Philippa Velija

‘It made me feel powerful’: women’s gendered embodiment and physical empowerment in the martial arts

This paper presents data collected from 11 females and explores their gendered and embodied experiences of the martial arts. Our research suggests that through their involvement in the martial arts, women develop physical strength, which leads to individual physical empowerment. Furthermore, the women note their involvement in the martial arts increases their confidence to defend themselves and challenge their gendered embodiment. However, despite acquiring physical strength that challenges their previous forms of gendered embodiment, their experiences remain predominantly at the level of individual empowerment. Thus, the women do not problematise normative views of gendered embodiment which position women as weak and men as strong. Nor do the women in this study question the pressure on females’ bodies to be toned and feminine. Drawing predominantly on physical feminism, we question and problematise the concepts of women’s empowerment and gendered embodiment through women’s experiences of the martial arts.

The development of knowledge for teaching physical education in secondary schools over the course of a PGCE year

There has been a considerable amount of work on what knowledge student teachers need to develop to become effective teachers. The purpose of this study was to look at the development of knowledge of student physical education teachers in England. Six secondary student physical education teachers completed a journal on a monthly basis throughout their one‐year course. The student teachers and their mentors were interviewed in school towards the end of their course in June. Responses were analysed inductively. Results showed that knowledge important to develop, knowledge developed and knowledge which still needs to be developed at the end of the course was all related to content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge which they could apply in the immediate practical teaching situation. The results are discussed in relation to the development of student physical education teachers knowledge for teaching.

A maiden over: a socio-historical analysis of the Women's Ashes

This paper explores the development of the Womens Ashes, focusing on the emergence of Womens Cricket in Australia and England. Despite the importance of the Womens Ashes to the players, it does not have a recognizable public profile. Utilizing data from the England Womens Cricket Association (WCA), published literature on Womens Cricket and media reports on the Womens Ashes, this paper offers a critical sociological discussion of the development of the Womens Ashes and Womens Cricket more generally drawing on wider issues of gender relations in the respective countries that have impacted on the development the womens game.

Exclusionary power in sports organisations: The merger between the Women's Cricket Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board

This paper contributes to existing literature on gender equity within sporting organisations, focusing on the merger between the Women’s Cricket Association (WCA) and the England and Wales Cricket Board in 1998. At the time of the merger those involved in the WCA debated whether the merger would be positive for the future of the women’s game. In this paper we discuss the impact of the merger on the women’s role in the governance of their sport through the views of 10 women who were involved in playing, administrating, managing or coaching cricket during the time of the merger. The interviewees’ experiences are located within wider debates about power, gender and sport. We specifically draw on the concept of exclusionary power to highlight how gender inequities continue to impact upon the management and organisation of women’s cricket in England. Our participants’ testimonies suggest that since the merger, the game has unquestionably benefited from increased financial support. This has significantly boosted the elite development of the game. However, since the merger the role of women has changed. They now have limited power over the organisation and development of both elite and grassroots levels of play. This paper therefore contributes to existing research on gender relations and sporting organisations, such as the work of Stronach and Adair ((2009) ‘Brave new world’ or ‘sticky wicket’? Women, management and organizational power in Cricket Australia. Sport in Society 12(7): 910–932) and Sibson ((2010) “I Was Banging My Head against a Brick Wall”: Exclusionary power and the gendering of sport organisations. Journal of Sport Management 24: 379–399), by further applying the concept of exclusionary power to understanding gender relations within a UK sports context.

‘Men fall like boiled eggs. Women fall like raw eggs.’ Civilised female bodies and gender relations in British National Hunt racing:

This purpose of this article is to contribute to the existing research on the gendered nature of equestrian sports by discussing how power relations continue to position females on the margins of National Hunt (NH) racing. In the UK, NH racing is the most male-dominated form of racing; at the time of writing, 100 males hold a professional jockey licence, compared to just 4 females. In this article we draw on figurational sociology, specifically the concepts of the civilised body, interdependence and habitus to offer a critical analysis of the gendered experiences of eight amateur and professional female jockeys. The experiences of female jockeys cannot be understood without considering their networks of interdependencies with trainers, owners, male jockeys, breeders and the wider racing industry. We argue that early involvement in the figuration through family ties supports the development of a gendered racing habitus that influences the social identities of female jockeys who normalise their own limitations. Civilised female bodies are positioned in the figuration as weaker than males and needing protection from potentially risky horses. We argue that because safe horses are chosen by trainers and owners, these limit the opportunities and number of rides for female jockeys, these (gendered) decisions obscure issues of power that enable male jockeys to dominate in the NH figuration.

Cricket and Gendered National Identities: The Experiences of Women Who Play and Organise the ‘Global Game’

In the majority of countries discussed in Chapter 3, it was evident that cricket was diffused at a time when it strongly reflected types of nationalism and masculinity. Wherever cricket was played in the ICC full member countries, it was played first and foremost as a male sport that reflected particular views of masculinity. Cricket also embodied a type of nationalism, firstly English nationalism, but in many later contexts cricket was shaped and developed in ways that reflected the national character of where it was played. The exception in this case is clearly in Ireland and Holland where varying patterns of diffusion can be seen and the game was different for men’s and women’s cricket in these case studies. This is a reminder as Malcolm (2013) highlights that diffusion processes are not linear and there is no clear pattern of diffusion and acceptance of a sport; instead there are complex social processes that influence the acceptance or rejection of particular sport forms. However, it is important to consider in relation to gender the way cricket came to embody particular types of national identity and character. National identities related to nationalism are fluid and subject to change. The majority of research on sport and national identity is written about men’s sport (Bairner, 2001). National cultures are formed and transformed in relation to specific social relations and may at times be ‘imagined’ or reinvented, these processes mean that national identity is not fixed but fluid (Maguire, 1993).

Women’s Cricket, International Governance and Organisation of the Global Game

In Chapter 3, the emergence of women’s cricket in a variety of national contexts was discussed: In particular the focus was how and why women’s cricket emerged and what social processes were involved in the development of the game, drawing on figurational sociology as a framework for exploring the social processes and emergence of established and outsider figurations in specific national contexts. In this chapter, the international governance and the organisation of women’s cricket as a global game are discussed, focusing on the social processes that enabled the emergence of a global governing body and the subsequent developments in the structures governing women’s cricket. Since its formation in 1909, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has been the governing body of men’s cricket. This organisation was originally controlled by England and Australia and it was an elitist organisation that influenced the development of men’s cricket according to particular values and social habituses (closely linked to race and class relations more broadly).

Cricket and Masculinity in Early Forms of Cricket

Cricket developed as a modern sport in England and it was in England that the first ‘laws’ of the game were published. The first recorded women’s match was also played in England in 1745. The first country to have a governing body for the women’s game was also England, in 1926. Whilst a substantial amount has been written about the men’s game and the history development and diffusion of the game, far less is understood about the women’s game from its initial development and the social processes that enabled the game to develop as a global sport. The women’s game and its development need to be considered in relation to the development of men’s cricket. One of the specific focuses of Eliasian sociology is to consider the relational aspect of power relations; given this context, Chapter 2 seeks to explore the emergence of cricket as a modern sport in England and its association with Englishness and masculinity, which is critical for understanding the development of the women’s game.

Civilising Processes, Gender Relations and the Global Women’s Game

As discussed in the introduction to the book, women’s cricket is growing and continues to develop as part of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and in different nations, at different paces. However, this growth is not universal. Some countries are developing at a much faster pace than others, and some nations that play the women’s game have a more established history than others. At times this pattern of development runs parallel to the development of men’s cricket, but this is not the case in all contexts and the diffusion of men’s cricket and the subsequent adoption, resistance or acceptance of women in the game varies across the globe. This no doubt is reflective of broader gender relations and power struggles between men and women in different nation states, in which women’s involvement in sport is such a small, but significant, part. In Chapter 2, the focus was on the development and emergence of cricket in England and Australia, as these were the first countries involved in playing the women’s game. These were the first international matches that were played between these two nations, signalling the emergence of international women’s cricket from 1934 onwards. In this chapter, the focus is on understanding the emergence and development of women’s cricket in a number of other nation states, considering the emergence and development of women’s cricket alongside the development of men’s cricket and the creation of distinct established and outsider relations.

Book Review: M. Messner, Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007, 227 pp., ISBN 978 0 7914 7172 2 (pbk)

Michael Messer’s has previously contributed several texts to the sociology of sport and the study of gender, not least his seminal 1992 text Power at Play, which explores sport and issues of masculinity and the more recent Taking the Field (2002), which explores gender relations between males and females within sport in a variety of settings. In the foreword to Messner’s new book, Raewyn Connell sums up the importance of Messner’s latest study of gender and sport by stating that: