The institutionalization of women’s soccer through federal sports policies: Sweden vs. France, “let’s replay the match” (twentieth and twenty-first centuries)

While women’s soccer now seems to have become “a practice in its own right” (Boniface and Gomez 2019), there are still major discrepancies from one federation to the next. While the feminization rate in French soccer stands at 7.4%, it is still lower than in other nations such as Sweden (38.4%). How can these differences be explained, and to what extent do egalitarian public policies and federal sports policies play a major role in the dynamics identified? Drawing on the principles of the sociohistorical approach (Noiriel 2008) and comparative history (Werner and Zimmermann 2004), we propose here to shed light on the institutionalization processes of Swedish and French women’s soccer. While the practice of women’s soccer has emerged over the same periods of time in both countries, a cross-cutting study of government and sports policies (by FIFA, UEFA, sports federations, and states) has enabled us to identify similarities and differences in the conception and promotion of the activity, as well as to question France’s supposed “backwardness” in other ways.