ABSTRACT
Lorber’s approach can provide instruments and strategies for cross-cultural comparisons. The components of gender can be used as categories, which help to identify similarities and differences in the gender order, in the individual appropriation of gender and also in the connections between sport and gender. These categories can be used as a thread, which helps to organise the findings and fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Lorber uses these components to paint a coherent picture of gender as a social construct, which also can be applied to sport as a social subsystem. The gender order of a society and individual ‘doing gender’ are closely intertwined with the structure of sport and the conditions of doing sport in different countries. However, gender and sport form different patterns depending on manifold variables, like tradition, the economic situation, the role of top-level sport, the ideologies and beliefs connected with sport, the aims and contents of physical education, sport policies and, last but not least, the organisation of sport. Other determining factors are the rituals and conditions of everyday life, like time schedules, climatic features, the environment, the economic situation of the population and also the costs involved in practising sport. Moreover, all these factors influence men and women to different degrees and in different ways.
