As part of my assessment I had to write a 1500-word essay addressing the statement, 'Identify and critically examine the key factors underpinning the varied levels of sports participation and sports leadership in the UK, in relation to gender'. After receiving feedback from an expert in this field, I've edited and improved my original essay, and then added on a paragraph on how my essay relates to trail running. For those of you who might be new to this topic, I highly recommend heading over to Ultra168 and reading these three articles (Article 1, Article 2, Article 3) and then continuing your reading from there. I've also included my reference list if you're interested in digging into the academic literature.
Society’s views of gender impacts on the participation levels of women in sport and the number of women in sports leadership roles. Gender is first discussed in relation to broader society. This gives context to discuss participation rates in sport across the UK, and some of the reasons why females are not participating at equal levels as males. Focus then turns to sports leadership, and the factors behind why there are not as many women in the boardroom as men.
Sport is directly influenced by society and the way gender plays a role in sport reflects how gender is seen and practiced at a broader societal level (Hylton & Totten, 2013). Gender and sex are often seen as interchangeable terms, but whereas sex refers to a person’s biology, gender refers to “the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex” (Fisher, Knust & Johnson, 2013, pp. 1). This has traditionally resulted in a binary classification model where gender is generally expressed through “masculine” traits if a person is a boy or “feminine” traits if a person is a girl (Coakley & Pike, 2014). Gender is learned over a person’s lifetime and a person’s gender then influences how men or women are supposed to behave and what roles they are supposed to play in society (Appleby & Foster, 2013). The traditional “mode” of action a boy might learn to associate with masculinity is to be assertive, aggressive and competent, whereas a girl may learn constraint, restraint and passivity (Fisher, Knust & Johnson, 2013). These traits are set up to be in opposition to each other and lead to the traditional belief that being male and “masculine” is better than being female and “feminine”, which in turn has contributed to forms of overt and covert sexual discrimination (Fisher, Knust & Johnson, 2013). These beliefs are slowly being challenged and changed over time, from women being allowed to vote in the early 20th century, to more recently with the #metoo movement, which campaigns against sexual harassment and assault. However, societal views on gender are still impacting on how women participate in sport as well as levels of women in sports leadership positions.
Women have historically been underrepresented in youth, community and elite sport in the UK, which is starting to improve, and can be explained through several factors. In the school/youth setting, a report by the Women Sport and Fitness Foundation (2012) found that while there are similar physical activity participation rates of boys and girls in primary school, there is a decline in girls being active in the transition to high school. The boys who were surveyed were twice as active as the girls at the ages of 14 and 15. More recently, the Active Lives Survey (2015/2016) found that 78.2% of males and 74.5% of females aged 16-24 were active for at least 150 minutes a week, while 97.5% of males and 98.1% of females aged 16-24 participated in sport at least once during the past year. The Active Lives Survey also found that in a community setting of everyone aged 16 years or older, 59% of women are likely to be active compared to 63% of men. What also became apparent is the gendering within sports as women were more likely to participate in fitness and informal based activities, such as leisure walking, whereas men were more likely to take part in team sports (Sport England, 2015/2016). Two themes become evident when regarding female participation at an elite level. Regarding the Olympics, major inroads have been made. In the first Games in 1892 women weren’t allowed to compete (Appleby & Foster, 2013). Since then there has been a gradual increase in female competitors, where in 2012, for the first time, all 26 sports were open to both genders (Appleby & Foster, 2013) and at the 2016 Games, approximately 45% of all athletes were women (IOC, 2018). Regarding professional sport, such as women’s basketball, football, etc., funding levels, number of competitions, and overall spectators are gradually increasing, but have not yet reached the same levels of male professional sport (Pfister, 2013). One of the reasons why female participation is lower is due to sport reproducing patriarchal relations, where men are deemed as superior and women inferior (Giulianotti, 2016). This has led to male sport being prioritised, with government backed media campaigns such as ‘This Girl Can’ only just recently being established to try and encourage women to be physically active. According to Appleby and Foster (2013), women have said that a lack of role models keeps them from engaging in sport, which is in part due to the low levels of female sports players being reported on in the media. And when there is female coverage, it is predominantly in a (hetero)sexualised manner, emphasising their femininity (Appleby & Foster, 2013). Sports have also been traditionally a “masculine” domain, where “masculine” traits are valorised (Appleby & Foster, 2013). This has led to a notion that there are appropriate and inappropriate sports for men and women, which isn’t based on what the human body can do, but instead what society “thinks we should (or should not) do” (Appleby & Foster, 2013, pp.14). To help reduce the masculinity associated with sport, female-only fitness centres have opened (Appleby & Foster, 2013). This raises the question though; are women unknowingly reinforcing societies idea of femininity by exercising in a female-only fitness space, even though it makes women feel more comfortable, rather than taking part in more traditionally male activities such as team-sport? There is also an intersectionality of identities, where people identify as a gender as well as an ethnicity. Females who come from a background that is not White-British have lower participation rates in community sport (Sport England, 2015/2016), due to variety of factors such as the stigma attached to females playing sport within their culture, patriarchal relations and issues around dress-code, particularly regarding women from a Middle-Eastern and south Asian background (Appleby & Foster, 2013). Intersectionality of identities, the masculinity of sport and patriarchal relationships continually need to be addressed to help encourage women of all backgrounds to participate and engage in physical activity and sport.
Female sports participation rates in the UK have continuously been improving over the past few decades, however this has not been reflected in the number of women in sports leadership positions. Historically and currently, women have been under-represented in sport management positions (Adriaanse & Claringbould, 2016). This is exemplified in a global context within the Olympics movement. The International Olympic Committee set a target that by the end of 2016 all National Governing Bodies (NGB’s) belonging to the Olympic movement, National Olympic Committees, and International and National Federations must have a minimum of 30% of women in decision making positions (IOC, 2018). On the IOC board, 27% of its members were women as of April 2017 (IOC, 2018), but 85% of all the NGB’s boards had all-male leadership teams and only one NGB had an all-female leadership team (Burton, 2015). This is broadly reflected in the UK, where in the past decade women in sports leadership roles have been slowly increasing but, in publicly funded governing bodies, have recently plateaued at a 30% average (BBC, 2017). There are three key factors why there is yet to be gender equality in management boards in the UK. One of these is a woman’s role in broader, patriarchal society, where they are expected to be responsible for the caretaking of a child and other household duties (Claringbould & Knoppers, 2012). If a woman were to assume this role, this leaves little time to take part in a demanding managerial/executive job, which often involves working long, inflexible hours, and this can cause women to leave the management sector altogether (Claringbould & Knoppers, 2012). Furthermore, upper management is an environment that reproduces and emphasises masculinity, which reduces access for women (Burton, 2015). Rationality, efficiency and being a ‘heavyweight’ are qualities associated with being a good leader but are also qualities that are associated with masculinity (Adriaanse & Claringbould, 2016). This has meant women have had to co-opt masculine traits to gain leadership positions, to fit in with the ‘norm’ (Burton, 2015). Or, Burton also argues (2015, p.158) that to keep within gender boundaries of what is acceptable, women are given positions on a board that involve clerical/administrative work. This is further exacerbated by gendered recruiting practices, where the men who control the board often recruit new members by personally asking male friends and colleagues, which maintains the ‘maleness’ of upper management (Adriaanse & Claringbould, 2016). There have been some measures put in place that are designed to increase the levels of women in sports management roles, such as the IOC’s targets mentioned previously, along with UK Sport and Sport England’s own targets. In the UK, as stated in the Code of Sports Governance, a minimum of 30% of each publicly funded sport’s board must be women, to keep receiving exchequer funds (BBC, 2017). However, Lusted (2014) has argued that many equality policies have been written in the past in the UK, yet only minor improvements have occurred, so only time will tell whether this new policy will increase the number of women in sports management. Hopefully it will, as having a greater number of women in sports leadership roles “benefit(s) women, men and sports organisations” (Adriaanse & Claringbould, 2016, pp.563).
Patriarchal views and the masculinity of sport and upper management have influenced why women are represented less than men in sports leadership and in sports participation. Pfister argues, “gender is not something we have or are, but something that we permanently do” (2013, pp. 175) and until gender is done is such a way where female accomplishments, talents and abilities are viewed as equally as males, there will continue to be an unequal representation.
Based on the above, how can we apply this to the world of trail running
and ultramarathon? We know that there aren't as many female ultra-runners as
males and I feel this can be broadly related to the reasons mentioned above.
Male performances in this sport are still, for the most part, more celebrated
than the female performances. This is gradually changing though, due to the
efforts of reporting sites like Ultra 168 and irunfar, which report
performances in equal measure. And with the continued growth of social media
there are a number of strong female trail runners that are providing leadership
and being role models, which women (and men) within the sport can look towards.
And I think luckily that since ultra-running has only recently grown in
popularity, there isn't so much of a stigma that women shouldn't and can't
complete these distances compared to men. Team sports still have a long way to
go compared to ultra-running in that regard.
In sports leadership, trail running doesn't really have the same
structure compared to 'mainstream' team-based sports. Trail running does have a
governing body, and after having a look on their website, of the 86
representatives I think there are maybe 7 or 8 women (there could be more or
less women but I'm unable to tell as a lot of the names come from different
languages and I'm unable to identify the gender of the individual). 9% of all
the representatives are women. Let that sink in for a moment. I'm not sure what
the ITRA actually does for the sport, but considering it's still a governing
body, that's appalling. I think a simple fix is to adopt the IOC's targets and
aim for 30% female representation. But I think in this sport the majority of
the power doesn't come from the ITRA, but from race directors. And while I
couldn't find any statistics, anecdotally I know that the male/female ratio of
race directors is nowhere near 70/30 (if we want to compare race directing to the
IOC’s targets). This is something that could potentially be improved too.
I'm acutely aware that I'm a male writing about problems facing women. I
know that I've only just scratched the surface of some of the problems, and I'm
not going to offer any solutions as I feel that I'm not adequately qualified. I
just hope that the more people who talk about it, the more the conversation can
lead to productive, long-term solutions of bringing more women into trail
running and sport in general.
The TRN
ADRIAANSE,
J., & CLARINGBOULD, I. (2016). ‘Gender equality in sport leadership: From
the Brighton Declaration to the Sydney Scoreboard.’ International review of the Sociology of Sport. Vol 51 (5), 547-566
APPLEBY, K. & Foster, E. (2013). ‘Gender and Sports Participation.’ in ROPER, E. A. (2013) ‘Gender
Relations in Sport.’ SensePublishers: Rotterdam (Chapter 1: pp. 1-20)
BBC, 2017. ‘Women In Sport: Number of women in top jobs
at UK sporting bodies declining, says study’. [online]. [viewed 18/05/2018]. Available
from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/39186461
BURTON,
L. (2015). ‘Under-representation of women in sport leadership: a review of the
research’. Sport Management Review.
Vol 18, 155-165
CLARINGBOULD,
I. & KNOPPERS, A. (2012). ‘Paradoxical Practices of Gender in Sport-Related
Organizations’. Journal of Sport
Management. Vol 26 (5), 404-416
COAKLEY,
J. and PIKE, E. (2014) ‘Gender and sports: is equity possible?’ in COAKLEY, J.
and PIKE, E. (2014) Sports in Society:
Issues and controversies (2nd edition). McGraw Hill. (Chapter 8:
pp. 221-260)
HYLTON, K. and TOTTEN, M. (2013). ‘Developing Sport for
All’ in HYLTON, K. ‘Sport Development:
Policy, process, and practice: Third Edition.’ Routledge: London and New
York (Chapter 3: pp. 37-79)
FISHER, L. A., KNUST, S. K. & JOHNSON, A. J. (2013). ‘Theories of
Gender and Sport.’ in ROPER, E.
A. (2013) ‘Gender Relations in Sport.’ SensePublishers: Rotterdam
(Chapter 2: pp. 21-38)
GIULIANOTTI, R. (2016) ‘Gender sexuality in sport: playing
against patriarchy’ in GIULIANOTTI, R. (2016) ‘Sport: A Critical Sociology’ (2nd edition). Polity
Press: Cambridge. (Chapter 6: pp 96-115)
LUSTED, J. (2014) ‘Equality
policies in sport: carrots, sticks and a retreat from the radical.’ Journal of Policy Research in Tourism,
Leisure and Events. Vol 6 (1), 85-90
PFISTER, G. (2013). ‘Developments and current issues in
gender and sport from a European perspective.’ in ROPER, E.
A. (2013) ‘Gender Relations in Sport.’ SensePublishers: Rotterdam
(Chapter 9: pp. 163-180)
WOMEN’S SPORT AND FITNESS FOUNDATION, 2012. ‘Changing the Game for Girls-Report’. [online].
[viewed 11/05/18]. Available from: https://www.womeninsport.org/resources/changing-the-game-for-girls-policy-report/
SPORT ENGLAND, 2015/2016. ‘Active Lives Survey’. [online]. [viewed 11/05/18]. Available from: https://activelives.sportengland.org/
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