Memo #7- Literature Review

She can score

A critical analysis of gender inequality awareness in collegiate and youth soccer coaches.

By Nadima Skeff, MS

A problem is not a problem until you treat it as a problem.

Jeanes, R. (2011). ‘I'm into high heels and make up but I still love football’: exploring gender identity and football participation with preadolescent girls. Soccer & society, 12(3), 402-420.

During six- month ethnographic study, the research investigates the influence participating in football has on 10- and 11-year-old girls identity construction. The researcher used Butler’s 1 concept of performativity which provided a theoretical framework to understand gender identity construction, this theory “ is used to provide an understanding of gender identity as multiple, fluid and changing”. To assist the girls’ communication about their views in gender identity and its complexity, it was used a range of participatory methods. Although there is a rapid increase in the number of girls and women playing football, playing still does not completely reshape traditional notions of femininity. Instead, this study concluded that playing football became acceptable, the girls played was strongly restricted by those notions of femininity. There is a need for girls to look “feminine” and to have a slim body,  “femininity may be strongly associated with appropriate bodily display, it is clearly interlaced with other desirable social locations represented in the capacity to appear (physically) competent”. Aggressive, assertive, attitude, and physical play was not easily accepted by other players- therefore girl’s participation was limited.

Heinecken, D. (2016). Empowering Girls Through Sport? Sports Advice Books for Young Female Readers. Children's Literature in Education, 47(4), 325-342.

Due the wider context, globalization, different cultures, and realities, this study analyzes the subjectivity and world view sports advice books offer to girls who urging to transform and empower. Those books are essential tools and manuals to instruct girls understanding female identity, and it implies that girls are facing unique challenges in a sexist society. The researcher argues girls’ sports advice books that uses postfeminist constructions of female subjectivity operates to support ideologies do not liberate girls and its “usefulness to girls is questionable”, but actually limit, “they continue to frame girls in limiting ways, reproducing normative ideologies of middle-class heterosexual femininity while constructing the ‘‘empowered’’ girl subject in ways that further the interests of global capital.”

Schlesinger, T., & Weigelt-Schlesinger, Y. (2012). ‘Poor thing’ or ‘Wow, she knows how to do it’–gender stereotypes as barriers to women’s qualification in the education of soccer coaches. Soccer & Society, 13(1), 56-72.

The influence of gender stereotypes on preventing women from undertaking and abandon coaching education in professional soccer, and the discrimination against them during the education process “The female players and coaches themselves, as well as the males, tend to deny the women’s soccer-specific abilities and coaching skills” to perform and success in the coaching level. Throughout a qualitative interview study, the researcher used a regional association of the German Football Association (DFB) to examine those impacts using systems theory and system levels (society, organization, interaction). This study concludes that the exclusion of women often begins they even start coaching education, “the analysis demonstrates that women’s gender-specific self-conception plays a decisive role in their attendance of coaching courses. It is therefore easy to understand why gender-differentiated experiences continue to present limiting factors. These limitations could undo the good work of measures aimed at promoting women coaches in soccer.”

Cooky, C. (2009). “Girls Just Aren't Interested”: The Social Construction of Interest in Girls' Sport. Sociological Perspectives, 52(2), 259-283.

The present study examines the assumption of girls not participating in sports because the choose to do so due their lack of interest in sport. Throughout sociology accounts and qualitative methodologies, the researcher uses a low-income monitory girls’ recreational sport program in Los Angeles area. The theory used in this article was Giddens’s theory to be able to analyse structuration to emergent themes from participant observations and interviews, and “the interviews with girls and informal discussions, girls were interested in playing sport” just for the same reason boys are interested as well. However, “resistance against women’s presence in sport continues today as a result of sport’s historical foundation to teach boys and men hegemonic masculinity” and culture of power. The study concludes social structure and cultural discourses are constrained and embodied on participants’ daily social interactions.

Plaza, M., Boiché, J., Brunel, L., & Ruchaud, F. (2017). Sport= male… But not all sports: Investigating the gender stereotypes of sport activities at the explicit and implicit levels. Sex Roles, 76(3-4), 202-217.

This study has three objectives. Study 1 seek to update the explicit gender stereotypes towards sports activity. It has the objected to analyse the association of gender, age, personal practice, and gender feminization rates of participants. Study 2 (N=53) investigates the effects that could potential implicit gender sport stereotypes on the categorization of gendered names. Study 3 ( N=42) together with both studies, investigates the perception of feminine, neutral, and masculine silhouettes. This study found that explicit gender stereotypes are still attached to sports activities with strong association with actual feminization rates. Study 2 found a slower identification of males names when participants were among ‘feminine sports activities’. The last study, found that neutral silhouettes were often categorized as women- concluding that sports activities are still explicit and implicit gendered leading participants to adjust their interest on participating even outside their consciousness. The set of studies “confirm that sport still appears as a territory of gender-stereotype expression, which can be a concern regarding people's’ tendency to choose to practice activities based on their perceived gender appropriateness” , this can potentially leads to restriction of female athletes to practice and participate in the sport.

Knijnik, J. (2015). Femininities and masculinities in Brazilian women's football: resistance and compliance. Journal of International Women's Studies, 16(3), 54.

In Brazil, football is the most popular and important sport, and the major cultural manifestations. Football is also the result of its hegemonic masculinity which it does not allow women to participate. The purpose of this study was to discuss gender issues that pervade in Brazilian football among women football players. The study used psychoanalytic views of gender issues with sociological framework as background, and observation and interviews ethnographic approach. In Brazil, football was used to resist hegemonic gender order, and the study also emphasizes the love the participants have for the game although there were a disturbing scarcity in financial and emotional support. Also, although some refuse the normative femininity, several brazilian female football players complied with normative femininity in order in the sport by managers, agent, press and general public, saying that “if you want to play in a women’s team, you must look like a woman ”. The study concluded that only urgent federal legislation could potentially lead women to gender equality in Brazil football and the author add that “futebol feminino should be legally supported as a way of achieving social justice and gender equity while creating a new football universe, with values of solidarity and equality”.

Scraton, S., & Flintoff, A. (2013). Gender, feminist theory, and sport. A companion to sport, 96-111.

The researchers sought to develop a critical work on sports feminisms and how different theories sought to answer very different questions relating to gender and sport.  The issues in gender and sports changes over times, the authors question if older question on this issues are not outdated and surpassed by new and more relevant issues and concerns, and/or other questions and concerns still relevant and pertinent.  The researchers acknowledge that currently the focus is more on differences, fragmentations, and identities but old questions about inequalities still remain pertinent on today’s issues and “still provides limited coverage of women’s sport”. There are still a lack of coverage of women’s sports by the media, and although the sexualization of women by the media and sports pages are not explicit, it exists and remain an issue and “gender power relations remain at the center of sporting practices”.

Boiché, J., Plaza, M., Chalabaev, A., Guillet-Descas, E., & Sarrazin, P. (2014). Social antecedents and consequences of gender-sport stereotypes during adolescence. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(2), 259-274.

It is known that stereotypes endorsed by parents can potentially influence their children’s participation in activities. This study used Expectancy-Value Model to examine the parent-child transmission of gender stereotypes,  and the relationship among stereotypes, self-perception, and decisions to drop out from an activity; “this model assumes that gender stereotypes present within the cultural milieu may facilitate differentiated developmental patterns between boys and girls because they are transmitted by parents to their children through the construction of general schemas and specific self-perceptions”. Using 347 adolescents, study 1 found significant links in general and parental beliefs among perceived gender stereotypes in the social environment, personal endorsements of stereotypes, and dropout behaviors. Study 2 used 104 adolescents athletes and it found no link between stereotypes assessed between those athletes and their parents. Additionally, in the same study, 155 adolescents showed self-perceptions mediating the relationship of participants’ gender stereotypes and intentions to drop out from sport. In the third study involving 23 parent-adolescent dyads revealed that although there were a significant correlation of parents’ and adolescent’ endorsement of gender stereotypes when assessed through an implicit test, the same were not significantly related when assessed with explicit measures. The researcher suggest that gender sport stereotypes are conveyed from social environment (mainly from their parents) and “operate both through explicit processes and unconsciously”  to adolescents. These social environment can lead to drop out, and this can potentially “lead to a sedentary lifestyle and poor health consequences in the long term”.

Wedgwood, N. (2004). Kicking like a boy: Schoolgirl Australian rules football and bi-gendered female embodiment. Sociology of Sport Journal, 21(2), 140-162.

The author of this study used life-history research to provide unusual insights from Australian Rules football team about the gendered embodiment of female footballers. Looking at the sport in a wider context of gender, the article looks into familial relations of players and its complexities often overlooked. This study questions the reasons why girls decides to play football, if its whether they are consciously resisting male domination, whether the sport can teach them a different gender embodiment, and also, how these players deals with gender contradictions that emerge from playing football. The study found that although some of the players could be described as gender rebels, none of them were inspired to play by feminism. About half of the team develop their motivation for the game from very traditional gender dynamics, such as develop the love for the game playing with male family members.