History

Cultural Tradition

In Spain, the role of the women has always been to function as the wife and/or mother of the house. This is the long-standing tradition that is a crucial part of Spain's culture. It is said that if a women is to defy this role, she is considered to be betraying her sex or her family. Thus, most women in the past chose to accept and play the role for the sake of herself, her family, and her society. Because of this long-standing history, Spain lags behind the rest of the world in gender equality in all areas including female sport.
Over the past century, the country started to make some changes and become a little bit more progressive. Women finally started to join the work force in Spain in the 1900s. However, the 'rule' was that if they wanted to work and have a job, they could not let it interfere with their home duties. Because of these double responsibilities, it is no surprise that women had no time for sport. Their historic role basically forbade them from playing sport, in addition to the ideas that sport is a masculine domain, only for men in Spain.
During the Franco period, gender equality and women's rights were limited once again. Franco idealized the role of women as the home-keeper and tried to emphasize the importance that this role had. He tried to remove all women from the workforce. This set the gender back even further in its search for equality.
Today, the country has made huge progressive strides. Women are abundant in the workforce. Furthermore, sports are becoming more and more popular for women as they have more freedom to decide what they want to do with their free time and the stereotypes are continually waning out. However, they still face some setbacks such as the men and women that still have a very conservative outlook on the role of women in Spanish society.
In summary, cultural tradition and gender stereotypes have held women back from pursuing certain social activities such as sport. Throughout history, they have been granted freedom and have had it taken away over the years. Today, the country is making progressive reforms towards gender equality and these movements are making things like individual athletes and team sports much more common for girls in the Spanish culture today.

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"Gendered Narratives in Spain"

Women in Spain have faced chronic under-representation in sport according to Liz Crolley's article in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport Journal. Her article goes on to talk about how the media portrays women's sport and the crucial role that the media plays in influencing society. In her research of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, she discovered that the media does not equally portray men and women's sports. This lack of equity has a whiplash effect on the socialization of women sports in the past and presently.
Women in Spain have faced a social stigma for years. Sport has been considered a masculine domain here for centuries. In the Franco period (mid 1950s), women were intensely discouraged from participating and the effect was stifling. Although women's sport is getting increasing more popular today, women are still not equally represented. Studies have been conducted (such as the Llopis Study quoted in Crolley's article) and the results show that 'childhood socialization' can largely explain why females don't play sports here in Spain.
The media plays an important role in social constructions. It has power and the influence to convince or sway people's opinions. Its headlines, images, and material catches the attention of the people. Thus, the way the media portrays women's sport is important. Crolley researched the media's portrayal of sport during the Athens 2004 Olympics and found many interesting statistics. Before these games, the media was known for promoting male dominance in sports and for constructing it as a male domain. During the Athens Olympics this tradition was upheld and exemplified. Crolley studied the amount of coverage and the nature of coverage that women received compared to men and found shocking statistics. Although women made up about 40% of the Spanish athletes (an accomplishment and improvement in and of itself for the women of Spain), they received no where near 40% of the publicity in the newspapers and other mediums of communication and news. Women were rarely referenced in headlines or had large attention-drawing articles written about them. Also, the reporters focused on the more 'graceful' women's sports like swimming and gymnastics, rather than the masculine sports. Furthermore, they were talked about in a different, feminine language with a focus on trivial details about their personal lives instead of their athletic accomplishments. Crolley summarizes her article saying that women's sport is starting to be taken more seriously, but as of 2004 when the article was written, Spanish society still had a long way to go on the road to equal representation.

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Hopeful Prospects  

In recent years, Spain has been making progressive changes to help minimize the gender disparity that exists in sports. They are using numerous, unique mediums to get their message across that it is socially acceptable and even encouraged for women to start partaking in sport. They are especially using organizations and the media to publicize the movement towards gender equity.

For example, in 2009 the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) launched a campaign on gender equality with a focus on assisting local sport bodies. Their goal was to identify the current social issues in these sporting bodies and aid the local organizations in fixing them. Their main objectives were to help look for discrimination and provide the necessary tools and advice to the local businesses in order to promote female participation in sport. They creators of the project think, "women's participation in sport can be increased through the provision of non-discriminatory sports facilities and fair distribution of material resources and by promoting the involvement of women in local sports bodies." And with this initiative, they set out to create these conditions in a long term project that would be effective and beneficial for women in the years to come.

Furthermore, in 2015 the media has begun making bigger and bigger strides in promoting women in sports. In the beginning of the year, the Spanish Sports Federation for Persons with Physical Disabilites (FEDDF) launched a progressive promo video. It was about the Spanish Women's Wheelchair Basketball team and was made to create enthusiasm for increased participation for women and people with disabilities in sports. It was an inspiring, progressive move by the media that is setting a great example for others to follow! Below you can find the promo video:

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