Section 2D Flashcards
What are the two types of restrictions that female athletes have had to endure?
Structural and ideological
What are structural restrictions?
Many sports have not been open to them, ways of doing sport have been different, rewards and prize money have been for less, fewer female coaches than men, fewer events, less sponsorship.
What are ideological restrictions?
Gender logic that pervades the sports world derives from chauvinistic power structures and affects attitudes to female players at all levels. Includes style of media coverage (or absence), homophobic views of female athletes.
Who are some Canadian female sports pioneers?
Manon Rheaume (first womean to play in big four professional north American sports leagues)
Hayley Wickenheiser- played alongside men in professional Scandanavian ice hockey.
What is media sexploitation?
Media imagery that marginalizes and diminishes young women’s accomplishments.
When do sociologists of sport trace a shift in the media sexploitation of females?
1972 Summer Games (Munich) with Olga Korbut who was petite, graceful, and had aesthetic movements and quickly became a media darling, prompting for more tiny and feminine gymnasts
What is one of few sports where the unquantifiable qualities of grace and power are assessed?
Gymnastics
What is men’s and women’s sports seen as respectively?
Performantive and spectatorial.
What are the 4 key themes we can use to understand the treatment of female athletes in the media?
1) Exploitation/trivialization vs. consent/complicity
2) Constraint vs. enablement
3) Fixed or dynamic gender identities
4) Cultural tranfromation
What is the idea of exploitation and trivialization vs consent and complicity?
Are women being exploited and marginalized by male power in sport or are they complicit in their own marginalization?
What is the idea of constraint vs. enablement?
Does sport provide a setting for the constraint of an entire gender and other social categories or does it encourage change?
What is the idea of fixed or dynamic gender identities?
What is the affect of various styles of female athletic involvement? Is femininity or masculinity fixed or dynamic in sport?
What is the hijab controversy?
Nike came out with a hijab for female athletes, seen as corporatization in an attempt to keep sport closer to the area of power and within the status quo (under control of men).
