This book explores the connections between women's experiences of and contributions to sport as a profession, product and pastime. This collection brings together insights and experiences from ...academics, activists, players and practitioners to critically reflect upon contemporary women's sport.
Sport holds great significance in the lives of many Australians (and people world-wide). However, sport has traditionally been a male dominated pastime, where the structures and practices within ...sport have most often favoured males (including opportunities to play sport, gain employment and hold leadership roles). More recently, the dynamic of sport is changing and the capabilities of women as athletes and employees in sport are being recognised, resulting in more women being visible in positions historically dominated by men. Nonetheless, there are still barriers evident for female leaders in sports. Utilising a third wave feminism perspective, this study explores the experiences of 26 women working in traditionally male dominated leadership positions in the sport of Australian rules football. While it is acknowledged that overall, these women have had positive experiences within their roles, this manuscript focuses specifically on the barriers that are evident for female leaders in Australian rules football.
Acclaimed since its original publication,Coming on Stronghas become a much-cited touchstone in scholarship on women and sports. In this new edition, Susan K. Cahn updates her detailed history of ...women's sport and the struggles over gender, sexuality, race, class, and policy that have often defined it. A new chapter explores the impact of Title IX and how the opportunities and interest in sports it helped create reshaped women's lives even as the legislation itself came under sustained attack.
Kicking ass and taking notes-what it's like to be a woman in the ring.Alison Dean teaches English literature. She also kicks people. Hard. Despite having several amateur fights under her belt, she ...struggles to be taken as seriously as a male kickboxer would. "You punch hard for a girl" is still an insult-women aren't supposed to participate in violence.Her unique perspective as a thirty-something PhD turned fighter allows Dean to expose and explain the inner world of combat sports. She articulates ways fighting changes a person's-and particularly a woman's-relationship to their body and to the world around them, and considers how women shift boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, and MMA's male dominated cultures in turn. Combining research, anecdotes, and interviews with coaches and fighters, Seconds Out looks at the history of women in the ring, the challenges of training, and the nuances of fighting while female. She shares her own experiences, good and bad, as she takes on her first few amateur fights. With the literary acumen and panache of fighting's greatest writers, like A. J. Leibling, Joyce Carol Oates, and Katherine Dunn, but from the perspective of someone who has been in the ring, Seconds Out brilliantly explores our culture's relationship with violence, particularly when it is practiced by women.
Women's rugby league made a spectacular entrance to Sydney on Saturday, 17 September 1921. The foundation match of the NSW Ladies Rugby Football League was a great success, attracting a large crowd ...and a surprisingly glowing media coverage. But women's rugby league shone for just one brief season only to disappear as quickly as it came. The 'Ladies League' was doomed from the start, thwarted by historical conflicts amongst the NSW Rugby League's pioneer administrators who perceived it as a threat to their power base and control of the game. A century later, the rugby league's administrators are finally recognising the marketability of the women's game, which was briefly evident in 1921.
Recent research has indicated that coverage of women's sport has become less trivialised and sexualised, compared to historical coverage. This article uses the inaugural season of the AFL Women's ...(AFLW) League in 2017 to explore this concept in both media and Twitter framing. It found that most media coverage and tweets were likely to discuss the AFLW as sport, focusing on match previews and reviews. However, there was evidence that women may still be treated differently to men, as the AFLW players who received the most media coverage also had significant off-field stories that were always mentioned alongside their on-field performance. Analysis of the tweets found that more were focused on the cultural change impact of AFLW. This was further exaggerated when looking at the most shared tweets, which were overwhelmingly focused on the socio-cultural impact of AFLW. This study indicates then that women's sport is continuing to be normalised as part of regular sports reporting, but also that social media did not necessarily share the same frames as media when discussing AFLW. In an increasingly fragmented media environment, this has implications for media's agenda-building function.
In the contemporary global war of spectator and participant sports the Australian Football League (AFL) pursued three 'revolutions', seeking to ensure the Australian game remains Australia's most ...successful sport. A women's national league, AFLW, in February 2017, addressed high profile spectator support and women's participation as players. Despite some voices of discontent AFLW's great success built on three decades of increased women's participation in Australian Football, on and off the field. AFLX, a tentative 2018 and 2019 experiment in inventing an 'instant sport', with smaller teams, spaces and shorter matches, drew traditionalists' opposition, as it sensibly addressed new overseas markets and new immigrant demographics. A 2019 tentative revolution changed AFL rules, challenging the ugly, defensive play characterising most top sports. The three revolutions might ensure Australian Football's sporting primacy in 2058, during the bicentenary of the oldest codified form of football.
Informed by feminism and the fields of anthropology and sociology of sport, this anthology investigates women’s place in sport and exercise from a sociocultural perspective, documenting women’s ...struggle into the sports arenas of male hegemony. The nine ethnographic case studies explore issues of identity, embodiment, and meaning in various sports and exercise, including triathlons, aerobics, basketball, bodybuilding, weightlifting, motorcycle riding, softball, casual exercise, and rugby.
Ice ’n’ Go Moshak, Jenny; Schriver, Debby
2013, 2013-05-30
eBook
The 1972 passage of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education, was a game changer for women and girls in athletics. In the forty years since the law was enacted, ...participation in sports-especially of girls and women-has grown dramatically. With that growth have come challenges. In Ice 'n' Go: Score in Sports and Life, Jenny Moshak, celebrated athletic trainer of the legendary Lady Vols basketball team and associate athletic director for sports medicine at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, reflects on the role of sports in society and addresses the high stakes and costs of winning in sports today.Ice 'n' Go is a culmination of the breadth of knowledge and unique insight from Moshak's more than twenty-five years of work in major college sports. In this highly readable new book, she covers social issues, medical concerns, motivational techniques, gender roles and expectations, the impact of sports on our children, and how the body works, heals, and recovers. Though she writes on serious subjects in a serious way, Moshak's tone is always upbeat and positive with simple strategies for improving the athletic experience for all, especially kids.An outstanding athlete herself, she shares lessons learned on her own demanding coast-to-coast bicycle ride across the United States. In sharing her stories, sound advice and fresh ideas, Moshak seeks to do for us what she has always done for the players in her care: to help protect, nurture, and grow the athlete who is in each one of us.
A Coaching Life Blair, Gary; Burson, Rusty
2017, 2017-01-27
eBook
“It’s still difficult to describe the scene after the final buzzer sounded, because the moment was just so damned surreal,” writes head coach Gary Blair of the minutes following the ...conclusion of the title game of the 2011 NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament. “So many things happened that I will never forget … kissing my wife on the floor of Conseco Fieldhouse … looking toward the stands, where my grandson was … flashbulbs popping as the Aggie Band played triumphantly … our players and coaches wildly celebrating the biggest win in women’s basketball history at Texas A&M … tears streaming down the faces of former players … I remember thinking that I wished I could somehow stop time.”   This memory and countless others form the greatest treasure of Coach Blair’s life, as he makes clear in this engaging, inspiring memoir, written with veteran sports journalist and author Rusty Burson. Indeed, as he says at the beginning of this work, “What I cherish the most are the memories of these players and coaches.”  Beyond the trophies, beyond the impressive won-lost record compiled over more than four decades of coaching, beyond even the ungrudging professional respect he has achieved among his peers in a fiercely competitive occupation, Gary Blair values the images, moments, and memories he has collected during a life spent doing what he loves most: coaching and mentoring young women on the basketball court.   In Gary Blair: Remembering a Coaching Life , Coach Blair offers readers a “freeze-frame” view of a storied career. He serves up a few of his favorite memories with wit, grace, and humility. In the process, he invites readers to reflect on life’s wins and losses and, most importantly, what both have to teach us.
