Gender equality in Costa Rican Professional Football: Challenges faced by professional female Costa Rican football players compared with their male counterparts

Abstract

Sports and football in general has been studied by the social science, it has been used as a way to approach the different areas of sociability, the human behaviour of groups and symbology.

Football is a world with complex networks and despite of opinions little explored. In order to understand how the associations are formed or managed its necessary to learn about the symbolic aspects involved.

The purpose of this research is to analyse the challenges faced between female and male football players in Costa Rica and how this is originated for the gender inequality still existing.

Womens football arrived in Costa Rica in 1921 when the first national team was put together in order to compete internationally, however, they did not received support, for this reason the womens national league was founded in 1991 and relaunched in 2013 ( as a request of the president back that time Ms. Laura Chinchilla).

Keywords : Challenges, Gender inequality, football