Diverse City FC is an all-female football team, based in Dublin, and the
centerpiece of the Hijabs and Hat-tricks
project initiated and supported by Sports Against Racism Ireland.[1] As a club, Diverse City is
unique in that it is the first (and remains the only) football team founded
specifically to facilitate access to sport for young Muslim women and girls in
Ireland.
Research (see
for example Bradbury 2010; Collins and Kay 2014) has shown how, faced with prejudice,
exclusion, and limited opportunities to participate in sports, members of
minority communities often respond by forming their own teams. These teams
become spaces for players to be themselves; to express their own identities with
confidence, and in a safe environment.
Drawing on focus group discussions undertaken with players from
Diverse City FC this paper reveals the young women’s experiences of
racism in contemporary Irish Society and shows how football has provided an
important avenue in overcoming such experiences. Diverse City FC has become
more than a club, and football, for the young women involved, has become more
than a game. Not only has Diverse City FC provided these young women with a route
to participate in sport, it has also provided them with a key platform from
which they can challenge negative stereotypes around gender and racialised religious
identity.
[1] The ‘Hijabs and Hat-tricks’ project has been funded
and/or supported by Sony, FIFA and Street Football World. The researchers were
not remunerated for their work as part of this evaluation.