Women's soccer: challenges and coping strategies of a team from Manaus

Brazil is a country where soccer is interconnected to national identity, but this is still a place to be conquered and re-signified for women who practice this sport. Thus, this research aimed to understand the challenges experienced by a group of women professional soccer players in the city of Manaus. The qualitative approach was used and the data collection was done through the semi-structured interview. Five female professional players participated from one of the city's leading soccer clubs and the analysis of the data took advantage of the content analysis model. As a result, we have built five categories: 1) The discovery; 2) Integration into professional soccer; 3) The difficulties and being a woman in soccer and 4) The strategies of confrontation. The results showed that player's challenges are concentrated on gender perspectives, that is, the `being a woman in soccer' and that they use varied coping strategies to improve and maintain their performance in the field. The purpose of this research was to give visibility to the universe of women professional soccer players so that there is recognition and encouragement from investors, sponsors and supporters of soccer.