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Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain

Michael A. Messner

This paper explores the historical and ideological meanings of organized sports for the politics of gender relations. After outlining a theory for building a historically grounded understanding of sport, culture, and ideology, the paper argues that organized sports have come to serve as a primary institutional means for bolstering a challenged and faltering ideology of male superiority in the 20th century. Increasing female athleticism represents a genuine quest by women for equality, control of their own bodies, and self-definition, and as such represents a challenge to the ideological basis of male domination. Yet this quest for equality is not without contradictions and ambiguities. The socially constructed meanings surrounding physiological differences between the sexes, the present “male” structure of organized sports, and the media framing of the female athlete all threaten to subvert any counter-hegemonic potential posed by female athletes. In short, the female athlete—and her body—has become a contested ideological terrain.

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Feminist Sport Media Studies in SSJ: Mapping Theoretical Frameworks and Geographies of Knowledge Production

Dunja Antunovic

Social Issues , Thorpe et al. ( 2017 ) noted: The challenge of how to best theorize issues related to media representation of female athletes has long occupied feminist researchers. The ongoing challenges of this project are evident in the size of the research corpus, which includes many thousands of

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Gender Parity, False Starts, and Promising Practices in the Paralympic Movement

Nikolaus A. Dean, Andrea Bundon, P. David Howe, and Natalie Abele

movement. For example, in 2017, the Agitos Foundation hosted the first ever international women’s para ice hockey training camp in South Korea. According to one female athlete who attended, the program was quite successful in connecting women athletes and organizers from differing regions: I got to go over

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Gender Critical Feminism and Trans Tolerance in Sports

C.J. Jones

innate biological differences give physical advantages to males that cannot be mitigated, disqualifying any female athlete from fair competition. To deny this is denying science.” One of the co-signers of the letter, Hands Across the Aisle Coalition (HATAC), takes what Whittier calls a “narrow neutral

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Contradiction or Cohesion? Tracing Questions of Protection and Fairness in Scientifically Driven Elite Sport Policies

Anna Posbergh

a “protected class,” which is largely contingent on beliefs about the biological inferiority of female athletes ( Burke, 2022 ; Henne, 2014 ; McDonagh & Pappano, 2008 ). This, in turn, reinforces biologizations of sex and gender, or, the understanding that such constructs are neutral ways to

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Indigenizing Sport Research: Analyzing Protective Factors of Exercising Sovereignty in North America

Alisse Ali-Joseph, Kelsey Leonard, and Natalie Welch

and inclinations” ( Lomawaima, 1993 , p. 228). This racialized gender hierarchy directly affected not only Indigenous females’ opportunities to participate in sports during the boarding school era, but also the notoriety of Indigenous female athletes in the general society. Although there is a vacuum

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Gender Equality in the “Next Stage” of the “New Age?” Content and Fan Perceptions of English Media Coverage of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup

Stacey Pope, Rachel Allison, and Kate Petty

’: Twitter users react to Donald Trump and Megan Rapinoe . Communication & Sport, 10 ( 6 ), 1210 – 1228 . 10.1177/2167479520950778 Godoy-Pressland , A. , & Griggs , G. ( 2014 ). The photographic representation of female athletes in the British print media during the London 2012 Olympic Games

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Through the Decades: Critical Race Theory and Pathways Forward in Sport Sociology Research

Jonathan E. Howe, Ajhanai C.I. Keaton, Sayvon J.L. Foster, and A. Lamont Williams

. Additionally, like in other decades, race-specific work was present, but these analyses did not specifically draw upon CRT. For example, George ( 2023 ) drew upon Black feminist theory to examine how Black Canadian female athletes negotiate their identities to access basketball spaces. Love et al. ( 2017

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Denial of Power in Televised Women’s Sports

Margaret Carlisle Duncan and Cynthia A. Hasbrook

Televised texts of women’s sports are examined using the hermeneutical method. This study begins with the observation that women’s participation in team sports and certain “male-appropriate” individual sports is significantly lower than men’s participation in these sports. More striking yet is the media’s (particularly television’s) virtual disregard of women in team sports and certain individual sports. On the basis of these observations, the authors frame their research question: Do these imbalances constitute a symbolic denial of power for women? To answer this question, the authors investigate televised depictions of basketball, surfing, and marathon running. In each sport, the television narratives and visuals of the women’s competition are contrasted with those of the men’s competition. These depictions reveal a profound ambivalence in the reporting of the women’s sports, something that is not present in the reporting of the men’s sports. This ambivalence consists of conflicting messages about female athletes; positive portrayals of sportswomen are combined with subtly negative suggestions that trivialize or undercut the women’s efforts. Such trivialization is a way of denying power to women. The authors conclude by asserting that sport and leisure educators have an ethical obligation to redress the imbalance of power in the sporting world.

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Brittney Griner, Intersectionality, and “Woke Politics”: A Critical Examination of Brittney Griner’s Return to the United States

Ajhanai C.I. Keaton, Evan Frederick, Keisha Branch, and Ann Pegoraro

. 2), and political pundits and representatives from varying paradigms questioned if a Black lesbian female athlete was a “worthy enough American” to be swapped for. However, such commentary did not hinder BG’s release as it was ultimately rendered secondary to domestic political cultural wars rooted