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The Filipinas is the moniker of the Philippine women’s national football team. Overshadowed by the focus of the game on men, the Filipinas have achieved commendable outcomes including twice qualifying for the AFC Asian Cup, winning a regional championship in 2022, and qualifying for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, a first in the country’s football history. The Filipinas however share some common challenges with the men’s national team, notable of which is the low level of mass appeal of football in the Philippines, and questions over their national identity. Similar with the national men’s team, majority of members of the Filipinas are mixed-race transnational Filipinos whose national and ethnic identities have equally been questioned. This is rather ironic in a society where colourism is normalised, and the naturalisation of non-Filipinos to represent the national basketball team is generally accepted. The argument holds that such Othering practices are related to football’s attempt at occupying a space dominated by basketball which has symbolically come to represent Filipino nationalism. This paper draws on the author’s research on race, ethnicity and nationalism in Philippine sport to highlight the contestations the Filipinas have to wade through in establishing their rightful status, and thus contributing to the overall sociological discourse in the country that consciously questions the idea that a national community and its identity are necessarily bounded by geographic border and its 'indigenousness'.
