Introduction: soccer, women and society 1. Dimensions of professionalization: a comparative analysis of women’s soccer in the United States and Poland 2. Bonsucesso Futebol Clube, undefeated youth champion of 1983: Rio de Janeiro’s suburbs as breeding grounds for women’s soccer in Brazil 3. Professionalization of women’s football in Brazil: perspectives and challenges in athletes’ working conditions 4. Soccer, women, society: contextualizing women’s football growth in East Africa 5. The talent pathways of professional and international female soccer players in the United States 6. Multi-club networks in women’s soccer: reproducing hierarchies under the promise of integration 7. Sport as migrant work: transnational athletic migration and belonging in English professional women’s football 8. Beyond the pitch: migration, communication, culture, and chastity in Nigerian women’s football 9. The Australian Matildas at FIFA 2023: spurring social change, sports policy and soft power diplomacy 10. Game changers? The Matildas and 2023 Women’s World Cup 11. Thirty-two years of inequality in coaching at the FIFA Women’s World Cup (1991–2023): do gender, race and region matter? 12. Coaching expectations among women in Germany’s amateur soccer leagues 13. Women in club presidency: masculinities and power in Brazilian football politics 14. Disrupting the doxa: how women leaders in soccer facilitate other women on their career paths – a Bourdieusian perspective 15. Sport, society, and gender: a Confucian perspective on North Korean women’s football 16. Soccer, society and motherhood: mothers, daughters and tackling gender norms 17. Mexican women’s football philosophy: lesbian visibility, public motherhood and collective effervescence 18. Five dollars and a dress: gendered dynamics and the politics of funding Zimbabwe’s ‘Mighty Warriors’ 19. Plain sexism or misogyny? gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and a non-consensual kiss 20. Do Brazilian women football players consider themselves feminists? Approaches to gender equality and empowerment 21. Women’s football in Iran: resistance through circumstances