SEVEN FACES OF WOMENS SPORT
SEVEN FACES OF WOMENS SPORT
EDITED BY
IRENE A. REID
University of Stirling, UK
JANE DENNEHY
Gender Hub, UK
United Kingdom North America Japan India Malaysia China
Emerald Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK
First edition 2018
Copyright 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited
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ISBN: 978-1-78743-711-1 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-78743-710-4 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-78743-966-5 (EPub)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all the girls and women who are in parks, halls and on playing fields made of concrete, dirt, sand and mud; it is you who have inspired us to write this book. We admire your tenacity and resilience and your passion to claim public spaces for your sport.
We appreciate the support of all those mums, dads, sisters, brothers and friends, without whom much of the sport for girls and women simply would not happen.
We thank our families, colleagues and friends who have encouraged us to complete this project. We also want to thank those individuals who shared their stories, insights and knowledge of sport. For those who are not specifically named, we want you to know that research and progress does not happen without you.
Contents
Jane Dennehy
Irene A. Reid
Jane Dennehy
C. D. Fisher
Jane Dennehy
Marisa Schlenker
Jane Dennehy
Jane Dennehy
List of Contributors
Jane Dennehy | Gender Hub, UK, jane@genderhub.com |
Irene A. Reid | University of Stirling, UK, i.a.reid@stir.ac.uk |
C. D. Fisher | Gender Hub, Germany, cait.fisher@gmail.com |
Marisa Schlenker | Gender Hub, Germany, marisaeschlenker@gmail.com |
About the Authors
Jane Dennehy, a Strategist in gender for sport, media and legal organisations, combines her academic research in gender and the labour market with her special interest in employability and competition. She is a director at the Gender Hub, a research and consulting collective and at What Could I Be, a charity and publisher of career information for young people and parents.
Dr Dennehy earned her PhD in gender and management from the Gender Institute at the London School of Economics in 2010. Her re-entry to academia came after 15 years in marketing and advertising. She has recently contributed to a collection on Governance in Sport in Europe (with Irene A. Reid, forthcoming), has worked on research projects with EIGE on gender mainstreaming and has undertaken research on womens experiences of womb cancer and the 20th anniversary of the What Women Want, a UK-based campaign.
Jane is originally from New Zealand but is based in Scotland and has two teenage daughters, who are keen young sportswomen.
C. D. Fisher is a Futebol Activist, Scholar and Artist. She is involved in organising around the labour rights of female players and promoting gender justice in sport through movement. She played professional futebol (Brazil, Sweden, USA) and now uses muscle memory, movement and narratives from the pitch to explore the way elite sport perpetuates power relations and identity (con)forming mechanisms. She uses reflexive, experiential research to explore how the commodified version of futebol as we know it is shaping bodies and social relations and what clues the game can offer us about possibilities for other ways of proposing, experiencing and enacting human relations. While critical of the sport, Fisher remains committed to the great potential of the worlds most popular game to create community and collective action, produce subversive and free bodies, and offer us alternatives beyond our current order.
Fisher has published on the gender (re)presentation and embodied resistance of female futebol players in Brazil as a Fulbright Scholar (Journal of Sport & Society (2015)). She co-founded the Guerreiras Project, a project promoting gender justice and labour rights through futebol in Brazil. She curated/co-created the 2016 contesting/contexting SPORT Exhibition during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games. She holds a BA in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University (2004); and an MSc in Gender & Development, from the London School of Economics (2010).
Irene A. Reids academic background is in the sociology of sport and leisure, which she has taught at the University of Stirling and at De Montfort Universitys Bedford campus (19921997). Prior to taking up her first lecturing position in the University sector, she worked in sports development and administration in Perth and Kinross District Council and at the Scottish Sports Council. She has also taught physical education in the secondary school and further education sector.
Dr Reids research interests cover a variety of issues associated with critical social and cultural studies of sport. This has included work on football, nationalism and the media in Scotland; shinty, nationalism and cultural identity; and the place of leisure practices in the context of changing nationalisms in Scotland and Ireland. She is currently working on research about women coaches in Scotland, and on women, sport and the iconography of nationhood and representations of nation and identity in the Scottish media.
Marisa Schlenker received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin- Madison in political science and Spanish literature, where she was also a member of the universitys womens soccer team. Her passion for sport, combined with her interest in development studies, led her to the field of sport for development and subsequently involvement in various organisations. Since 2016, Marisa has been pursuing a masters degree in international administration and conflict management at Konstanz University.
Foreword
I was lucky; although on reflection, luck had very little to do with it. Fortunate might be a better word altogether. Fortunate, when growing up in the 1970s as a boy, to have access to a wide range of sports at school (and some excellent amateur coaches) and good public facilities: open spaces, organised pitches, tennis courts, changing rooms and a sports centre and swimming pool in town. At the time, public policy came under the guidance of The Sports Council whose tag line was Sport for All. Looking back, the message was simple, credible and inclusive.
