Empowerment Through Sport?

In many countries, such as the US, there is a continuing and increasingly popular framing of sport as a site that promotes gender equality and female empowerment. Yet scholarly research continues to reveal a complex reproduction of traditional gendered, hetero/sexualized discourses and ideologies, as well as challenges to the gendered order (Christopherson, Janning and McConnell 2002; Knoppers and Anthonissen 2008). ¹ As a powerful socio-cultural site for the construction of hegemonic masculinity, male dominance of sport has been increasingly contested and problematized (Dworkin and Messner 1999; Pringle 2005). But evidence suggests mainstream sporting discourses continue to define men and masculinity as central or standard to the category of sport (Fielding-Lloyd and Meân 2008; Hardin and Whiteside 2006; Knoppers and Anthonissen 2008). This means that men continue to be constructed as the (proto)typical expert or authenticfan of sports, and serious sports fandom is typically associated with men’s sports as the manifestation of realsport (Creedon 1994; Messner 2002). The implications of such constructions are highly relevant for arguments about women’s empowerment through sport since they impact the continued gendering of sport and fan identities.