ABSTRACT
Critical inquiries into the world of sport have disclosed that sport has always been a ‘sexual battlefield’ in which familiar stereotypes of men and women are communicated and reinforced (Boyle and Haynes 2000:127). Male domination in sport was established as early as the 19th century, when sport emerged as a social institution created by and for men. Biological scientism and the social organization of modernity, in particular the spatial and functional segregation of gender roles, provided the ideological nutrient for the legitimization of gender discrimination in sport. Female subordination was based on a taken-for-granted view of sport as ‘natural domain’ of men because of the innately different biological and psychological natures of men and women. In contrast to and as complement of the adventurous and competitive-victorious ideal of masculinity, the modern idea of femininity was conceptualized around domestic services provided by women as wives and mothers.
