1. One of the
Guys:
Gender, Women
and Sports
(Media)

2. Outline
1) Gender, Sex and Biology versus Social Construction
2) Sports and Masculinity
3) Women in Sports Media
4) Discussion and Application

4. Nature vs Nurture
Judith Butler
• Challenged the “expression model” of gender—ie, that gender simply
expressed inherent differences of sex.
• Gender is a performance, and also performative.
• “Consider gender, for instance as a corporeal style, an act, as it were, which is
both intentional and performative, where “performative” suggests a dramatic
contingent construction of meaning”
• Social Construction Theories

5. Gender Bias in Mothers’Expectations
about Infant Crawling
“Although boys outshine girls in a range of motor skills, there are no reported gender differences
in motor performance during infancy. This study examined gender bias in mothers’ expectations
about their infants’ motor development. Mothers of 11-month-old infants estimated their
babies’ crawling ability, crawling attempts, and motor decisions in a novel locomotor task—
crawling down steep and shallow slopes. Mothers of girls underestimated their performance
and mothers of boys overestimated their performance. Mothers’ gender bias had no basis in
fact. When we tested the infants in the same slope task moments after mothers’ provided their
ratings, girls and boys showed identical levels of motor performance.”

6. Nature vs Nurture
• Biological difference theories
• Suggest that men and women have
inherent differences due to their
genetics, and that this affects their
capabilities
• Men are have higher testosterone
production, which builds muscles.
• Testosterone production is currently
used for testing the gender of
athletes

7. Nature vs Nurture
• There are broad differences between men and women.
• Any one individual can easily fall outside of these broad divisions, and
there is no clear line between men and women.
• Some of these broad differences are probably due to biological
differences.
• Some of these broad differences are probably due to social
construction.
• The physical body is also susceptible to social construction, not just
behaviour.

8. Hegemonic Masculinities
“Refers to commonly shared and socially valued understanding of what constitutes “being a
man”’
Wamsley, 25
“Male interests predominate in most sports, and in many of them male hegemony has been
more complete and more resistant to change than in other areas of culture. Nevertheless, male
hegemony in sports has never been static and absolute, but is a constantly shifting process
which incorporates both reactionary and liberating features of gender relations.”
Hargreaves, 23

9. Hegemonic Masculinities
•Bush vs Gentry Masculinities
•“For Military men, sport and exercise were considered appropriate vehicles for the development
of ‘good character’” (Wamsley, 28).
“Sport is heavily laden with values of maleness.
Men who abstain from male sporting subcultures
can be stereotyped as being effeminate in
character, in a context where a feminine trait is
viewed as a negative, less empowering attribute.
Male sporting subcultures, therefore, operate
twin dynamics of misogyny and homophobic
behaviour” (Boyle and Haynes, 136)

10. (Toxic) Masculinity and Sports
•“Many sports are predicated on aggressive values, where competition demands violent physical
contact and often the deliberate infliction of harm or injury. . .the legitimacy of violence in
sport… balances upon the axis of power in the gender order, where physical combat, blood and
bruises are considered natural for men and alien to women” (Boyle and Haynes, 138).
•“Men are socialized to be aggressors, women to be victims. Historically, sport has come to be
seen as a form of male entitlement, little boys continuing to play into adulthood” (Fuller, 6)
•“The mentality of a professional hockey player is that you never admit that you’re human. You
never admit pain, especially if it’s pain that no one can see.” (Dupius)

11. Disruptions
•Gender Parody
•Many feminists have suspected that women’s cultivation of aggressive personalities,
especially when pleasurable, amounts to getting duped by male domination. Feminists
have tried not to “play into the patriarchy” by playing men’s games and sharing “male”
values. From this vantage point, women’s embrace of violence smacks of getting into
the pigsty with the pigs. (McCaughey 14)
•The accounts of adolescent hockey players presented here suggest a powerful challenge
to the historically gendered practice of sport in which men were empowered and
women largely excluded. This challenge lies in the possibilities that hockey and other
sports offer for attaining alternative forms of embodiment that are grounded in the
experience of strength, competency, and agency. (Theberge, 514)

12. Media
GENDER REPRESENTATIONS IN SPORTS

13. Representations of Female Athletes
•Masculine Generics
•Gender Marking (ie, WNBA, Ladies’ Final)
•Descriptions based on Physical appearance
•Sexuality
•Infantilizing
•Activity Levels (“Johnson drives to the net” versus “The ball goes in”)
•Naming Conventions
• Ladies/Girls/Chicks
• First vs Last names

14. Time and Quality
•More is written about men’s sport than women’s sport, and more
often, in newspapers, magazines news, bulletin's, school
newspapers, and websites (Segrave et al, 34-35)
•Common Barriers to gender equity in media coverage include . . .
• Devoting less broadcast time to women’s sporting events. Particularly
women’s team sports
• Using less sophisticated production techniques for women’s broadcasts
(Hallmark, 161)

16. Case Study: Shannon Szabados
•Woman playing on a Men’s professional team
•First Woman to play in the Western Hockey League, played for the Tri City Americans in
Exhibition Games
•Played in Alberta Junior Hockey League, received AJHL's Top Goaltender after the 2006–07
season.
•Ineligible for NCAA, due to playing in the WHL
•Played for the Men’s Teams for Grant McEwan University and Northern Alberta Institute of
Technology
•Canadian Women’s Olympic Team 2 time gold Medalist

17. Discussion Questions
What did you notice about the way in which Szabados was presented
in that video—how was her gender dealt with? How does this relate
to, or echo, some of the things being said by the girls in Gilenstam et
al‘s article?

18. Discussion Questions
Do you think that contact sports such as hockey are a potential place
for feminist liberation? Or are they too tied up with values such as
aggressiveness? What is the role of media and the symbolic order
that Gilenstam et al talk about in the success or failure of this
project?