”Fantastiskt! Dom spelade nästan som grabbar.” : Damfotboll i svenska dagstidningar mellan åren 1967–1973

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this essay is to examine how women´s football is described in Swedish newspapers, focusing on the use of vocabulary in the articles between the years 1967–1973. The essay´s theoretical framework is based on Yvonne Hirdman’s theoretical thinkings of gender and gender contracts. The method is based on text analytical tools with a linguistic focus. The study´s material consists of Swedish newspapers archived at ”Kungliga biblioteket”. Ten articles were selected from each year within the 1967-1973 timeframe, resulting in a total of 69 articles for the entire study. One of the main conclusions of the study is that women who played football before and after integration into the Swedish Football association were marginalized compared to men and men’s football. The language use in the articles also underwent changes between the years 1967-1973, establishing a consensus on how women were referred to in the articles. From 1967-1971, women who played football were named with a total of ten different synonyms of women, however by the years 1972-1973, when women´s football became integrated into the Swedish Football association, the language use shifted to exclusively name female football players as women or girls. There was also no comparison between women’s- and men’s football during 1972-1973. Most newspaper exhibited a positive stance toward women’s football, but they did not perceive the sport as equal to men’s football.