WGS160 Lecture - Sports

Wired 70z & 80s

- Dominated by liberal feminism (including women in technoscience = erosion of
gendered inequalities)
- women's lack of participation in technoscience = lack of equal access
- did NOT question the structures and social relations constitutive of technoscience
(gendered nature of scientific knowledge)
- assumption: technologies are intrinsically open, unbiased, gender neutral

QUESTIONS TO ABOVE: Is it perhaps necessary, but NOT adequate?

Why take sports seriously?

- In North America, by 2007, the size of the sport industry is 7 times bigger than film
industry in the US, and 2 times bigger than automobile industry
e.g. Olympics

Sports has a lot of ramifications for politics and national identity (e.g. West Indies
cricket matches against England)

Women's cricket was never given enough coverage or sponsors. Taken for granted
that all players and coaches are men.

$5 Canadian note - story on one side is about tensions b/w Francophone and
Anglophone, but also emblematic of relationship between hockey and Canadian
identity.

"stoic, courageous, proficiency, perseverance" qualities of hockey - also valued in

patriarchal relations. "A site for males to define their worth as men, drawing on
notions of masculinity that date date back to 17th century Canada." Contrast with
common perception of Canadians - "polite, passive aggressive"

cricket and curling - seen as genteel, bourgeouis sports. Also increasingly became a
way to inculcate genteel qualities on to people. Of course, cricket did not catch on
in Canada.

Originally bagatawe was an aboriginal sport, and seen as dangerous and savage.
But it seemed to offer certain kinds of masculinites that were at odds with sports
like cricket/curling: "hardness, ruggedness". So became claimed by male settlers
and standardized (before, rules varied from region to region). Renamed it "lacrosse",
and became increasingly exclusionary. Transformed into an amateur sport-only to
discourage the "wrong kind of people" into participating - ppl like working class ppl
and aboriginal people. e.g. only middle class and aspiring middle class men could
play since matches were played on Sundays etc. So potential lacrosse players
drifted to hockey instead. by early 1920s, hockey became seen as Canadian sport.

"World sport remains one of the slowest social institutions to adopt more fluid
definitions of gender" - Helen Lensky

Revision: the sex/gender binary:

1) the classification of sex and gendewr into two distinct and biological forms of
masculine and feminine
2) a social boundary used to prevent people from crossing or mixing
3)

Men's bodies in sports are objects of social practice. Transformed into "weapons" to
be used in sports - exercise, diet, drugs.

Sports is one avenue that is open to working class men and men of color, but the
acceptance is not an unqualified one. In his article he talks about how men of color
are channeled disproportionately into dangerous sports, and dangerous positions in
these sports. Richard Sherman's treatment by the media was extremely racialized.

So femininity = a lack - of power, of strength, of skill

Homophobic insults are invested in a heternormative structure

Gender Equity in Canadian Inter-University Sport

"Although gender is a social construction, and biological sex is increasingly
recognized as a continuum rather than a binary, organized sport (including
Canadian interuniversity sport) operates on the assumption of a clear female/male
gender binary... regardless of an athelete's self identified gender, each individual
competing in CIS SIC sport identifies as female or male for the purposes of athletic
competition.
^ Sport is organized and imagined in terms of the gender binary, so even studies on
it are limited to talking in its terms.

The Culture of Gender in Sports

- the discourses surrounding women and sport: - biologism - tomboyism
- "gender verification" test ("femininity control," 1996) - maintaining a two-sex
system. It is overwhelmingly 'suspect women' who are subjected to these tests (why
are women subjected to these tests and how is it related to the idea that women's
performance in sports is always inferior to men?). Constantly policed because
people are always overflowing the boundaries. Social construction of the body as
naturally gender binary.

Undeniable that great strides have been made to include women and girls in sports,
but the idea that gendered relations that patriarchal inequalities have disappeared
is a myth.

Governance structure: women constitute less than 10% of IOC (International

Olympic Committee). Olympic head coaches in Canada:
- 2008: 9%
- 2006: 8%
- 2004: 7%

women's presence tapers off dramatically the higher up you go.

CIS Inequality Data

- 44% athletes in CIS sports are female, but females represent well over 50% of
university populations (and pay over 50% of the athletics fees): 2010-2011
- 2005: 20% of CIS coaches were female; no university had more F than M coaches

so women are included but the structure remains biased in terms of funding and
rewards (highest paid atheletes are primarily men). Top 50 paid atheletes in 2012
were men, except for MAria Sharapova at #26.

who's providing the commentary? mostly men. female-unfriendly culture. male

commentators routinely harass female commentatoers but think it's okay if it's "offcamera",

Media coverage of female athletes: female athletes receive only 3% of ESPN

magazine's written coverage, and only 5% of the photographic coverage (2011). It's
not just about a question about "where are the women?" we have to ask what kind
of coverage is given to the women? When women athletes are featured on the
covers, they either shared the cover with others, or represented in female-only
sports, or depicted in highly sexualized ways.

Material (funding, rules, coverage) and ideological conditions structure sports.

Competitive sports is one of the most important arenas for the expression of
gender.

"The woman athlete is contested ideological terrain". - Michael Messner: he's talking
about the anxieties that emerge or erupt when these gender binaries are disturbed,
eg by women athletes encroaching on "male activities"

Readings from this week suggest their presence is both celebrated and regulated.
Must think about what inclusion entails - there are clear limits to the extent to which
women's inclusion change the idea that aggression and violence is non-negotiable
("part of the game")

so catch 22 - if you argue for inclusion, then you are arguing for aggression,
violence. if you are arguing for difference, then you are reinforcing the idea that
women's sports are inferior to the "real" game.

The difference is not an entity of itself, but a derivative: NBA and WNBA.
Emphasizes the default unmarked male, and the dependence of women's sports
leagues (a "sub" of the norm). Speaks to inferiority and subordination. Makes it
difficult to challenge the notion of absolute categorical difference.