As detailed through the examples above, it is evident that the surge of visibility,
audibility, comprehension, and memory connected to women’s soccer and its athletes prior to
1921 challenged notions of belonging in the realm of sport, as well as perceptions about life
trajectories for women. Women’s soccer called into question the “neo-Victorian belief[s] that
male-female biological differences predispose men to aggressively dominate public life, while
females are naturally suited to serve as the nurturant guardians of home and hearth,” and
threatened the patriarchy’s biological whole (Messner, 1992, p. 150). Therefore, these bans and
ideologies were necessary “to protect the men’s game,” ‘making’ it ‘live’ and ‘letting’ women’s
soccer ‘die’ (Hall, 2003, p. 31). This demonstrates the biopolitical framework within which we
can “understand the state as ultimately protective rather than oppressive,” in terms of maintaining
not only the purity of sport and media, but perceptions of purity, superiority, worthiness, and

Dombrosky 10
belonging of white men’s lives at the expense of all those beneath them on the supposed
biological hierarchy (Kay, 2020, p. 36).
It is clear that as interlocking manifestations of hard and soft power, these historical bans
and traditional, repressive, ideologies of which they were born directly contributed to shaping
gendered life trajectories. In the wake of governing bodies’ calculated prohibition and censorship
of women’s soccer, and therefore its truth, history, and memory, “subsequent generations were
prevented from watching female role models while the entire football industry, from media
coverage to kit manufacturing, paid little or no attention to female participation” (Skillen et al.,
2022, p. 53). This censorship also deprived generations of women and girls of the experience of
community belonging and membership through sports. With no competition, “men’s football
grew and improved significantly in almost every area, including participation, attendances,
income, kit development, and so on” (Skillen et al., 2022, p. 53). The dominant media messaging
of femininity, fragility, and women as other in the realm of sport resulted in the continued
fortification of soccer as a masculine endeavour; in both England and Canada, soccer “was not
encouraged in schools, universities or in the women’s sports clubs,” further stripping women and
girls of not only visibility, but the various opportunities, possibilities, and pathways to officially
recognized professional careers in soccer and sports at large (Hall, 2003, p. 32). The censored
layers of knowledge in this molding process evokes Susan Bibler Coutin’s concept of
dismemberment with regard to its characteristics of “the separation of persons from history… the
embodied nature of structural violence… and the denial [and active prevention] of [community]
membership” (Coutin, 2016, p. 4). Ahmed emphasizes that the power found in this
dismemberment and dominant ideology “work as…mode[s] of directionality, a way of
orientating bodies in particular ways, so they are facing a certain way, heading toward a future

Dombrosky 11
that is given a face” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 43). If “we are directed by what is in front of us [and]
what is in front of us depends on how we are directed,” how are we to know what we do not
know? (Ahmed, 2017, p. 48). How are we to discover anything if we do not know what
questions to ask? If we do not know there are questions to ask in the first place? This experience
of “‘not knowing’ is… made possible through a public performance of a void, the knowledge
[concerning women’s soccer] that cannot be permitted to circulate” (Coutin, 2016, p. 4).
To these points, I argue that sometimes, the absence of something can also act as a wall:
the persistent, near-inarticulable feeling that there is something more, just hazy beyond
comprehension. Ahmed emphasizes that “you can be hit by something before you become
conscious of something”; the “intangibility [of walls] can be… described as an institutional
achievement” (2017, p. 139). The edge of the frame, the brush against the wall: “we can feel an
absence; we can sense what is missing” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 181). In attempting to communicate
the existence of these “phantom walls,” you make something out of what others may perceive as
nothing: “you come up against what others do not see[,] and… what others are often invested in
not seeing” (Ahmed, 2017, pp. 138, 142). Media framing and the articulation of sport and
masculinity have historically combined to create such phantom walls. To turn on the television
and see, hear, and know only men: “if we are hit by something, again and again, our body might
register this impact as an expectation: that the wall will come up” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 139). As a
reflection of the biological whole, white, cisgender, heterosexual, middle-to-upper-class,
able-bodied, neurotypical men visibly dominate sport and sport media, occupying the majority of
positions ranging from athletes, coaches, managers, and owners, to broadcasters, commentators,
reporters, and journalists. Sometimes, “walls are how some bodies are not encountered in the
first place” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 145).

Dombrosky 12
These patriarchal walls and frames, phantom and otherwise, reinforce and reflect mass
media’s enduring, systemic exclusion and historically negative portrayals of women athletes
(Butler, 2009, p. 1). To Butler, cultural frames are effective in deciding whose lives are
considered worthy of recognition, of loss, and of grief: “if someone is lost, and that person is not
someone, then what and where is the loss, and how does mourning take place?” (2004, p. 32). In
combination with Butler’s work, Kath Woodward’s “The gendering of defining moments: heroic
narratives and pivotal points in footballing memories” (2019) emphasizes the harm of erasure
and disdain in terms of their significance to women and their lives. Focusing on visibility and
memory, Woodward asserts that “the processes through which women are made (in)visible…
matter in the exploration of changing times and gender equality in football” (2019, p. 1109). She
argues that “visibility is not just about being there–it is about being seen to be there and how one
is seen” (Woodward, 2019, p. 1110). The connection between visibility and memory runs deeper
than just a mere absence; instead Woodward emphasizes that “to lose the capacity to remember is
in part to lose the self because the embodied self can no longer be situated in time. Memory loss
is identity loss and memories make and remake identities” (Woodward, 2019, p. 1111).
Sara Ahmed furthers both the queries of Butler and assertions of Woodward: she asks us
“what happens when those who have been designated as ungrievable are grieved, and when their
loss is not only felt as a loss, but becomes a symbol of the injustice of loss?” (2014, p. 192). With
the world finally reawakening to the power that lies within women’s sports, Ahmed’s inquiry as
to whether “griev[ing] for the [historically] ungrieved… convert[s] an injustice to a justice” is
increasingly relevant (2014, p. 192). In terms of the near-invisible, unequal systems of power
that shape our lives, experiences, and opportunities, Ahmed aptly declares that:

Dombrosky 13
If the violence of what happened is recognised, as a violence that shapes the present, then
the ‘truths’ of history are called into question. Recognition of injustice is not simply
about others becoming visible (though this can be important). Recognition is also about
claiming that an injustice did happen; the claim is a radical one in the face of the
forgetting of such injustices. Healing does not cover over, but exposes the wound to
others: the recovery is a form of exposure. The visibility produced by recognition is
actually the visibility of the ordinary and normative or the visibility of what has been
concealed under the sign of truth. (Ahmed, 2014, p. 200).
Ahmed asserts that articulating the varying institutional and phantom walls obstructing
women’s belonging in the realm of sport requires a significant amount of ongoing labour in order
to prove there is a problem: “we have to show what we know: walls are not just perceptions. But
perception does still matter. Some perceptions are walls. What you are perceived as being can be
what stops you from being” (Ahmed, 2017, pp. 142-143). This speaks to one of the foundational
expressions of the women’s sports community: representation matters—if you can see it, you can
be it. For decades, the concerted effort directed at censoring, devaluing, and situating women’s
sports in precarity has collectively stripped people of the capacity to form memories, identities,
life trajectories, and the capacity to mourn. The sport-media industrial complex systemically
censored women’s sports’ media coverage, information, and histories; strategically stunted
growth of leagues and kept players in abject conditions; and perhaps most significantly, restricted
the life trajectories of those who initially could not see it:
To [subsequently] become conscious of possibility can involve mourning for its loss. You
can feel the sadness of what could have been, but was not to be. Maybe we realize: it
would have been possible to live one’s life in another way. We can mourn because we

Dombrosky 14
didn’t even realize that we gave something up. The shape of a life can feel like a past
tense; something we sense only after it has been acquired. (Ahmed, 2017, p. 47).
So many slipped through the cracks; so many had no idea pathways to professional athletics even
existed. In a way, this research is for them.
With time and sociocultural advancements, such as Title IX in the United States, which
outlawed sex-based discrimination in all Federally funded educational programs and activities,
the effectiveness of outright bans on women’s participation in sport and the fragility rhetoric
waned (Britannica, 2024). As women athletes fought for increased visibility, worthiness, and
belonging in sport and media, the power directed at them shifted to a partnership between media
framing and resource gatekeeping based on Western neoliberal capitalist conceptions of skill and
value reinforced by sexism. A departure from Kurt Lewin’s original gatekeeping theory, resource
gatekeepers govern access to, availability of, and quality of women’s soccer specifically,
weaponizing the justification that women’s sports and athletes are unworthy of said resources.
Instead of forcibly acting upon women’s bodies like the bans, resource gatekeepers practice
strategic withholding; similarly to the enforcement of the bans, though, the denial of resources
works in tandem with softer ideological power and the media.
To situate women’s soccer at the intersection of gender, labour, and language: as labour is
the primary generator of value under Western capitalism, it is therefore necessary to control it in
order to reproduce capital (Previtali and Fagiani, 2015). Language is critical in shaping
perceptions of worthiness and controlling labour: words create worlds as worlds create words.
Dictionary definitions of worth provide key words such as value (especially monetary),
usefulness, and importance; connecting the above to conceptions of labour and skill under
capitalism with relevance to sport is informative. Dissecting worth and worthiness illuminates

Dombrosky 15
underlying operations of the biopolitics of worthiness: interconnected are the adjacent
perceptions of deserving and earning, legitimacy, proving, success and failure, competition and
comparison. Within the patriarchal paradigm, white men’s lives are deemed more worthy not
only because they are white and men, but because they are the money generators (breadwinners)
and the generators of money: due to the systems dedicated to making men’s sports thrive, such
sports generate increased capital, accumulating said capital in the hands of other predominantly
white men. This cyclical transfer of power demonstrates Ahmed’s concept of white men as
institution, “referring not only to what has already been instituted or built but the mechanisms
that ensure the persistence of that structure… shaped by a series of regulative norms” (2017, p.
153). Therefore, it is evident that “sexism and racism become systems of inheritance in which
white men are freed up to take the place of other white men” at the expense of everyone situated
lower in the hierarchy of worthiness (Ahmed, 2017, p. 158).
With regard to labour and skill, it is important to note “the fact that ‘skills’ are
ideologically constructed [by the ruling class], with some competencies being defined as skills
and others being excluded from the definition, mostly on the basis of gender stereotypes”
(Zulauf, 2001, as qtd. in IOM, 2012, pp. 13-14). Furthermore, the hierarchy of skill, ranging
from skilled, low-skilled, to unskilled labour is another manifestation of invisibilized power, in
that concrete, consensually agreed-upon definitions of these terms are rather elusive. It is Karl
Marx who aptly summarizes the uncertainty surrounding value and definitions of skill under
capitalism:
The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled
labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs
of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom. (1867/2015, n.p.).

Dombrosky 16
On the surface, we could summarize dominant arguments against the worthiness of women’s
soccer by acknowledging the gendered division of labour: women’s traditional household
reproductive labour is unpaid and framed as the manifestation of inherent biological, feminine
qualities. If caring and nurturing are natural qualities, they are therefore not skills, and
reproductive labour is not, in fact, labour. To apply a similarly rigid perspective to women’s
soccer, we could argue that because society does not view women’s soccer as work, it therefore
does not have value due to perceptions of femininity, especially racialized femininity. To explore
this argument with more depth exposes the implication that women’s soccer somehow requires
less skill than men’s soccer. Simply put, the labour necessary for participation in women’s soccer
is perceived as requiring less skill, therefore having less value, and ultimately less worth.
Western Neoliberal iterations of capitalism deepen this argument: the “role that competitiveness,
measurement, and meritocratic evaluation play in framing social life… harm people by defining
them as failures and holding them responsible for not competing successfully in competitions
they cannot win” (Lynch, 2022, p. 134). To this point, women’s sports are doubly framed as less
skilled and as not competitive: as competition and meritocracy are lauded under capitalism, if
you are not competitive, you must not be working hard. A lack of hard work in turn signifies a
lack of value, and therefore unworthiness of any reward. This ideology creates a vicious cycle
that systemically devalues the labour and skills in women’s soccer in order to justify the pay
disparity, substandard working conditions, and negative to apathetic cultural treatment
reproduced through traditional media agents.
In her work “Stopped at the gate: Women’s sports, ‘reader interest,’ and decision making
by editors” (2005), Marie Hardin speaks to this justification of unworthiness, suggesting that
“interest in women’s sports has been suppressed by their symbolic annihilation” (Hardin, 2005,

Dombrosky 17
p. 66). These intersecting forces of perceptions of unworthiness, symbolic annihilation, and
common arguments that women’s sports are not profitable, in high demand, and that no one
watches them are “cloak[s] for hegemonic decision-making” (Hardin, 2005, p. 72). These
common arguments are evidently reinforced by sexist ideology: in their 25-year study “From
fizzle to sizzle!’: Televised sports news and the production of gender-bland sexism” (2017),
Michaela Musto, Cheryl Cooky, and Michael Messner further speak to not only this hegemonic
worldview but the shifts in sexism in women’s sports coverage. Since past iterations of hard
power and softer ideological power such as the fragility rhetoric were no longer effective in the
face of human rights advancements, ranging forms of sexism were employed to trivialize and
degrade women’s participation in sport. This evolution of sexism in women’s sports media
coverage transformed from overt and denigrating, to an emphasis on athletes’ traditional gender
roles as wives, mothers, and girlfriends, to a “dull—neither overtly sexist nor
ambivalent—rendering of women’s sporting events” (Musto et al., 2017, p. 581). The final stage
of this evolution can be understood as what Musto et al. call ‘gender-bland sexism,’ which
“frames women in a lackluster… manner[;] cover[age of their] athletic accomplishments [is]
devoid of overt sexism but simultaneously perpetuate[s] beliefs about men’s inherent athletic
superiority” (2017, p. 575). Gender-bland sexism as a mechanism of symbolic annihilation is
reproduced through consistently lower production value of women’s sports in terms of “fewer
camera angles, statistics and graphics, and lower sound quality”; significantly shorter segments
and a manufactured absence of highlights showcasing skill and physicality; and bland,
monotonous tone void of the “fast-paced, funny, and descriptive language” awarded to coverage
of men’s sports (Musto et al., 2017, pp. 581, p. 586).

Dombrosky 18
Furthermore, the interlocking powers of censorship and gender-bland sexism rife in
traditional media’s control of women’s soccer coverage and information impacts the behaviour of
mass media consumers, which “is determined by the dynamics of the [coverage] situation which
includes the channels through which [coverage appears], the gatekeeper governing the
channels… and the… ideology of the gatekeeper” (Lewin, 1943, n.p.). Connecting Lewin’s
theory to present-day gender relations, Hardin asserts that gatekeeping often takes the form of
the “decision-making process [of] choos[ing] stories,” which “is a basic and powerful force” in
shaping a “hegemonic worldview that privileges men” (2005, p. 65).
The previous sections sociohistorically detailing the biopolitics of worthiness were
necessarily situated within the patriarchal paradigm to illustrate the ubiquitous influence of
power in shaping our lives. In returning to Goettner-Abendroth’s theory of matriarchy, we can
privilege tenets of reciprocity, community, love, and regeneration, instead of greed,
individualism, dominance, and exploitation (De Baere, 2024). I aim to shift from the either/or
framework characteristic of the patriarchal paradigm and henceforth “embrace a both/and
perspective that creates space for a rupture discourse that sees no incompatibility between
athleticism and femininity” (2023, pp. 2, 13; Bruce, 2016, p. 368).

Figure 3. “From patriarchy to matriarchy” (De Baere, 2024).

Dombrosky 19
A prime example of a both/and space is the digital realm, specifically social media
platforms, which emerged as influential powers around the 2010s. As women athletes, their
teams, and league organizations now “have [increased] opportunity to talk directly with their
consumers, [bypassing] traditional media gatekeepers,” social media presence on platforms such
as Instagram is a fundamental piece of curating online women’s sports communities (Coche,
2016, p. 91, 90). The augmented ability to proliferate, endorse, and support women’s sport
content reflects the community’s active commitment to breaking the traditional frame, reframing
the conversation around, and creating a new frame for women’s sports, online and offline. This
process works to gradually undo the indoctrination of the patriarchal frame, slowly changing
people’s minds from binary either/or judgements to both/and acceptance of women in sports as
the discussion disseminates outward.
On their own, “sports are… a powerful platform for athletes to express their voice, to
bring public attention to social injustice both inside and outside the world of sports, and to
advocate for social change,” but the rise of “social media… has provided a powerful outlet for
resistance” for the women’s sports community (Cooky, 2017, p. 3; Musto et al., 2017, p. 590).
We can understand their strategic use of social media platforms as creating an actively updating
historical record of women’s sport. “With its large reach and low costs,” social media’s
interactive format not only generates increased visibility, audibility, and comprehension of
women’s sports, leagues, and players, but makes the history of injustice surrounding them easily
accessible. Social media’s capacity to serve as a historical record challenges the verity of
collective memory and the reign of “intellectual, charismatic, white, heterosexual, cisgender
men… as keepers of the history” (Arthur Riley, 2022, pp. 175-176). To employ Christina
Sharpe’s metaphor of the wake: “in the wake [of systemic frames, walls, and gatekeepers], the

Dombrosky 20
past that is not the past reappears, always, to rupture the present” (2016, p. 9). This rupture, as
outlined by Butler and Ahmed, allows space for exposure, recognition, and familiarity of grief,
loss, and suffering: such experiences heighten not only the consciousness of the individual, but
also the “world-consciousness in which the suffering of those who do not belong disturbs the
atmosphere” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 60).
The symbiotic relationship of women’s sports and social media in raising awareness of
social injustice and instigating cultural and perceptual shifts is unmistakable.

Figure 4. CBS (2020). Players kneel during the National Anthem before the NWSL Challenge Cup kicked off on
June 27; Figure 5. Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images (2023). Canada and the USWNT faced each other in the
SheBelieves Cup; Figure 6. Nathan Ray Seebeck/USA TODAY Sports (2023). San Diego Wave players express their
support for Spain’s Jenni Hermoso after their game Friday.

Women soccer players frequently utilize the visibility of their professional stage as a means to
protest injustice and dominant constructions of worthiness, thereby reaffirming a shared ethic of
love. Figure 4 illustrates the solidarity of National Women’s Soccer League teams with the Black
Lives Matter movement in the wake of the police officer Derek Chauvin’s cold-blooded murder
of George Floyd in the United States in May 2020: players from the Portland Thorns and North
Carolina Courage donned shirts stating the movement’s name, and knelt during the national
anthem in protest of police brutality as an instrument of the ongoing, state-sanctioned,
racially-motivated structural violence inflicted upon Black people in America across time and
space. Their statement is clear: literally, we will not stand for this any longer. Figure 5 further
depicts the supportive, communal framework within women’s soccer: prior to a match between

Dombrosky 21
the Canadian and United States women’s national teams at the SheBelieves Cup in February
2023, the players joined arms and formed a circle to protest the “drastic cuts to the program
ahead of [the] summer’s Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand,” the lack of
compensation for their play in 2022, and their federation’s threat of legal action against the
team’s attempted strike (Peterson, 2023, n.p.). Both teams wore purple and white wristbands to
show support for causes of gender equality and trans rights (De la Fuente, 2023). Figure 6 shows
the NWSL’s San Diego Wave expressing their solidarity for Jenni Hermoso, the illustrious
Spanish striker, whom the then-President of the Spanish Federation (RFEF) and Vice President
of UEFA assaulted with a non-consensual kiss as Hermoso collected her gold medal at the 2023
Women’s World Cup.
The women’s sports community reinforces these on-the ground acts of resistance and
solidarity through social media, specifically Instagram. The circulation of photos and videos
from multiple angles, as well as quotes and interviews from diverse, intersecting perspectives
surrounding these unjust events assists in carrying memory into the future: “collective memory
requires that we piece together the fragments of individual memory and behold something not
necessarily larger but with greater depth and color” (Arthur Riley, 2022, p. 174). A critical
function of social media as an actively updating historical record is the hashtag, which acts as an
archiving feature as well as a tool to boost awareness and comprehension: women’s sports
accounts on Instagram used hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter; #EqualPlayEqualPay;
#ProtectTransKids, #TransRightsAreHumanRights; #SeAcabo #ItsOver #ContigoJenni #MeToo
in order to generate further community solidarity and resistance, the cultural shifts of which
ripple outward. With specific regard to the example of Jenni Hermoso, the combination of online
and offline worlds generated such intense backlash against former RFEF President Luis

Dombrosky 22
Rubiales, and such unwavering, global support for Hermoso that he was forced to tender his
resignation and was banned from “all football-related activities” for three years (TOGETHXR,
2023).
Despite the widespread allure and influence of social media in revamping the
communicative terrain in terms of women’s sports, we cannot paint social media solely as a site
of agency and unwavering community, love, and support; within the both/and framework, we
must also acknowledge its flaws and limitations. In the complex, nonlinear process of breaking
the patriarchal frame, a blend of competing discourses is observable in the women’s sports
community’s use of Instagram. As it is nearly impossible to extricate ourselves from the system
in which we are situated, that being the patriarchal or dominator model of society, content and
strategies employed in some ways feed into this model in the ongoing attempt to attain equality
with men’s sports. Attaining equality here could be understood as equal power in terms of
visibility, audibility, comprehension, memory, and resources, especially capital. Many of the
accounts observed employ liberal feminist undertones that align with neoliberal capitalist
conceptions of merit, accrual, and consumption: the resulting “emphasis on gender equality with
men within existing societal structures… implicitly normalizes coverage [and resources] of
culturally valued men’s sport as the ideal against which women’s representation should be
judged” (Bruce, 2016, p. 364).
In her book Gender, media and voice: Communicative injustice and public speech (2020),
Jilly Boyce Kay states that “the seductive notion that social media has enabled a democratisation
of voice is repeated so often that it has become a truism” (p. 10). Her concept of communicative
injustice problematizes audibility in terms of voice: she argues that ‘othered’ populations “are
denied a voice that is sufficiently expansive, complex and meaningful so as to allow them a

Dombrosky 23
position of full citizenship and personhood in contemporary culture,” and that “irreconcilable
gendered norms… and exclusions” characterize public speech (Kay, 2020, pp. 7, 9). She asserts
that “to have meaningful voice in the contemporary context clearly cannot simply be equated
with speaking in any public way. It is to speak of things and in ways that have the potential to
transform the social order” (Kay, 2020, p. 132). Due to pervasive institutional and ideological
walls, frames and gatekeepers of worthiness and belonging, “achieving this kind of meaningful
voice has been, and remains, a profound challenge for women” (Kay, 2020, p. 132). Evidently,
the audibility of women’s voices and speech is still partially situated in the biopolitics of
worthiness. Increased access to effective public speech is afforded to white, cisgender,
heterosexual athletes whose gender presentations align with dominant constructions of
femininity and whose speech aligns with white supremacist ideals of propriety. Their stories and
causes hold more cultural weight, and experience significantly less vitriol due to the attachment
of worthiness to their lives. In short, “for a voice to be effective, it is not enough for it to simply
exist. It must carry value from the perspective of the listener” (Crawford, 2023, p. 692).
Here, we can see the layers of audibility: to speak and be heard is to be understood, and
yet there is a marked difference between being heard and being listened to. Additionally, Kay
notes that the women’s sports community “come[s] up against the brute realities of misogynistic
backlash, ridicule, trolling and hate that circulate so easily throughout digital culture” as a result
of the increased exposure and visibility to those outside the haven of supportive community
(2020, p. 6). Therefore, “social media might allow women to circumvent the gatekeepers of
traditional media in order to communicate and self-express in public contexts, but it also allows
for instantaneous forms of gendered[, racial, queer, trans, and xenophobic abuse” (Kay, 2020, p.
6). However, Kay acknowledges that “this is a rather totalising narrative that reduces all

Dombrosky 24
mediated communication to a commodity form that ultimately, inevitably and neatly shores up
the power of neoliberal capitalism as well as heteropatriarchy” (2020, p. 12). We could
understand the women’s sports community’s use of social media platforms such as Instagram,
then, as strategic compliance: to privilege only institutional oppression is to obscure the
individual and collective agency these athletes and media creators strategically exercise. We
know from Audre Lorde that “the master’s tools will never destroy the master’s house,” though
in this situation we can acknowledge the necessity of using the master’s tools in order to get a
foot in the door, so to speak; ultimately, oppressive systems cannot be destroyed from the inside
out, but there is something to be said for the ability to access these internal resources and
influence and redistributing them outward (1984/2016, p. 259). Through this both/and orientation
and the recognition that communicative injustice is produced and reproduced by systems of
power such as racism, misogyny, ableism, and capitalism, Kay argues that we must reframe voice
away from associations of streamlined individualism and instead to a “messy multiplicity” of
voice that is “collective, feminist, and queer” (2020, p. 22).
To further the discussion of the women’s sports community’s strategic use of social
media to break traditional frames, reframe the conversation and create a new frame around
women’s sports that privileges matriarchal tenets of reciprocity, community, love, and
regeneration, this research purposively samples the Instagram account TOGETHXR (De Baere,
2024). Founded in 2021 by four of the world’s greatest professional athletes, soccer player Alex
Morgan, snowboarder Chloe Kim, swimmer Simone Manuel, and basketball legend Sue Bird,
TOGETHXR is a “media and commerce company [that] sits at the intersection of women’s
sports and culture” (TOGETHXR, 2024). As the “fastest growing [and] most influential brand in
women’s sports,” TOGETHXR pushes for “equal rights, coverage, and investment in women’s

Dombrosky 25
sports” and representation while showcasing and supporting “women of all ages, races, and
backgrounds” (2024). Importantly, as Esther Wallace describes in her TED Talk Representation
is hope: You have to see it to be it (2022):
Representation isn’t just about role models. It isn’t just about admiration. Representation
is power, and it is truth. It is the invitation to explore our potential for greatness and
success. Representation [is critical] because it affirms for us that there is no ceiling to our
potential. (Wallace, 2022).
TOGETHXR “is building a home for generations of women who’ve never had a place that
existed just for them” (TOGETHXR, 2024). For decades, women’s sports only received 4% of
media coverage; recently, that number has increased to 15%, but this is still only a fraction of the
coverage, especially considering that women comprise 44% of all participants in sport
(TOGETHXR, 2024). Created by professional athletes, each with intimate understanding of the
dominant frames, walls, and gatekeepers obstructing the growth of women’s sports,
TOGETHXR utilizes the power of its platform to generate a reality in which representation and
equality are norms: blending the realms of “culture, activism, lifestyle, and sports,” TOGETHXR
“shatter[s] the often narrow depictions of women in the media with content featuring a diverse
and inclusive community of game changers, culture shapers, thought leaders, and barrier
breakers” through in-depth storytelling (2024). Their slogan, “everyone watches women’s sports”
embodies the practice of breaking, reframing, and creating a new media and cultural frame
around women’s sports, its athletes, and their lives (TOGETHXR, 2024). This tagline directly
counters the popular sexist frame of “no one watches women’s sports,” which stems from
legacies of ideological soft power and the biopolitics of worthiness that work to maintain the
dominant construction of women’s non-belonging in sport. The use of the word “everyone”

Dombrosky 26
simply but effectively opposes the fracturing individualism normalized by Western Neoliberal
capitalism while simultaneously acting as an invitation: where the articulation of sport and
masculinity predominantly rejects those outside the homogenous biological whole, TOGETHXR
bolsters the frame of women’s sports as a moreso inclusive community that not only welcomes,
but celebrates difference.
Living up to their mission statement, TOGETHXR’s commitment to “moving culture
forward” blends core matriarchal tenets with social media’s capacity to act as a historical record
(2024). Analysis of the company’s Instagram account first provides insight into the themes and
strategies employed in the dissemination of women’s sports content, then focuses specifically on
content surrounding the Women’s World Cup soccer tournament in Australia and New Zealand
during the summer of 2023. TOGETHXR’s Instagram account delivers approximately three to
four posts per day to its 347,000 followers, delivered in a range of visually intriguing formats
including solitary photographs, swipeable posts containing both text and videos, engaging
infographics, as well as interestingly cut and edited videos.

Dombrosky 27
Figure 7. TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2024, February 21). Everyone watches women’s sports [Photograph]; Figure 8.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2023, July 27). Heba Saadieh making history on the world’s stage [Photograph]; Figure
3. TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2024, May 2). We’re watching women take over the sports world [Photographs via
Arsenal Women FC, @arsenalwfc].

The primary theme and function observed in this account is that of highlighting women in the
realms of sport and popular culture (TOGETHXR, 2024). Within the domain of sport, this
highlighting includes individual athletes, teams, leagues, and their accomplishments;
non-athletes in sports such as coaches, referees, owners, commentators, reporters, interviewers,
content creators, and photographers; sociocultural advancements in womens’ sports; current
sporting news; girls in sport. TOGETHXR repurposes the nexus of power that has historically
been used as an instrument of obfuscation to an instrument of illumination by supporting their
claims with concrete statistics, highlighting those with intersecting identities who have been
consistently framed out of sport and worthiness, and publishing previously unseen photos and
information about the history of women’s soccer.
Figures 7-9 illustrate this illumination: figure 7 is a visually intriguing infographic
detailing recent record-breaking audiences and television viewership of women’s sports. The
platform’s tagline serves as the title: “everyone watches women’s sports” is now no longer just a
counterargument to the popular sexist comment “no one watches women’s sports.” Now, as
evidenced in figure 7, the statement is rooted in irrefutable statistical facts. Figure 8 is a post
celebrating Heba Saadieh, “the first Palestinian, male or female, and the first hijabi referee in
[Women’s World Cup] tournament history” (TOGETHXR, 2023). The following slides utilize a
storytelling orientation to provide the audience with information about her accomplishments and
journey building up to this historic achievement. Figure 9 is a pertinent example of utilizing
social media as a historical record to carry memory into the future: the post compares the
audience growth from May 1st, 2013, to May 1st, 2023 at Arsenal WFC vs Wolfsburg’s UEFA

Dombrosky 28
Women’s Champions League (UWCL) semifinals matches on either side of a decade. The most
recent UWCL match between the two sides “broke the record for the highest-attended women’s
match in England with 60, 063 fans” (TOGETHXR, 2023). This comparative post further
exposes the journey of the women’s game with two contrasting photos demonstrating the
substandard conditions from a decade prior: the first match was played on a patchy, poorly
maintained field at a small stadium with limited seating capacity. Memories exposing these
unfavourable conditions speaks to the resilience of the trailblazing professional women athletes
who did manage to fight through and ‘make it’ while shouldering and fighting inequality without
near-any of the visibility, recognition, or memory they deserved. The second match, however,
was played at the Emirates Stadium, which has historically only been home to the Arsenal men’s
team; however, as the average attendance of the Arsenal Women’s team (34,997) surpassed that
of ten men’s English Premier League teams this past season, they will now call Emirates Stadium
their home for the upcoming 2024-25 season and beyond, further cementing their worthiness and
belonging in the realm of sport (Chambers, 2024). Women’s sports were never nothing; nothing
is a false truth, a false memory. Just because it was not visible, does not mean it was not
happening: “from [this] ‘nothing’ will come everything” (Northern Super League, 2024).
Through their strategic use of Instagram, TOGETHXR builds awareness, comprehension,
and excitement about women’s sports while simultaneously exposing the societal injustices
facing our collective lives. The account achieves this through informational, historical, and in
memoriam posts, while promoting representational inclusivity through collaborative posts with
athletes corresponding with months such as Black History Month, AAPI Heritage Month, and
Pride Month, to name a few. Breaking away from the academic research corpus’s tendency to
“only name the problem… state complaint without a constructive focus on resolution [and

Dombrosky 29
consequently] take away hope,” TOGETHXR’s innovative both/and frame of sport and pop
culture centres athletes’ and communities’ agency instead of implicitly privileging either/or
discourses that “work to sustain dominator culture” (hooks, 2003, pp. xiii-xiv). This platform
deepens the surface level visibility of women’s sports into recognition and familiarity, which has
historically been gatekept, as well as senses of worthiness and belonging; with its ability to not
only showcase stunning athletic highlights but also to amplify a diverse range of athletes,
TOGETHXR’s orientation of “rich storytelling” humanizes women in sports, endearing them to
the public (2024). This facilitates the possibility of “defining moments[,] which are made
through the identification of heroic figures, which is only possible if we can recognize players,
know who they are and something about their life stories” (Woodward, 2019, p. 1114).

Figure 3. National Women’s Soccer League [@nwsl]. (2024, May 22). There’s no such thing as an away game for
Barbra Banda! [Photograph]; Figure 4. National Women’s Soccer League [@nwsl]. (2024, May 28). Ji-So Yun gets
the love from the fans in Washington DC over the weekend! [Photograph]; Figure 5. National Women’s Soccer
League and Bay FC [@nwsl, @wearebayfc]. (2024, May 11). Gracias por el apoyo en la carretera [Photograph].

In terms of TOGETHXR’s coverage of the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and
New Zealand, there are approximately 160 posts dedicated to this tournament. The general theme
of highlighting is similarly present in this content: the main highlight is the tournament itself, but
TOGETHXR illuminates the history makers, game changers, and shared joy within the
tournament by dedicating posts to athletes, non-athletes, and team accomplishments and

Dombrosky 30
backstories in addition to actual athletic highlights. This style of content exemplifies the both/and
discourse in showing women’s multidimensionality; they are more than just athletes. As a
platform, TOGETHXR is successful in building a flourishing community at the intersection of
sports and culture, breaking the traditional narrow frame around women, sports, and life, and
demonstrating a new strength that is not predicated on white supremacist constructions of
masculinity.
Videos of interviews with athletes during the Women’s World Cup tournament are
especially significant, as they amplify the voices and histories of these athletes to supportive
communities who actively listen, understand, and care: their words do not fall on deaf ears.
Instead, they are met with outpourings of love, support, and recognition, tying into the notion
that to be known is to be loved. Interviews with Australia’s Ellie Carpenter, New Zealand’s Ali
Riley, and Brazil’s legendary Marta stood out from the crowd. These brief interviews encapsulate
themes of inspiration, support, and transformation. In her youth, Carpenter, like many young
girls, played on a boys team as there was no team for girls. She grew up watching the Australian
national women’s soccer team, The Matildas, play in stadiums with 300 people in attendance;
now, she plays for The Matildas in sold out stadiums. She expresses that “how far we’ve come is
just unimaginable” in terms of “chang[ing] women’s sport in Australia [and] inspir[ing] the next
generation” of young girls and boys (TOGETHXR, 2023). Similarly, Riley hopes:
That we’ve inspired the country, [and] that little girls across New Zealand, across the
world now will start playing sport and feel like they can achieve whatever they put their
mind to and just dream bigger than they have ever been able to before. I just hope that
this opens so many doors and opportunities for young girls. We wanted to inspire. We

Dombrosky 31
wanted to honour the Ferns that came before us, and this team did that. I’m so proud of
them. (TOGETHXR, 2023).
“Representation is a lesson that ceilings are just the perception of limitations” (Wallace, 2022).
After her final Women’s World Cup match, Marta credits the persistence of players who fought
through the frames, walls, and gatekeepers in order to lay the foundation of women’s soccer. She
“ask[s] the new generation to continue where we left off: continue to inspire even more girls and
boys, no matter what age they are” (TOGETHXR, 2023). Marta emphasizes that “women’s
football is a product that gives profit, that gives enjoyment to watch. So support. Keep
supporting. Because for them, it’s just the beginning. For me, it’s the end of the line now”
(TOGETHXR, 2023). Clearly, representation is nonlinear; it “is a cycle that keeps going,
powered by the opportunities that we have to become the representation that someone else needs
to see” (Wallace, 2022).
Limitations and future research
Due to the scope of this paper, I was unable to do proper justice to the effects of
coloniality and race on worthiness, gender, sport, and media, and strongly recommend in-depth
further research exploring these intersections. Since the scope of this research is limited to
Western women’s sports and media coverage, issues facing Western women’s sports hold the
most staying power in terms of relevance and repeated posts on the accounts, and content
relating to sociocultural movements are situated primarily within that Western context.
Suggestions for further research include illuminating the complex truths, histories, and memories
of women’s sports beyond the Western contextual frame; identifying women’s sports accounts
from different areas of the world to increase breadth and depth in the research corpus, as well as
to identify similarities and differences in strategic online presence is recommended. Further

Dombrosky 32
research on the effects of biopolitical hierarchies of worthiness on the decision-making process
of creating new frames for women’s sports, as well as more in-depth exploration of women’s
sports and the potential for matriarchy is recommended as well.
Conclusion
Ultimately, despite the near-invisible nexus of hard and soft power shaping our collective
histories, memories, and truths with regard to dominant constructions of biopolitical worthiness
in sport, media, and life, the women’s sports community strategically utilizes social media as an
actively updating historical record to carry memory into the future. The work of accounts such as
TOGETHXR in partnership with professional women athletes and creators generates heightened
visibility, audibility, comprehension, and love for women’s sports and athletes, combats
restrictive perceptions and gender-bland sexism, and highlights the systemic, institutional walls,
frames, and gatekeepers attempting to obstruct women’s belonging in the realm of sport.
The implications of this research, however, far exceed this summary. These women, they
are not just bypassing institutional gatekeepers and building flourishing communities. By holding
sacred the knowledge and experiences of those who came before them, they are actively
rewriting history through the present, changing the very fabric of our culture and society,
cracking life trajectories wide open by building new worlds, new realities. The strategic use of
these social media platforms facilitates the illumination and normalization of historically
stigmatized identities in athletics and in life; they are shifting the cultural consciousness toward
increased acceptance of non-traditional ways of existence. They break the dominant frame and
create their own; the resulting visibility, recognition, and worthiness of their lives, and therefore
the lives of people who look or identify similarly to them, radiate outward. The right to not only

Dombrosky 33
exist, but to thrive, in a professional sports environment and in general, is no longer gatekept by
the iron fist of the ruling institutional powers.
Through the fracturing obscurity forged by old, traditional systems of power shines a
message of hope: women in sport are creating a new, undeniable core of enthusiasm, support,
and communal connection: the “public performance of a void” cannot be sustained much longer
(Coutin, 2016, p. 4). The way things were is being drowned out by the way things are. Can you
hear us? Will you listen? There are concrete paths forward; a future is being written into
existence. The influx of representation of women in sport and in life “stretches our imagination
beyond what we thought possible” (Wallace, 2022). Now, moreso than ever, it is possible to
know our own power. So, awaken to the power within yourself. Your life is in your hands. The
tides are turning, and women’s sports are up next. Are you with us?

Dombrosky 34
References
Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life. Duke University Press.
Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press.
https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.tru.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=8
30670&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Arthur Riley, C. (2022). This here flesh. Convergent Books, Penguin Random House.
Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war. Verso.
Butler. J. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. Verso.
Bruce, T. (2016). New rules for new times: Sportswomen and media representation in the
third wave. Sex Roles, 74(7), 361–376.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0497-6.
CBS (2020). Players kneel during the National Anthem before the NWSL Challenge Cup
kicked off on June 27.
https://heavy.com/sports/2020/06/nwsl-athlete-kneeling-national-anthem-video/.
Chambers, T. (2024, March 6). Average Arsenal WSL crowd bigger than 10 Premier League
clubs. ESPN.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39664597/average-arsenal-wsl-crowd-bigger10-premier-league-clubs.
Coutin, S. B. (2016). Exiled home: Salvadoran transnational youth in the aftermath of
violence. Duke University Press.
Crawford, M. (2023). Speaking Up and Speaking Out: Collective Voice in Women’s Sports
Media. Communication & Sport, 11(4), 688-705.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1177/21674795221131794.

Dombrosky 35
Crushed hopes: underemployment and deskilling among skilled migrant women. (2012).
International Organization for Migration.
https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/crushed_hopes_3jan2013.pdf.
De Baere, N. (2024, Mar. 19). “The next phase of feminism is matriarchy.” Chix.
https://chixmag.com/editorial/the-next-phase-of-feminism-is-matriarchy?utm_campai
gn=later-linkinbio-chicksforclimate&utm_content=later-42507259&utm_medium=soc
ial&utm_source=linkin.bio.
De la Fuente, H. (2023, February 17). Uswnt and Canada unite in protest for gender equality
and trans rights before SheBelieves Cup game. CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/football/uswnt-canada-gender-equality-trans-rights-s
pt-intl/index.html.
Dworkin, G. (2020, September 9). Paternalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/paternalism/.
Ehrmann, M. (2023). Canada and the USWNT faced each other in the SheBelieves Cup.
[Photograph]. Getty Images.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/football/uswnt-canada-gender-equality-trans-rights-s
pt-intl/index.html.
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (2024, May 30). Title IX. Encyclopædia Britannica.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Title-IX.
England, D. (2023, n.d.). Oh what a night: Shepparton-born Cortnee Vine celebrates after
scoring the winning penalty against France for the Matildas. [Photograph]. AAP/Jono

Dombrosky 36
Searle Photo.
https://www.seymourtelegraph.com.au/sport/ex-shepparton-talent-cortnee-vine-sendsmatildas-to-world-cup-semi-final-after-scoring-winning-penal/.
Foucault, M. (1976). Society must be defended. Picador: New York.
FOX Sports. (2023, August 12). Australia vs. France highlights: Australia reaches semifinals
in historic thriller. FOX Sports.
https://www.foxsports.com/stories/soccer/womens-world-cup-2023-top-plays-australia
-france.
Goettner-Abendroth, H. (2023). Matriarchal societies of the past and the rise of patriarchy.
Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York.
Hall, M. A. (2003). The Game of Choice: Girls’ and Women’s Soccer in Canada. Soccer &
Society, 4(2/3), 30–46.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1080/14660970512331390815.
Hardin, M. (2005). Stopped at the gate: Women’s sports, “reader interest,” and decision
making by editors. JOURNALISM & MASS COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY, 82(1),
62–77.
https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&
db=edswss&AN=000229271000005&site=eds-live&scope=site.
hooks, bell. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. Routledge.
Kay, J. B. (2020). Gender, media and voice: Communicative injustice and public speech.
Palgrave Macmillan.

Dombrosky 37
Lee, J. F. (2012). The Lady Footballers and the British Press, 1895. Critical Survey, 24(1),
88–101. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41556450.
Lewin, K. (1943). Forces behind food habits and methods of change.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK224347/.
Lorde, A. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house (2016) in Mann, S. A.,
and Patterson, A. S. Reading feminist theory: From modernity to postmodernity.
Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1984).
Lynch, K. (2022). Care and capitalism. Polity.
Macfarlane, A. (2023, January 16). History of women’s soccer: The challenges & the current
game. History Of Soccer. https://historyofsoccer.info/womens_soccer.
Mann, S. A., and Patterson, A. S. (2016). Reading feminist theory: From modernity to
postmodernity. Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. (2015). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.” Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts: Capital: Volume One,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/. Original work published
1867.
Mayne, J. (2023, August 12). Matildas World Cup crowd: Confirmed attendance for Australia
vs. France at Brisbane Stadium. Sporting News Australia.
https://www.sportingnews.com/au/football/news/matildas-world-cup-crowd-australia-f
rance-brisbane-stadium/kiwg3vnuzkarpq3tzn4xihf1.

Dombrosky 38
Messner, M. A. (1992). Power at play: Sports and the problem of masculinity. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Musto, M., Cooky, C., & Messner, M. A. (2017). “From fizzle to sizzle!”: Televised sports
news and the production of gender-bland sexism. Gender and Society, 31(5), 573–596.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26597007.
National Women’s Soccer League [@nwsl]. (2024, May 28). “Ji-So Yun gets the love from the
fans in Washington DC over the weekend!” [Photograph]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7hTqyQi-2t/?img_index=2.
National Women’s Soccer League [@nwsl]. (2024, May 22). There’s no such thing as an
away game for Barbra Banda! [Photograph].
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7SMdGhykFZ/?img_index=1.
Bay FC and National Women’s Soccer League [@nwsl, @wearebayfc]. (2024, May 11).
“Gracias por el apoyo en la carretera” [Photograph]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C62m4xqrRNn/?img_index=1
Northern Super League [@northernsuperleague]. (2024, May 30). From nothing will come
everything. Coming 2025.

🌌⚽️. [Video]. Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7j2GwMpV4i/.
Peterson, A. M. (2023, February 16). Canada women prepare for SheBelieves amid labour
dispute. CTV News.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sports/canada-women-prepare-for-shebelieves-amid-labour-di
spute-1.6276584.

Dombrosky 39
Previtali, F. S. and Fagiani, C. C. (2015). Deskilling and degradation of labour in
contemporary capitalism: the continuing relevance of Braverman. Work Organisation,
Labour & Globalisation, 9(1), 76–91.
https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/stable/pdf/10.13169/workorgalaboglob.9.1.0076.
pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A937bb47ea669f2d73d9ffc153fb4f4b0&ab_segments=&ori
gin=&acceptTC=1.
Seebeck, N. R. (2023). San Diego Wave players express their support for Spain’s Jenni
Hermoso after their game Friday. [Photograph]. USA TODAY Sports.
https://justwomenssports.com/reads/nwsl-players-wear-wristbands-in-support-of-jenni
-hermoso/.
Sharpe, Christina. (2016). In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press.
Skillen, F., Byrne, H., Carrier, J., & James, G. (2022). ‘The game of football is quite
unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged’: a comparative analysis of the
1921 English Football Association ban on women’s football in Britain and Ireland.
Sport in History, 42(1), 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2021.2025415.
TOGETHXR. (n.d.). About. TOGETHXR inc.. https://www.togethxr.com/pages/about
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (n.d.). Posts [Instagram profile]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/togethxr/.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2024, May 2). We’re watching women take over the sports world
[Photographs via Arsenal Women FC, @arsenalwfc].
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrwiuvSP-H_/?img_index=1.

Dombrosky 40
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2024, February 21). Everyone watches women’s sports
[Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/C3oZjn6uZkd/.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2023, August 6). “Winning a World Cup should be one of the
best moments in these players' lives but instead it's overshadowed by…”
[Photograph]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CwbXO24PxyM/?img_index=8.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2023, July 27). Heba Saadieh making history on the world’s stage
[Photograph]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvN8ZrqvQ6a/?img_index=1.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2023, August 12). Hearing about the Tillies’ growth has me in
my feels [Video]. Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv1eoPOPKbF/?img_index=1.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2023, August 2). Changed the game forever, THANK YOU
@martavsilva10

🫶 [Video]. Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvdIrGtuItP/?img_index=2.
TOGETHXR [@togethxr]. (2023, July 30). Inspiring generations to come

👏

[Video].

Instagram. [https://www.instagram.com/p/CvUeB9ire_Y/?img_index=1.
Walia, H. (2021). Border and rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist
nationalism. Fernwood Publishing.
Wallace, E. (2022, June 7). Representation is hope: You have to see it to be it | Esther Wallace
| tedxboston. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJP8GLA1p90.

Dombrosky 41
West, W. (2023, n.d.). Cortnee Vine scores Australia’s winning penalty against France.
[Photograph].
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230819-usa-dumped-out-and-penalty-dram
a-women-s-world-cup-moments.
Wills, M. (2019, July 5). The origins of women’s soccer. JSTOR Daily.
https://daily.jstor.org/the-origins-of-womens-soccer/.
Woodward, K. (2019). The gendering of defining moments: heroic narratives and pivotal
points in footballing memories. Soccer & Society, 20(7/8), 1108–1117.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.tru.ca/10.1080/14660970.2019.1680507. /
https://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&
db=a9h&AN=139617853&site=eds-live&scope=site.