Sporting Females

Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women's Sport

Jennifer Hargreaves

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134912766
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

1994 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Annual Book Award

An outstanding contribution to feminist analysis of sport from the nineteenth century to the present day. Jennifer Hargreaves views sport as a battle for control of the physical body and an important area for feminist intervention. Placing women at the centre of discussion, no other book is as comprehensive.

Chapter 1
Theories of sports
The neglect of gender

INTRODUCTION

Although for a century or more organized sports have occupied a central position in British cultural life, until comparatively recently they have been a neglected area of historical and sociological analysis. This is partly because mainstream ideas about sports are concerned with the physical body (something that appears as entirely ‘natural’ and unchangeable), and partly because sports are popularly believed to have a ‘life of their own’, essentially separate from ‘important’ aspects of the social world of work, politics and economics (something intrinsically innocent, playful and liberating). Not surprisingly, some of the earliest theorizing about sports during the 1960s was essentially uncritical and had a positivist orientation. It was assumed that sports are a feature of a common cultural heritage, embracing a central value system shared by all sections of society (see Chapters 1 and 2 in Hargreaves 1982). But during the 1970s and 1980s, as sports became more blatantly politicized and commercialized, and such problems as drugs and hooliganism became public issues, the significance of sports as social phenomena captured the imagination of theorists with a more critical orientation. Since that time the sociology of sports has expanded rapidly and is now a sophisticated field of social analysis.

THE PROBLEM OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

Analysing sports is an inherently controversial affair and the sociology of sports incorporates different and conflicting theories of society—those which in general support conventional ideas about sports, about the nature of society, and about masculine and feminine identities; and those which question them. The production of critical histories and sociologies of sports has been part of a wider theoretical movement focusing on ‘culture’ and on the significance of ideology and consciousness within it (Hall 1981). Part of this movement has been the attempt of sociologists to understand the organic relationships between sports and other cultural formations, to examine questions of agency and structure, and to look at the tensions between change and continuity. But although all these isssues are connected to relationships of power between different agents, and in particular to gender relations of power, a common characteristic of the various sports sociology perspectives is the marginalization of women’s experiences and relationships of gender. In this respect, the history of sports sociology reflects the long history of male domination of modem sports and dominant ideas about sexual difference. Sports history and sociology reflect the male dominance of academic discourse.

It has been particularly difficult to transcend traditional assumptions that differences between the sexes are biological rather than cultural, and that feminine—and masculine—appropriate sports and male sporting superiority are in the ‘natural’ order of things (see Chapters 3 and 7). The notion that human behaviour is parallel in many ways to that of other primates underpins the argument that differing cultural behaviour between men and women is rooted in biology:

we behave culturally because it is in our nature to behave culturally, because natural selection has produced an animal that has to behave culturally, that has to invent rules, make myths, speak languages, and form men’s clubs, in the same way that the hamadryas baboon has to form harems, adopt infants, and bite its wives on the neck.

(Tiger and Fox 1971:20)

Although this extreme version of biological determinism is not prevalent in sports sociology, nevertheless biological determinism is influential in the general discourse of sports academia. For example, Desmond Morris’s (1981) explanations of human aggression in sports as instinctive male behaviour are popular and influential; in the elite field of cultural analysis, the argument that sports are the ‘natural’ domains of men because of the innately different biological and psychological natures of men and women, has been given legitimacy (Carroll 1986); and the ideology of sexual difference is validated in the sports sciences (Hargreaves 1982:2). To explain the cultural at the level of the biological encourages the exaggeration and approval of analyses based on distinctions between men and women, and masks the complex relationship between the biological and the cultural. As Paul Willis (1982:119) points out, ‘to know, more exactly, why it is that women can muster only 90% of a man’s strength cannot help us to comprehend, explain, or change the massive feeling in our society that a woman has no business flexing her muscles anyway’.

Although sociologists of sport and leisure have provided a critique of biological determinism, at the same time they are implicated in the reproduction of ideas about sexual difference through the content and organization of their own work. There have been three main approaches: first, to disregard women by using the term ‘sports’ unproblematically, ignoring that what is really being examined is male sports from which generalizations are made about the experiences of all humans, and to refer to ‘society’ as if it is a single community in respect of men and women (Dunning 1971; Parker 1976). The second approach, which has been a reaction to the influence of feminism, is to devote some space to female sports and discussions of gender (usually a separate chapter or section) in an essentially male-oriented account (Coakley 1990; Elias and Dunning 1986; John Hargreaves 1986; Jarvie 1991). There is a tendency in both these approaches to fail to distinguish between sex and gender and implicitly to incorporate male-defined definitions and values. This book is characterized by the third, specifically feminist and minority perspective, which is a sociology exclusively of female sports (Boutilier and San Giovanni 1983; Lenskyj 1986; see next chapter). The last approach, unlike the other two, does not construct the female as ‘the Other’, but rather attempts to subvert dominant gender relations in sports sociology. However, because the whole of the history of modern sports has been based on gender divisions, even radical accounts of women’s sports tend to focus on perceived differences between men and women, rather than on the less obvious relations of power between them. In general, therefore, sports sociology texts do not give equal treatment to male and female sports or integrate gender relations thoroughly into their analyses.

POPULAR IDEAS ABOUT SPORTS

Differences between men and women in sports are also a focus for sports providers, such as the GB Sports Council and local authorities. On the surface, however, their approach seems progressive: their policies are based on the premise that sports are beneficial to individuals and to society as a whole and that women should therefore participate in greater numbers, more in line with men’s participation rates. The following statement made by the UK Sports Council (1992b: 75) reflects establishment ideas about sport being a harmonizing force which contributes to the well-being of society:

We know that sport can make a positive contribution to national morale, health and the economy. We believe that it can enhance community spirit, equality of opportunity, personal development and social integration.

But these are not just the ideas of people in influential positions in sports, they are popular and powerful ideas in society at large. For example, a survey carried out by Mori in 1990 shows how highly the British public value sports:

90% agreed that most people who take part in sport get a great deal of pleasure from it;

83% agreed that people should be encouraged to take part in sport for health reasons;

79% agreed that taking part in sport gives people self-confidence and helps character development;

79% agreed that ‘sport has a vital role to play in society today’.

(Sports Council 1992b: 15)

The way in which questions are structured and responses elicited in such a survey treats the nature of both sports and society uncritically. The orientation is unambiguously functionalist, in common with the ‘mainstream tradition’ of sports sociology which goes back to the 1960s (see, for example, Ball and Loy 1975; Loy and Kenyon 1969; Luschen 1970, 1988; Sage 1974). Put rather simply, the general idea in functionalist accounts is that sport helps individuals to develop stable personalities and contributes to their well-being and all-round development, thus functioning to benefit society as a whole. The representation of sports as ‘affirmative culture’ is associated with liberal democracy as a political system, and with the emergence of a pluralist society and the ideology that the interests of divergent groups have equal validity. Modern sport is viewed as a progressive movement in history reflecting the general enfranchisement of wider and wider sections of the population (including women), symbolized in the philosophy of ‘Sport for All’.

POPULAR IDEAS ABOUT GENDER

Although such an uncomplex application of functionalism to a study of sports in society is no longer dominant in sports sociology, functionalist concepts remain influential. For example, ‘socialization’ is used widely in broadly different perspectives as a way of explaining how, through sports, individuals learn the dominant norms and values of society (Coakley 1990; Dyer 1982; McPherson, Curtis and Loy 1989). It is argued that girls are socialized to behave in ‘feminine-appropriate’ ways—a process which can be viewed as having beneficial or, less typically, negative effects. For example, Coakley (1990) argues that gender-role socialization results in inequalities between the sexes and discrimination against women. But there is a general failure with the concept of socialization to analyse adequately the extent of opposition to gender patterning, and a failure to analyse critically both traditional and newer images of femininity in sports. For example, the incompleteness of socialization results in the making of ‘tomboys’, in increasing numbers of young women playing traditional male team games, and in housewives demanding time away from the kitchen to participate in their favourite sports. But the tensions and conflicts between groups with opposing interests are minimized whenever the concept of socialization is used, whether or not it is seen as beneficial or detrimental. Changes, ambivalences and conflicts over gender divisions are marginalized, and the significance and shifting nature of gender relations often ignored.

A lot of official research also has a functionalist orientation. For example, implicit in the reports of the GB Sports Council and other policy documents (Sports Council 1982, 1988b, 1992b) is support of the basic structures, practices and values of mainstream sports and of the social system in general. They also neglect the interrelationships of power and gender. Such research reflects an empiricist orthodoxy, concentrating on statistical evidence and presenting results in a descriptive fashion as if they are unrelated to theories and meanings. The assumption that the theorist is neutral (someone who collects, presents and analyses the ‘facts’ of sport as value-free) does not take into account why, for example, certain surveys are financed and not others, and why certain questions are chosen and others left out (see the critique of Yiannakis [1989] by Ingham and Donnelly [1990]). The techniques used to analyse research data are often related to stereotyped ideas, and policies which reflect them. Empiricism assumes open-mindedness, but in practice tends to support established values and practices. For example, women’s limited access to sports, by comparison with that of men, is looked at as a problem that can be corrected by social engineering of a piecemeal kind, and increased participation is seen to reflect the way in which organizations have responded to the changing needs of women as a group. The GB Sports Council (1992b: 27) claims that

The gap between men’s and women’s participation has narrowed significantly over the last decade, and has shown signs of accelerating in recent years. Over 13 million adult women (57% [of women in the population]) participated in sport in the 4 weeks before interview in 1990, compared with 15.5 million adult men (73% [of men in the population]). (Walking is included as an activity in these statistics, and if it were left out the disparity between male and female participation would be much greater.)

The analysis of such data takes for granted the existing structures, arrangements and ideologies of sports for women, and as Liz Stanley (1980) argues:

In brief, such an approach is one which takes the philosophy and practical assumptions, ways of working, bases for defining problems within it as unproblematic. If women do not ‘fit in’ into the kind of provision that results from this approach, then the problem is women, not the approach.

(Quoted in Talbot 1988:33)

Increasing participation figures signify an improvement in the quality of life for large numbers of women, but they can be misleading. While some women have autonomy to participate in sports relatively freely, others face difficult constraints. It is essential that we treat critically the implication that women ‘in general’ have increased access to sport or even want increased access. Generalizations based upon women as a supposedly homogeneous group assume a spurious notion of consensus and ignore discriminatory practices and competing interests. They tend to mask the essentially historical nature of the ‘needs of women’, the varied and contradictory features of sports for women and the wielding of power, not only between men and women, but between different groups of women and different groups of men as well.

The GB Sports Council provides some evidence of different rates of sports participation according to certain subgroupings, such as age and disability, but not comprehensive data for all groups of women. And although in its publication on Women and Sport (1992a), the council looks at some of the factors which constrain women’s participation, it seldom funds radical research of the sort which would analyse the unquantifiable underlying causes—for example, the evolution, legitimation and reproduction of systems of belief, cultural values and symbolic representations which affect women’s participation in sports. It is also the case that the Sports Council has failed to consider the ethical dimensions of women’s participation in ‘patriarchal’ and ‘capitalist’ sports, the nature and extent of opposition to existing arrangements, or the possibilities of alternatives. For example, the Sports Council’s reference to education in its consultation document Sport in the Nineties—New Horizons (1992b: 21–3), makes no comment about the controversies surrounding the teaching of dance as an aspect of the National Curriculum for Physical Education (see Chapter 8). The National Curriculum Council took the decision not to implement the recommendations of the National Curriculum Physical Education Working Group to make dance compulsory for both sexes up to the age of 14 years (Department of Education and Science 1991), and the Minister for Sport and Her Majesty’s inspectors condoned this decision. The opportunity to radicalize gender relations in school physical education has been lost, but in spite of the Sports Council’s original support of equal opportunities for boys and girls in physical education, its silence on the issue since the National Curriculum has been implemented implicitly supports the position of the government.

ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

In attempts to acquire an authentic understanding of women’s needs, desires, opportunities and constraints, feminists have tended to favour ethnographic research—in particular, participant observation and interviews. A number of studies of women and leisure fall into this category (for example, contributions to Wimbush and Talbot 1988), but there are remarkably few ethnographic studies of women’s sports in Britain. Most examples are male enquiries about male sub-cultures around sports such as gambling, horse-racing, professional wrestling and soccer (Ashworth 1971; Fleming 1991; Goffman 1961; Marsh, Rosser and Harré 1978; Scott 1968). In these studies there is a general failure to examine reasons why the subcultures are (almost) exclusively male and to look at ways in which gender relations cohere with other features of the broader social context.

Participant observation and interview methodologies are part of the interactionist tradition which places the meaningfulness of social action at the centre of any kind of explanation (see Chapter 2 in Hargreaves 1982). Interactionism is concerned with the problem of control—how human beings can exert control over relationships, historical situations, activities and institutions. Culture is conceived of as a ‘lived experience’, constructed and changed through the interaction of men and women who make, resist and transform meanings, values and rules of behaviour. Whereas most research about women’s sports treats gender as a variable, ethnographic research ensures that women are placed at the centre of any analysis. To apply such an approach to women’s sports is an attractive idea, because we know so little about why women do or do not particip...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• TABLES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1: THEORIES OF SPORTS: THE NEGLECT OF GENDER
• CHAPTER 2: SPORTS FEMINISM: THE IMPORTANCE OF GENDER
• CHAPTER 3: NATURE AND CULTURE: INTRODUCING VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN SPORTS FOR WOMEN
• CHAPTER 4: THE LEGITIMATION OF FEMALE EXERCISE: THE CASE OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
• CHAPTER 5: RECREATIVE AND COMPETITIVE SPORTS: EXPANSION AND CONTAINMENT
• CHAPTER 6: THE INTER-WAR YEARS: LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES
• CHAPTER 7: FEMININITY OR ‘MUSCULINITY’?: CHANGING IMAGES OF FEMALE SPORTS
• CHAPTER 8: GENDER RELATIONS OF POWER: INSTITUTIONALIZED DISCRIMINATION
• CHAPTER 9: OLYMPIC WOMEN: A STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION
• CHAPTER 10: SPORTS FOR ALL WOMEN: PROBLEMS AND PROGRESS
• CHAPTER 11: INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: DIVERSITY AND EMPOWERMENT
• NOTES
• REFERENCES