While spending my last month in Amsterdam, I had to complete a 4 week research project on a topic I chose that related to gender studies. When I first arrived in Amsterdam I noticed that it was all over the news the women were starting to play soccer and it was an “unusual” thing. When I talked to locals, I realized how big soccer in the Netherlands was with big teams like AJax(Amsterdam) and Feyenoord(Rotterdam), but no one talked about the women;s teams other than the fact that it was new. This sparked my research question: what has caused the increase in female soccer players in the Netherlands? So 4 weeks I was interviewing soccer players all across the Netherlands trying to figure out the reason women started to play and why women weren’t playing before. I found out that there were a lot of stereotypes about females playing soccer prior to 2010 when the Dutch National Women’s Team came in 3rd in the European Championship. After this match was aired all over the media, there was a significant increase in women and girls soccer and it got rid of stereotypes about women playing soccer.
While I was doing this research, I also had a lot of free time to explore the city of Amsterdam one last time(so sad). I found the cutest coffee shops and some cozy places to work on my research paper. Honestly, I wish I would’ve found these places earlier because they really make Amsterdam the amazing city that it is.
