The 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup

This book offers a critical examination of the 2023 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women?s World Cup, being held in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on perspectives from sociology, history, political science, and management, it sheds new light on the development of women?s soccer and on women?s sport more broadly.

This book examines the politics of the build-up to the tournament, including the bidding process, as well as how the tournament has been represented in the media, the governance structures of the tournament itself, and policy proposals designed to leave an enduring legacy for women and girls in sport. The 2023 FIFA Women?s World Cup is the first Women?s World Cup to be held in the Southern Hemisphere and the first to be held with an expanded 32-team format. This book shows why the 2023 FIFA Women?s World Cup represents a unique opportunity to enhance our understanding of women?s football, gender-oriented sport development initiatives and strategies, national sport policy and programming, and the management of international sporting events.

This book is fascinating reading for any student, researcher, or practitioner with an interest in sport development, sport management, sport policy, sport sociology, event management, gender studies, political science, or the relationship between sport and wider society.

'In conjoined sporting, social, cultural, economic, political, and/or geographical terms, The 2023 FIFA Women?s World Cup: Politics, Representation, & Management aggregates an intriguing and multifaceted understanding of an event which occupies an increasingly prominent place within the global sporting landscape. As much a collective research project as an edited anthology (one or more of the editors are involved in the overwhelming majority of the chapters), The 2023 FIFA Women?s World Cup makes an important contribution to the sporting mega-event literature. It provides a vivid and interdisciplinary reading of the tournament?s location, structure, and representation which, albeit long overdue, finally brings the FIFA Women?s World Cup under the critical academic spotlight warranted by its manifold significance. Furthermore, without resorting to any form of uncritical romanticism, the book suggests how the Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand co-hosted 2023 FIFA Women?s World Cup tournament?s more progressive aspects offer something of a counterpoint to the entrenched orthodoxies of major sporting events more generally. A must-read for anyone with a serious interest in the complexities, and transformative potentialities, of contemporary sport culture.'?

David L. Andrews, Professor of Physical Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland - College Park, USA