This conceptual paper explores the gendered framing of women as sports fans in literature and pop culture and the surveillance of their fandom in the stands. By investigating what it feels like to be watched while watching, and the complex ways in which gendered practices complicate the position of women as spectators of sport, we can see how some women are actively challenging the stereotypes of sports fandom in popular culture. Through using the method of reflexive autoethnography, (see Delamont, 2009; Ellis et al., 2010 and Holman Jones, 2016) this paper will re/address how women are framed as fans in the sports fan space and the activism they demonstrate in these presentations that has gone unnoticed and under-researched in the sports fan space.
Through autoethnography I intend to also add personal reflections to connect to, challenge and re-position some representations of women as sports fans through this framework in order to explore different ways of engaging with the existing research. This method builds on innovative approaches to exploring fandom through mixed method and ethnographical investigations that have been developed in studies by key researchers in the field such as Hoeber & Kerwin’s (2013), McParland (2012) and Richards (2015 &, 2018).
Applying the lens of reflexive autoethnography as the primary methodology will further allow me, an engaged participant myself, to re-explore my previous experiences to give gendered perceptions of sports fandom further nuanced consideration. This approach aims to offer alternative ways to consider how women show activism in challenging their surveillance and presenting their multi-layered and complicated experiences of fandom by re-viewing how women as fans are represented in popular culture.
This paper will move through an examination of the existing research on gender and sports fandom, and touch on concepts of surveillance and present examples of women as fans in several text that perform elements of activism to challenge the ‘female fan’ stereotype to connect key ideas to the reflective autoethnographical entries, bringing a different way to understand the gendered experience of being watched while watching sport in a stadium.
