The significance of International Cooperation and Associated Travels for the Development of Women’s Football in Jordan

Abstract The long running-battle for equality in sports has now reached a new peak in women’s soccer. An increasing number of countries newly add women’s soccer programs and several existing national teams fight for a further professionalization and equal payments. This demand is part of an empowerment process. In soccer, women still form a marginalized group, but they increasingly gain more scope within the social subsystem “soccer”. In this context, sports have a considerable social and spatial significance on the individual, socio-cultural and structural level. This article focusses on one aspect of this multi-layer empowerment process and deals with the influences related to international cooperation, like traveling of delegates and teams as a form of sports tourism. The main goal is to carve out the increasing importance of such travel activities for a further development of sports and through sports. Therefore, the article raises the question, which role do international cooperation and associated travel activities play within the sports development context and do they foster structural and social developments in a certain regional context? What are the most common ways of exchange within the sports sector? Which role do particular settings and regional backgrounds play? With regard to women’s football in Arab countries, this article deals with the developments in Jordan. In Jordan, the deregulation of the ban on headscarves and the support by HRH Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, president of the Jordan Football Association (JFA), former FIFA vice-president and half-brother of King Abdullah II, have achieved a decisive boost. Prior to the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup 2016 and the Asian Cup 2018, JFA has signed several Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with different associations. These MoU play a vital role because they are important for the transfer of knowledge, the structural developments in Jordanian women’s football and include several travel activities.