Agergaard, Sine

Alber, Erdmute

Booth, Sara

Botelho, Vera

Claussen, Detlev

Darby, Paul

Engh, Mari

Liston, Katie

McCree, Roy

Mueller, Julianne

Nieland, Joerg-Uwe

Poli, Raffaele

Pfister, Gertrud

Rial, Carmen

Saavedra, Martha

Schaaf, Daniela

Schokkaert, Jeron

Spitaler, Georg

Tiesler, Nina Clara

Ungruhe, Christian

v. d. Meij, Nienke

Weedon, Gavin

Williams, Jean

Members

International Centre for Sports History and Culture
De Montfort University
Email: jwilliam@dmu.ac.uk
Study Groups: WF

Research area & expertise:

Jean Williams is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Centre for Sports History and Culture. Jean’s main projects for 2010-11 include a 17,000 Euro UEFA-funded project Women’s Football, Europe and Professionalization 1971-2011 and a research monograph called A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport (Routledge Research, 2011).
She has acted as consultant to sports organisations, including FIFA, and for the media, for example, the BBC Nation on Film series and BBC Radio 4. Jean is author of A Game For Rough Girls: A History of Women's Football in England (Routledge 2003) and A Beautiful Game: International Perspectives on Women's Football (Berg 2007). Jean is also a UEFA ‘B’ Licence Coach and an FA Child Protection Tutor.

Current reasearch interests & projects:

Overview of the UEFA funded project 1971-2011
Football has not just held its men’s World Cup in South Africa, a first for a sporting mega-event on the continent, but is building toward a Women’s World Cup in Germany in 2011. This will be sixth edition of that event since the first was held in PR China in 1991, and it now also has two youth versions; with the U-20 and U-17 tournaments to be held in Germany and Trinidad and Tobago respectively in 2010. With an estimated 26 million female players globally, of which 6 million are based in Europe, the change to football culture world-wide over the last sixty years has been dramatic. However, there is reason to be cautious in the optimism that surrounds the growth of the women’s game. The same survey claims only a total of 21 million registered European players, of whom 4 million are female, and the reported gender balance of the confederation reflects a wider international picture: even today, women make up ten per cent of the total football players at best. When we look at elite players earning a living from the game, the disparity is amplified: if there are 60,000 professionals in Europe, for example, very few are women. How many women have been involved in what kinds of professionalism of European football between 1971 and 2011? We recognize that most of the growth of female participation developed in the last forty years, however, we know very little about attendant professionalization. While this is not the first research to look at cross-national issues of elite women football players, it is among the first to look at Europe-wide patterns of professional female migration.

Selected publications:

Football

'An Equality Too Far? A Thematic Review of European Issues Relating to Women's Football' New Approaches in Football History Themenheft von Historical Social Research 1/2006

Migration of female sports-performers both amateurs and professsionals

‘Frisky and Bitchy: Unlikely British Olympic Heroes?’ in Fiona Skillen and Carol Osbourne (eds) Women and Sport a special edition of Sport in History June 2010

‘Send Her Victorious: A Historiography of British Women Olympians 1896-2012’ Sport & Society The Summer Olympics and Paralympics through the lens of social science The British Library September 2010 http://www.bl.uk/sportandsociety/.html

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