Gender on the Sports Agenda

This paper is a reaction to the general neglect of an adequate treatment of gender relations in the sociology of sport. It looks at the limitations of analyses of female sport and at the possibilities of producing a potentially authentic sociology of female sport which combines theory with sporting practice. I argue that analysing sport is an inherently controversial affair. The focus of the paper is female sport in capitalist societies, and, more specifically, in the UK. I argue that theory should question popular assertions about female sport by looking at complexities and contradictions. I discuss the relevance of feminist theories to sport and the particular problem of working out the relationship between capitalist relations and gender relations in sport. A number of issues are discussed which have theoretical and practical dimensions — for example, the male/female distinction in sport, the desire for equality of opportunity with men in sport, the philosophy of separate development, and the concern for qualitatively different models of sport for both sexes. Central to this paper is the problem about how we might explain theoretically the relationship between the possibilities and the limitations of female sport which have important practical and ethical implications. The focus is on the female, but the issues are relevant to males as well.