Mulheres de ouro: trajetória e representações de atletas de lutas

Abstract

This research is qualitative and descriptive in character, developed from the following central question: “What are the events and experiences experienced by women who carry on a career as wrestlers, despite the elaborate social arguments that act as inhibitors of such an attitude?”. With theoretical basis of gender studies and methodology of social representations, the objectives of this study have been defined from this question: a) To understand how the process of insertion and retention of women in wrestling is b) To identify the meanings, motivations, as well as the difficulties in building their careers, and c) To identify and analyze the representations of femininity of these female athletes and analyze how far towards and / or away from a hegemonic representation. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, a semi-structured interview was used, prepared in accordance with the objectives of the research, which comprehended six professional athletes of different modalities of wrestling: 2 in Olympic boxing, 3 freestyle wrestlers and 1 in mixed martial arts. All athletes have great national and international presence. The narratives show that the athletes are fit for the modalities in which they compete, but this is only founf out from when they start in the sport, in their first fight, or with the technical involvement with the sport, which is always mediated by men, here characterized as tutors. In addition, there is the desire of families regarding teh choice of the professional athletes, the difficulties - financial and prejudice - their dreams, achievements and meanings attached to the career of wrestlers. They are women who bear a heavy training routine in mixed environments and represent femininity in a plural manner and are marked by more aggressive stance in training and in fights. Their femininity is allied to vanity and beauty be it constitutive of every woman or that one invested externally on the occasions that they are not fighting or training and, where possible, also in those moments. In other words, they subjectivate certain “masculinity” as a way of belonging to the sport, while marking the presence of the feminine in the ring, on the mat and in the octagon.