Gender And Sport

Sporting Gender is the first book to explore the rise to fame of female athletes in China in the early twentieth century. Gao shows how these women coped with the conflicting demands of nationalist causes, unwanted male attention, and modern fame, arguing that the athletic female form helped to create a new ideal of modern womanhood in China. This book brings vividly to life the histories of these women and demonstrates how intertwined they were with the aims of the state and the needs of society.

“We trained just as hard and we have just as much love for our sport. We deserve to play just as much as any other athlete. . . . I am sick and tired of being treated like I am second rate. I plan on standing up for what is right and fighting for equality.” —Sage Ohlensehlen, Women’s Swim Team Captain at the University of Iowa Fifty years ago, US president Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, making it illegal for federally funded education programs to discriminate based on sex. The law set into motion a massive boom in girls and women’s sports teams, from kindergarten to the collegiate level. Professional women’s sports grew in turn. Title IX became a massive touchstone in the fight for gender equality. So why do girls and women—including trans and intersex women—continue to face sexist attitudes and unfair rules and regulations in sports? The truth is that the road to equality in sports has been anything but straightforward, and there is still a long way to go. Schools, universities, and professional organizations continue to struggle with addressing unequal pay, discrimination, and sexism in their sports programming. Delve into the history and impact of Title IX, learn more about the athletes at the forefront of the struggle, and explore how additional changes could lead to equality in sports. “Girls are socialized to know . . . that gender roles are already set. Men run the world. Men have the power. Men make the decisions. . . . When these girls are coming out, who are they looking up to telling them that’s not the way it has to be? And where better to do that than in sports?” —Muffet McGraw, Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Notre Dame “Fighting for equal rights and equal opportunities entails risk. It demands you put yourself in harm’s way by calling out injustice when it occurs. Sometimes it’s big things, like a boss making overtly sexist remarks or asserting they won’t hire women. But far more often, it’s little, seemingly innocuous, things . . . that sideline the women whose work you depend on every day. You can use your privilege to help those who don’t have it. It’s really as simple as that.” —Liz Elting, women’s rights advocate

The Tokyo Olympic Games are likely to feature the first transgender athlete, a topic that will be highly contentious during the competition. But transgender and intersex athletes such as Laurel Hubbard, Tifanny Abreu, and Caster Semenya didn’t just turn up overnight. Both intersex and transgender athletes have been newsworthy stories for decades. In Sporting Gender: The History, Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes, Joanna Harper provides an in-depth examination of why gender diverse athletes are so controversial. She not only delves into the history of these athletes and their personal stories, but also explains in a highly accessible manner the science behind their gender diversity and why the science is important for regulatory committees—and the general public—to consider when evaluating sports performance. Sporting Gender gives the reader a perspective that is both broad in scope and yet detailed enough to grasp the nuances that are central in understanding the controversies over intersex and transgender athletes. Featuring personal investigations from the author, who has had first-person access to some of the most significant recent developments in this complex arena, this book provides fascinating insight into sex, gender, and sports.

The Routledge Handbook of Sport, Gender and Sexuality brings together important new work from 68 leading international scholars that, collectively, demonstrates the intrinsic interconnectedness of sport, gender and sexuality. It introduces what is, in essence, a sophisticated sub-area of sport sociology, covering the field comprehensively, as well as signalling ideas for future research and analysis. Wide-ranging across different historical periods, different sports, and different local and global contexts, the book incorporates personal, ideological and political narratives; varied conceptual, methodological and theoretical approaches; and examples of complexities and nuanced ways of understanding the gendered and sexualized dynamics of sport. It examines structural and cultural forms of gender segregation, homophobia, heteronormativity and transphobia, as well as the ideological struggles and changes that have led to nuanced ways of thinking about the sport, gender and sexuality nexus. This is a landmark work of reference that will be a key resource for students and researchers working in sport studies, gender studies, sexuality studies or sociology.

Designed primarily as a textbook for upper division undergraduate courses in gender and sport, gender issues, sport sociology, cultural sport studies, and women’s studies, Gender Relations in Sport provides a comprehensive examination of the intersecting themes and concepts surrounding the study of gender and sport. The 16 contributors, leading scholars from sport studies, present key issues, current research perspectives and theoretical developments within nine sub-areas of gender and sport: • Gender and sport participation • Theories of gender and sport • Gender and sport media • Sexual identity and sport • Intersections of race, ethnicity and gender in sport • Framing Title IX policy using conceptual metaphors • Studying the athletic body • Sexual harassment and abuse in sport • Historical developments and current issues from a European perspective The intersecting themes and concepts across chapters are also accentuated. Such a publication provides access to the study of gender relations in sport to students across a variety of disciplines. Emily A. Roper, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Sam Houston State University. Her research focuses on gender, sexuality, and sport.

With contributions from many of the world's leading experts on the sociology of sport, this volume brings together influential articles that confront and illuminate issues of gender and sexuality in sport.

This text presents cutting-edge research on complexities and barriers to inclusive access to sport and physical activity, discussing how sport and society can move forward beyond the gender binary. It is essential reading for education, health, and sports professionals who work with and support gender diverse children and adults

The experiences of ethnic 'Other' females have - until recently - been widely overlooked in the study of sport. There continues to be a need to produce critical scholarship about ethnic 'Other' girls and women in sport and physical culture, in order to represent their complex, multifarious and dynamic lived realities. This international collection of critical essays provides compelling insight into the lived realities of ethnic 'Other' females in sport. Throughout the book, contributors either draw on the political consciousnesses of 'Other' feminisms, or privilege the voices of ethnic 'Other' girls and women so as to broaden, diversify and advance critical thinking pertaining to ethnic 'Other' females in sport and physical culture. The purpose of the collection is both to produce knowledge and privilege otherwise subjugated knowledges, which individually and collectively present counter-narratives that better speak to the lived realities of racially oppressed groups of women and girls. Race, Gender and Sport: The Politics of Ethnic 'Other' Girls and Women is important reading for all students and scholars with an interest in the sociology of sport, gender studies, or race and ethnicity studies.