Between stands and margins: Gendered hierarchies and intra-gender dynamics in Tunisian female football fandom

Abstract

This study explores the gendered dynamics that structure football fandom in Tunisia, a social arena historically framed by male norms and practices. By examining the trajectories, behaviours and positions of female fans, the research highlights how women must negotiate their place within asymmetric power relations. Their participation in chants, tifos and match-day rituals expresses a genuine desire for integration; however, their involvement often remains confined to supportive or peripheral roles, distant from strategic decision-making and militant tasks that dominate Ultras culture. The gendered distribution of roles reveals a persistent hierarchy in which men control the most valued and visible activities of fandom. Social and gender norms continue to shape women's access to the stadium and public interactions, imposing subtle yet powerful boundaries on their legitimacy and freedom of movement. Yet, paradoxically, the stadium appears to many women as a relatively safer public space compared to other urban environments in Tunisia. Some female fans manage to appropriate the space in ways that discreetly challenge masculine codes, reinterpret group norms and experiment with forms of resistance, even if these initiatives remain limited in scope. The research also uncovers internal tensions within female fans. While collaboration and informal sisterhood can reinforce women's presence in the stands, dynamics of exclusion, competition and selective homosociality persist, reflecting normative pressures linked to gender identity. Thus, the growing number of female fans does not automatically produce unconditional solidarity; instead, it may generate new forms of intra-gender hierarchy. Overall, the study positions female supporters as central actors in the gendered reconfiguration of Tunisian football fandom. Their ambivalent participation – oscillating between reproducing established structures and enacting subtle forms of subversion offers key insights into socialisation, power and cultural change within a historically male-dominated space.