ABSTRACT
One of the major barriers to developing this line of research is conceptualization. Researchers have focused on the custodial relationships between amateur athletes and their organizational environments. As students or club members, amateur athletes are dependent upon their schools, clubs or parents for health and injury care. In this study, I have conceptualized the relationship between professional female athletes and their organizational environments as contractual, that is, as a work relationship. Health and injury care, at least as related to job performance, is a condition of employment. Thus, the factors that shape health and injury care to factory and offi ce workers-such as job description, social class of the worker and gender-can be examined in the work experience of the professional athlete. An aim of this chapter is to better draw out the policy implications of understanding health and injury among groups like professional female athletes by observing these behaviors in the organizational environments within which they occur.
