ABSTRACT
Our overarching purpose in this book has been to reconsider the topic of girls, physical education and gender from an activist perspective. We argued in Chapter 2 that the “same old story” about girls and physical education has been circulating for more than thirty years, in its current form since at least the 1970s. This narrative is expressed in various ways but it typically seeks to imply that girls are somehow to blame for their apparent reluctance to fully engage in the physical education programmes they are offered. We suggested that despite attempts by feminist scholars over the years to reframe this narrative by revealing the complexity of the issue surrounding girls’ engagements with physical education, the same old story continues to surface in the popular press and other media, and indeed in the work of some researchers as well.
