Practical, professional or patriarchal? An investigation into the socio-cultural impacts of gendered school sports uniform and the role uniform plays in shaping female experiences of school sport

This paper reports the findings of a mixed-methods study which investigates the socio-cultural impacts of UK gendered school sport uniform and the role uniform plays in shaping female school sport experiences. Drawing on an extensive analytical survey with over 400 women of all-ages and 8 interviews with women aged 18–24, it explores how school sport uniform directly impacts female sporting experiences and participation in physical activity, and how uniform policy could be changed to promote greater female sport participation. Gendered school sport uniform continues to operate as a socio-spatial mechanism that names, frames and positions young people in heteronormative school sport spaces. This paper assesses how gendered school sport uniform contributes to the disciplining of the ‘ideal feminine body’ in schoolgirls and the construction of behavioural gender binaries in sport. The data reveal gendered sport uniform influences the development of a ‘fear of masculinisation’ in sport and common athletic-feminine identity tensions in teenage girls. The research finds gendered school sport uniform plays a major role in the high drop-out rates of teenage girls in school sport and offers practical insight into how policy could be changed to promote inclusivity, comfort and greater female sport participation. This paper proposes redesigning traditional gendered school sport policy to focus on ‘enabling’ participation has huge potential to transform female embodied and psychological experiences of school sport and increase school sport participation and enjoyment.