Working to change the culture from within in Argentine women’s soccer

On March 7, 2024, Cynthia Conforto’s cellphone exploded with calls. On the eve of International Women’s Day events, a sports journalist’s accusation of sexual assault against four Vélez Sarsfield players disrupted plans for 8M. Conforto had been in charge of the club’s Gender Department for only a few months; Vélez is one of the 30 clubs in Argentina’s professional league. The alleged incidents took place during a team training camp in Tucumán, about 750 miles from Buenos Aires.

Gender-based violence — so often overlooked in soccer — hit them hard. “We had to analyze the situation at the highest executive level,” Conforto recalls. That involved reviewing protocols and consulting with the legal department until the final decision was reached: the accused players were released. The criminal case, however, never went to trial. Some time later, the charges against the four were dismissed, and some of them were signed by other clubs.

This was not the first case to rock Argentine football. Sebastián Villa, a Boca Juniors player, had been accused of gender-based violence and was convicted in 2023 of assaulting and threatening his former partner. The problem is clear. In a 2022 nationwide analysis of Argentine sports clubs presented by the then-National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (INADI), 9% of responding institutions reported having had cases of gender-based violence. Among those same clubs, only 19% had a protocol to address such incidents, while 62% said they had not received gender or human-rights training. The agency that carried out the study was dissolved by Javier Milei’s government in 2024.

Gender training

The accusation that shook Vélez accelerated training on gender, violence, and diversity. While television crews camped outside the club’s facilities and the case blew up on social media, the Gender Department pushed for more training. “It happened in a cascade, from the top down,” Conforto says in her office at the club. Behind her, a banner displays Vélez’s crest altered with LGBTQ+ pride colors on both sides of the V and the female symbol beneath it.

Training began with the board of directors and took the Micaela Law as a starting point — the law is named after a young woman murdered in 2017 and requires training on gender and violence against women. From there it spread to other areas: public relations, travel and tourism, and also the club’s academy and dormitory where the youngest first-team prospects train. It also reached club members.

These training initiatives, however, were not enough while women remained excluded from soccer’s senior leadership tables. At Vélez, the board now has a different composition than in the past: nine of its 29 members are women. “Historic. It had never happened before,” Conforto emphasizes.

But sexism runs through societies and governs soccer with its own rules, rooted over generations. One of them is the “ethic of endurance,” as sociologist Pablo Alabarces calls it: “You’re a man and you have to prove you’re a man. In other words, that violence is not optional, it’s a mandate.” Its effects are also visible in the conditions under which women athletes play soccer.

Florencia Enera chairs Vélez’s Women’s Football Department. Today the team competes in Primera B, after playing in the Primera División in 2025, when some players signed their first professional contracts. But reaching the top tier did not erase gender inequalities: they persist in allocations of training fields and even in post-training food. While the men receive lunch provided by the club, the women had to fight for fruit, yogurt, and cereal bars. “Getting them was a struggle,” she says.

The biggest gap is in pay between men’s and women’s teams. “A woman cannot live on her salary as a footballer in Argentina, something that likely holds true across Latin America. A male player, on the other hand, may even be able to support his whole family. The difference is stark,” Enera explains.

Factors such as income from player transfers, contracts, and advertising, which give men’s soccer greater economic weight, influence how resources are distributed. That priority also shows up in sponsorships and the support each team receives. But inequality persists even when women generate resources: Marolio, an Argentine food company, placed its logo on the women’s team jersey and provided products that ended up at the hotel in the male training facility — to which the women had no access. “Even when you generate resources, they don’t come back to you,” Enera says.

Contract clauses

At Huracán’s headquarters in Parque Patricios, in Buenos Aires’s southern zone, Sol Rodríguez, a member of the club’s board and president of its Gender Subcommittee, tells a story Conforto could relate to: her passion for the club began at home. “I’m a Huracán fan because of my mother,” she says. Rodríguez is the fourth generation of her family to live in this Buenos Aires neighborhood, surrounded by plazas. Conforto, meanwhile, came to Vélez because of her father: “He loved coming to the stadium and I would go with him.” Over the years, both went from cheering for their teams to working in their clubs’ leadership.

Huracán approved a protocol in 2020 to prevent gender-based violence and to handle complaints confidentially. Months earlier it had gone through a situation similar to Vélez’s: players Walter Pérez and Federico Marín were arrested after an accusation of gang rape in Villa Carlos Paz, in Córdoba province. “We had to push for changes in players’ contracts,” Rodríguez explains. One clause added required players to know and respect the gender protocol, and another allowed the club to suspend a player without severance pay if he faced a criminal charge for gender-based violence.

Rodríguez visits the professional squad from time to time. She knows the men’s manager and the players and shares a WhatsApp group with them so they can contact her if needed. In conversations about gender she has had with them, she says, some start out indifferent: “At first they’re like, ‘I don’t care about that.’ But when they begin to recognize situations that could affect them, they get on board and see we’re talking about things that could happen to you.”

There is, however, one approach Rodríguez never abandons: being present. Going to matches, attending training sessions, meeting and talking with the coaches of each sport at the club. Also being close to where decisions are made: speaking directly with the club president, debating with him and participating in the daily life of the club’s leadership. “If you’re part of the club’s day-to-day and you support employees, athletes, and members, you prevent certain things from happening,” she says.

Sexism and resistance are part of a culture that extends beyond soccer. Rodríguez compares them to a chair that has been in the same spot for so many years that, even though it gets in the way and hurts those who pass by, there’s always someone willing to defend it. Moving it takes time. That’s why she chooses to stay at Huracán, even when she doesn’t agree with every decision: “If I can’t hold my ground here, I’ll lose it.” It is in that persistence that change also begins.

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