Separatism, community and emancipation: Football for girls as critical pedagogy

Sport activities can provide an informal educational setting where citizen formation, emancipation and resistance against social exclusion can take place. In this article, we explore the social ambitions of Girl Football Community (GFC), a girl-only football activity which organizes spontaneous sport activities, for girls aged 6–19, conducted by women, with the objective to create opportunities for girls in disadvantaged areas to participate in sports and to use participation to form social inclusion. Based on interviews with leaders and participants as well as participant observations of the activities, we explore how critical pedagogy is enabled in football activities for girls underpinned by social ambitions. We analyse how self-organization of the activities facilitate participation on the girl’s own terms, how gender separatism in the activities creates relations and a sense of community. Critical reflection around social injustices takes form through continuous dialogue and talk about rights in the activities and opinion work oriented towards actors beyond. Rather than taking a fixed understanding of critical pedagogy as our starting point, we theorize how this formation of self-organization, community through separatism and critical dialogue and talk about rights as well as opinion work provides a certain critical pedagogy.