Introduction

This chapter outlines our rationale for a focus upon gender and equity in contemporary physical education and draws attention to the breadth and complexity of the issues that this text seeks to address. It considers why professionals in all walks of physical education should be concerned with gender issues at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a period of rapidly changing lifestyles, life chances and expectations. We draw attention to longstanding inequities in the policies and practices of physical education in schools, and address the roles that teachers, teacher educators and researchers can play in either reinforcing or challenging sexism and inequity in physical education and sport.