The intersections of race and gendered stereotypes within the constructions of digital women footballers in video games

Paul Campbell; Marcus Maloney; Anika Leslie-Walker

doi:10.1080/1070289X.2025.2458397

The intersections of race and gendered stereotypes within the constructions of digital women footballers in video games

Paul Campbell
, Marcus Maloney
, Anika Leslie-Walker

University of Leicester
Nottingham Trent University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

226 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This article employs Bogost’s (2007) ‘procedural rhetoric’ frame to explore the ways in which the numerical values which constitute FIFA 22’s ‘Top 100’ Black and White digital women footballers reflect or challenge the exclusionary discourses that have, thus far, shaped the experiences of White and Black female sporting athletes in the social world. In doing so, this research is the first to empirically demonstrate considerable differences between the construction, sporting competencies and artificial emotional and sporting intelligence assigned to Black and White digital players within football video games. Findings also demonstrate the ways in which the numerical foundations of racialised digital women footballers are informed by, and reflect, processes of both sporting misogynoir and Whiteness, which intersect and underpin the markedly anti-Black and anti-feminine framings and sporting competencies of digital Black female footballers within this digital sports world.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	159-179
Number of pages	21
Journal	Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Volume	33
Issue number	2
Early online date	5 Feb 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2025.2458397
Publication status	Published - 4 Mar 2026

Bibliographical note

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use,distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of theAccepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

Keywords

Race
gender
video games
whiteness
misogynoir
soccer

Access to Document

10.1080/1070289X.2025.2458397Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Maloney2025VoRFinal published version, 731 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "The intersections of race and gendered stereotypes within the constructions of digital women footballers in video games",

abstract = "This article employs Bogost{\textquoteright}s (2007) {\textquoteleft}procedural rhetoric{\textquoteright} frame to explore the ways in which the numerical values which constitute FIFA 22{\textquoteright}s {\textquoteleft}Top 100{\textquoteright} Black and White digital women footballers reflect or challenge the exclusionary discourses that have, thus far, shaped the experiences of White and Black female sporting athletes in the social world. In doing so, this research is the first to empirically demonstrate considerable differences between the construction, sporting competencies and artificial emotional and sporting intelligence assigned to Black and White digital players within football video games. Findings also demonstrate the ways in which the numerical foundations of racialised digital women footballers are informed by, and reflect, processes of both sporting misogynoir and Whiteness, which intersect and underpin the markedly anti-Black and anti-feminine framings and sporting competencies of digital Black female footballers within this digital sports world.",

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The intersections of race and gendered stereotypes within the constructions of digital women footballers in video games

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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