The Tokyo Olympic Games are likely to feature the first transgender athlete, a topic that will be highly contentious during the competition. But transgender and intersex athletes such as Laurel Hubbard, Tifanny Abreu, and Caster Semenya didn’t just turn up overnight. Both intersex and transgender athletes have been newsworthy stories for decades. In Sporting Gender: The History, Science, and Stories of Transgender and Intersex Athletes, Joanna Harper provides an in-depth examination of why gender diverse athletes are so controversial. She not only delves into the history of these athletes and their personal stories, but also explains in a highly accessible manner the science behind their gender diversity and why the science is important for regulatory committees—and the general public—to consider when evaluating sports performance. Sporting Gender gives the reader a perspective that is both broad in scope and yet detailed enough to grasp the nuances that are central in understanding the controversies over intersex and transgender athletes. Featuring personal investigations from the author, who has had first-person access to some of the most significant recent developments in this complex arena, this book provides fascinating insight into sex, gender, and sports.
Sporting Gender is the first book to explore the rise to fame of female athletes in China during its national crisis of 1931-45 brought on by the Japanese invasion. By re-mapping lives and careers of these athletes, administrators, and film actors within a wartime context, Gao shows how they coped with the conflicting demands of nationalist causes, unwanted male attention, and modern fame. Addressing themes of state control, media influence, fashion, and changing gender roles, she argues that the athletic female form helped to create a new ideal of modern womanhood in China at a time when women’s emancipation and national needs went hand in hand. This book brings vividly to life the histories of these athletes and demonstrates how intertwined they were with the aims of the state and the needs of society.
Sporting Gender is the first book to explore the rise to fame of female athletes in China in the early twentieth century. Gao shows how these women coped with the conflicting demands of nationalist causes, unwanted male attention, and modern fame, arguing that the athletic female form helped to create a new ideal of modern womanhood in China. This book brings vividly to life the histories of these women and demonstrates how intertwined they were with the aims of the state and the needs of society.
The book [is] . . . well researched. Chapters by contributing authors enhance the breadth of the content both from a cultural and media perspective. Individuals interested in the history of women′s sports and particularly in gender issues as related to varying media will find this volume informative. . . . Upper-division undergraduate through professional. --Choice "Chapters by different authors make a splendid reference work on the history of women in sports, women′s sports magazines, examples of discrimination against women in sports and women sports reporters, and, of course, the proverbial locker-room access controversies are reviewed here." --Editor & Publisher "Pamela Creedon has hit a homerun that challenges assumptions about the relationship between women, media, and sports. This impressive collection of research helps redefine a playing field that until now had overwhelmingly male boundaries. This is a fabulous book!" --Susan Henry, California State University, Northridge "Women, Media, and Sport is a path-breaking book in mass media research. Not only does it provide a well-researched history of the women who report sports news and the media images of women in sports, but it also skillfully applies critical feminist theories to examine the context of these media messages and effects. It opens new research subjects and models for integrating media effects and cultural/critical studies research." --Marion T. Marzolf, The University of Michigan "This is a fascinating book that uses as its starting point a definition of sport as a cultural institution, rather than concentrating on the activities and games that make up the sports component. The book examines important ′sport′ metaphors and symbols, placing women and the media on a contextual playing field. I was struck by the fact that all the chapters are written by women who are asking myriad questions about journalistic norms, about media values, and about news conventions in the world of sport. These questions have not been asked by mainstream male journalists or writers covering sports. This distinctive point of view makes Women, Media, and Sport a valuable addition to any women′s studies, media studies, or cultural studies book list. This is a very thorough and comprehensive text, covering history, economics, marketing, and cultural paradigms for studying or critiquing women′s sport. Best of all, it offers a new model for women′s sport that is both provocative and practical. This book will not change any opinions about favorite football teams or sports announcers, but it does ask to examine attitudes toward women, the media, and the sport universe." --Sammye Johnson, Trinity University The first book to link feminist, sport, and media theory together, Women, Media, and Sport provides a broad cultural studies approach, which also touches on race and class relations in sport. In addition to the theoretical analyses, this volume provides a practical look at models of sport, media effects, and the construction of the sportswomen and women′s sport. Designed as a text to fill the gap in this area, the book is organized into three sections. The first provides an overview of women, sport, and the media and an example of the ways they intertwine. The extensive range of articles in the second section focuses on print and broadcast media′s portrayal of women′s sports and its journalistic process and examines such issues as the relationship between sports promotion and media′s representations of women′s sport and how sport reporting is taught to future journalists. The final section seeks to develop a new model for the future. A thorough and original text, Women, Media, and Sport is essential for scholars, students, and professionals in media and mass communication studies, sociology, women′s studies, cultural studies, popular culture, ethnic studies, and gender studies.
Drawing on historical records and contemporary interviews, Cahn chronicles the remarkable transformation made by women's sports in the the 20th century, revealing the struggles faced by women to overcome social constraints and behavior codes, and how sport has changes their lives. Photos.
In 1968, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) implemented sex testing for female athletes at that year's Games. When it became clear that testing regimes failed to delineate a sex divide, the IOC began to test for gender--a shift that allowed the organization to control the very idea of womanhood. Ranging from Cold War tensions to gender anxiety to controversies around doping, Lindsay Parks Pieper explores sex testing in sport from the 1930s to the early 2000s. Pieper examines how the IOC in particular insisted on a misguided binary notion of gender that privileged Western norms. Testing evolved into a tool to identify--and eliminate--athletes the IOC deemed too strong, too fast, or too successful. Pieper shows how this system punished gifted women while hindering the development of women's athletics for decades. She also reveals how the flawed notions behind testing--ideas often sexist, racist, or ridiculous--degraded the very idea of female athleticism.
2008 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title From beer ads in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to four-year-old boys and girls playing soccer; from male athletes' sexual violence against women to homophobia and racism in sport, Out of Play analyzes connections between gender and sport from the 1980s to the present. The book illuminates a wide range of contemporary issues in popular culture, children's sports, and women's and men's college and professional sports. Each chapter is preceded by a short introduction that lays out the context in which the piece was written. Drawing on his own memories as a former athlete, informal observations of his children's sports activities, and more formal research such as life-history interviews with athletes and content analyses of sports media, Michael A. Messner presents a multifaceted picture of gender constructed through an array of personalities, institutions, cultural symbols, and everyday interactions.
“We trained just as hard and we have just as much love for our sport. We deserve to play just as much as any other athlete. . . . I am sick and tired of being treated like I am second rate. I plan on standing up for what is right and fighting for equality.” —Sage Ohlensehlen, Women’s Swim Team Captain at the University of Iowa Fifty years ago, US president Richard Nixon signed Title IX into law, making it illegal for federally funded education programs to discriminate based on sex. The law set into motion a massive boom in girls and women’s sports teams, from kindergarten to the collegiate level. Professional women’s sports grew in turn. Title IX became a massive touchstone in the fight for gender equality. So why do girls and women—including trans and intersex women—continue to face sexist attitudes and unfair rules and regulations in sports? The truth is that the road to equality in sports has been anything but straightforward, and there is still a long way to go. Schools, universities, and professional organizations continue to struggle with addressing unequal pay, discrimination, and sexism in their sports programming. Delve into the history and impact of Title IX, learn more about the athletes at the forefront of the struggle, and explore how additional changes could lead to equality in sports. “Girls are socialized to know . . . that gender roles are already set. Men run the world. Men have the power. Men make the decisions. . . . When these girls are coming out, who are they looking up to telling them that’s not the way it has to be? And where better to do that than in sports?” —Muffet McGraw, Head Women’s Basketball Coach at Notre Dame “Fighting for equal rights and equal opportunities entails risk. It demands you put yourself in harm’s way by calling out injustice when it occurs. Sometimes it’s big things, like a boss making overtly sexist remarks or asserting they won’t hire women. But far more often, it’s little, seemingly innocuous, things . . . that sideline the women whose work you depend on every day. You can use your privilege to help those who don’t have it. It’s really as simple as that.” —Liz Elting, women’s rights advocate
This progressive and broad-ranging handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the complex intersections between politics, gender, sport and physical activity, shining new light on the significance of gender, sport and physical activity in wider society. Featuring contributions from leading and emerging researchers from around the world, the book makes the case that gender studies and critical thinking around gender are of particular importance in an era of increasingly intolerant populist politics. It examines important long-term as well as emerging themes, such as recent generational shifts in attitudes to gender identity in sport and the socio-cultural expectations on men and women that have traditionally influenced and often disrupted their engagement with sport and physical activity, and explores a wide range of current issues in contemporary sport, from debates around the contested gender binary and sex verification, to the role of the media and social media, and the significance of gender in sport leadership, policy and decision-making. This book is an authoritative survey of the current state of play in research connecting gender, sport, physical activity and politics, and is an important contribution to both sport studies and gender studies. It is fascinating reading for any student, researcher, policy-maker or professional with an interest in sport, physical activity, social studies, public health or political science.
