Title: Gender and Sports - Sociology of Sport - iResearchNet
Headings: Gender and Sports
Gender and Sports
Outline
Historical Developments and the Gendering of Sport
Sport, Gender, Power, and Physicality
Sport, Gender, and Contested Ideology
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Content: Between 1970 and 1980 psychological models were mainly used to explain female attitudes and motivations in sports. In the 1980s, emerging theoretical diversity and sophistication in feminist approaches led to the development of a clear sociology of women in sport. As political and theoretical feminisms have changed, so too has the focus of feminist research. Depending on the theoretical and methodological position of the researcher, different questions about and accounts of gender and sport prevail. Debates surrounding the gendered character of sporting practices have changed with increasing awareness of feminist theories and a more sophisticated use of these theories. For example, much of the initial work on gender and sport highlighted inequities but did not explicitly deal with how the prevailing organization of sports privileged the physical experiences of boys and men. Subsequent critical analyses revealed that research focused on differences between males and females generally supported traditional claims about the biological inferiority of females and the legitimacy of efforts to control women’s sports participation. Such research, it was argued, did not deal with the underlying structural and cultural sources of gender inequality. More recent scholarship has attempted to resolve the shortcomings of early research and theory by considering difference and diversity between and within groups of women, and by theoretical and methodological approaches that consider women as active agents in the construction and reconstruction of their sporting experiences. There is no single feminist movement or theory that has informed current scholarly work on gender and sport.