Negotiating Cultural Diversity for Women in Sport: from assimilation to multiculturalism

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Research addressing the issue of sport or physical activity for women of non‐English speaking backgrounds in the Australian context is still in its infancy. This is an area rich for study given the multicultural composition of the country's population, combined with the popular view of sport as a major component of Australian cultural identity and the fact that levels of sporting involvement of women bom in non‐English‐speaking countries are extremely low. The research study presented in this article involved exploring notions of sport from the perspectives of women from Italian, Lebanese and Vietnamese backgrounds, and the attitudes of sport service providers about these populations. The outcomes clearly demonstrate that there is continued adherence to assimilation practices in the sporting environment and that such practices disadvantage women from non‐English‐speaking backgrounds in their sport participation. The findings highlight the need to improve the knowledge and training of sports providers about cultural diversity and its implications for practice. Also, women from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds must have a greater involvement in developing policies and practices which combine innovative and progressive approaches that begin to challenge both racist and sexist constraints currently prevalent in Australian sporting environments.