The Role of Women in Sport: the Approaches and Methods in Women Rugby Players - Literature review Example

Introduction There have been restrictions on the role of women in sport since the beginning of recorded history. By far the majority of sporting events are set up for men, and it is often forgotten that the first 19 women to compete in the Olympic Games achieved this major milestone at the relatively recent games of 1900 (United Nations, 2007, p. 13). Any research into women in sport must contend with a starting point that is situated on the margins of the field: a field that has been dominated by men for centuries. Nevertheless there has been a recent growth in the participation of women in almost all sports, and in many countries across the world. The time has come to devote more attention to the particular context of women’s sport and the issues which hinder its expansion both in schools and in amateur and regional clubs. Some sports are regarded as being predominantly “men’s games” and rugby in particular has been labelled “a hyper-masculine sport” (Carle and Nauright, 1999, p. 55) largely both because of the physical contact that occurs between players in activities such as the scrum and the line-out, and because of the particular culture that has grown up around those who play the game. Women who choose to enter this sport thus come up against a number of prejudices and traditions which are based on sexist assumptions about the different potential and social roles that men and women are expected to have in society. This literature review focuses on the particular issues experienced by women rugby players in Wales at the present time. It examines first the culture of rugby in Wales, by way of background to the main study. There is a discussion of some of the main themes and theories that have been researched in the broad area of gender and sport, followed by a narrower examination of women’s experience in sports which have been traditionally regarded as being reserved solely, or mainly, for men’s participation. After this the question of drop out is considered, showing the approaches and methods that have been used to work out why and when athletes drop out from their sport, usually in the early teenage years. In these last two sections empirical studies are cited with a view to gathering information on the findings, but also reviewing the methods that are used to elicit useful data. Finally in the conclusion there is a brief summary of the main points of the literature review with some preliminary conclusions from the literature reviewed, and an enumeration of the areas which still remain to be explored further. The culture of rugby in Wales Rugby as a sport originates in the public school system of the English upper classes. It is a particularly physical sport, involving physical strength and speed, good hand eye co-ordination, close teamwork, and a certain amount of risk taking since injuries are frequent and often serious enough to warrant hospitalisation. It has been pointed out that in Wales rugby rose in popularity as a part of the formation of Welsh nationhood, envisaged as a separate entity situated within the larger grouping of countries that made up “Great Britain”: “The Imperial Welsh nation, centered on Cardiff – the other carbon jewel in the crown of the British Empire – was a product of Welsh nationalism and British Imperialism” (Andrews, 1991, p. 347). Welsh coal supplied fuel for British industrialisation, and Welsh troops fought in international wars alongside their dominant English neighbours and this collaboration was perceived both as fruitful alliance and a form of ignominy and oppression. The rugby field opened up an avenue for playing out old rivalries and new alliances. It allowed the nationalism of Welsh people to have a safe outlet in the twentieth century, at a time when world events required the British to pull together in order to survive external threats. With the loss of the majority of Britain’s colonies in the mid twentieth century, the rivalries closer to home provided an alternative spectacle which had all the trappings of bitter war, without any of the human cost. This historical connection of rugby with nationalism and imperialism is closely linked with its image of excessive masculinity. Women have gradually been taking up rugby in Wales, but so far they play only in amateur contexts. In contrast, Welsh male rugby players have driven forward an agenda of professionalisation in order “to be financially rewarded for the sacrifices that they have made in an effort to enhance sporting performance on the field of play” (Howe, 2001, p. 77). At the present time there is evidence of some change in this picture, as women’s rugby seems to be gaining ground, but as yet there is a lack of research on this development. This is the area that the present study aims to address. Gender in Sport It is common in the literature about women and sport to regard the experience of women as being one of gender-role conflict (Desertrain and Weiss, 1988). This is largely because there is an unspoken assumption in most societies that sport is an activity where men are physically superior and where they carve out a male-only preserve (Dunning and Sheard, 1973). The assumption is that men can live out their hegemonic view of masculinity in sport and so they set up barriers to the inclusion of women because it interferes with their sense of entitlement and superiority. It is somehow regarded as “normal” for men to participate in competitive sports, while for women there is an unspoken social taboo around taking sport seriously. There is a large literature on “embodiment” in modern and especially post-modern society and culture which is relevant to the study of gender and sport. For men, the body is a locus of power, while for women this is also true, but there are additional expectations that a woman’s body should be sexualised, mainly for the enjoyment of men. This explains the vastly superior amount of funding and television time that is devoted to male sports, and the tendency to trivialise and sexualise sports that are perceived as “women’s sports.” There has, of course, been some resistance to this model of women’s role in sports. From the feminist quarter there has been a suggestion that the male domination of sport makes it a gendered cultural form which has been used in the past to oppress women and objectify their bodies. Paradoxically, feminist theory states, this very situation of oppression could be used in the future as an agent of change in the transformation of gender relations (Theberge, 1985, p. 193). Some researchers theorise that women who play sports previously reserved for men have to enact two different identities: being an athlete and being a woman, and that while the women are engaged in their sport, including training, they do not have the time or inclination to do the grooming work that being a woman entails (Krane et al., 2004, p. 327). Although there is certainly potential for this dual identity to become pathological, it seems that many women enjoy both of these identities and can switch between them or merge them at will, thus enjoying the best of both worlds. Standard feminist theory also does not address issues of other sexual orientations beyond heterosexuality, and so there is a need to find methodologies which are flexible enough to take account of the multiple gender identities that are common in modern Welsh society. The particular case of women in traditionally masculine sports There is as yet a relatively small selection of literature available on women’s rugby but as it becomes more popular, the academic studies are starting to appear in greater numbers. Early studies have concentrated on factors which have prevented girls from being drawn to the sport. One such factor which is important in the way that women’s rugby is perceived, both within the sport and in wider society, is the way that the media tends to create and reinforce strict gender segregation in reporting, and even in the type of language that is used (Koivula, 1999). It is not just that commentaries trivialise women’s rugby, though this certainly happens, but the huge predominance of men’s sport in the media relegates women’s sport is to the margins. The very lack of a strong and positive signal from the media about women’s sport sends out a message of implied inferiority and irrelevance that young people are very sensitive to. Lesbians in particular may find that they are required to hide their true sexuality and construct an outward image of heterosexual femininity in order to obtain team funding through advertising, for example and this reflects an underlying assumption of compulsory heterosexuality: “Homosexuality is both defined and constructed as a stigmatized, abnormal and marginal identity that is socially threatening to the normative constructions of sexuality and gender” (Wright and Clarke, 1999, p. 228-229). The media certainly have been shown to perpetuate derogatory and stereotypical views of women sports players and this contributes to the negative image that they suffer across the world (Koivula, 1999). Young women perceive a difficulty in realising their own internal wishes while at the same time conforming to the expectations of a dominant heterosexual society which prescribes a limited and feminine role for women. These terms are, of course, culturally defined, and do not necessarily map neatly on to biological sex or physical appearance. These broader societal issues have prompted researchers to investigate what motivates young women to take up rugby, despite the negative messages that they receive from mainstream media. One qualitative study of eleven white female rugby players in a non-college setting in the United States found that the participants perceived not just one but a large number discrepant gender-role expectations. These areas, which the researchers called “core constructs”, range from perceived external qualities of the body such as fragility and body type, to psychological attributes such as passivity nurturance versus aggression and competitiveness and identity constructs such as femininity and sexual orientation (Fallon and Jome, 2007, pp. 315-317). This study concludes that simple gender-role conflict theories may be too simple to capture the complexity of the issues that affect women who play rugby and in adequate as a framework for studying the multiple strategies that they use to avoid or resolve such gender-role conflicts. It provides also a very good example of the structured interview technique and the use of coding to bring out core domains and themes in the analysis. There is evidence that women are beginning to become more visible in sports such as bodybuilding and rugby and this shows “how expectations of female body image and musculature change over time and challenge the essentialist view that physical characteristics such as hand eye co-ordination are inherently masculine” (Howe, 2001, p. 78). Another American empirical study examined the attitudes of female rugby players and noted that “these women resisted disciplinary processes of femininity but, at the same time, were willing participants in disciplinary processes of competitive sport. They and their bodies are shaped by multiple and competing discourses and disciplinary processes.” (Chase, 2006, p. 229). Such an analysis is based on the theories of Foucault, who argues that sport functions in society as a way of disciplining the human body, in order to make it docile (Foucault, 1977, p. 136). This evidence also suggests that a key motivator for women rugby players lies in the power to choose what kind of discipline to subject their own bodies to. The aim of Chase’s study was to “explore how women who play rugby understand, think about, and experience their bodies” (Chase, 2006, p. 230) One important conclusion of this study was a realisation that many women, far from finding gender-role conflict in the sport, find a culture of acceptance in women’s rugby because of the diversity of body shape that the game requires: “Rugby players clearly recognize that all body types are useful and productive, and are essentially aware that big female bodies can and do exist in sport despite media representations of female athletes as primarily small and graceful (Chase, 2006, p. 243). There may even be an act of resistance against oppressive and sexist cultural “norms” in the way that female rugby players gain “equality, self-definition and control of their own bodies to such a degree that it challenges male domination” (Carle and Nauright, 1999, p.56). Other factors such as camaraderie and bonding are experienced more intensely in rugby because of the need for players to physically use their bodies to support and protect their team. This intensity forms also in response to the isolating effect of ridicule and judgement from more traditional quarters and this may be is one of the key reasons why women’s rugby teams are so popular at the present time. They provide emotional support in pursuing an identity that others may not agree with or identify with, and this can be very liberating. Reasons for dropout/withdrawal in sport Dropout rates are a general issue of concern in youth sport because of the beneficial effects of participation in physical health and social integration, and the harmful long term effects of physical inactivity in youth. Many studies report a sudden drop in attendance at voluntary sports activities in the early to mid teens, and there have been a number of factors mooted as causes. One study of boys’ participation in ice-hockey, for example, which amounts to a national sport in Canada, proposes that a significant factor is the quartile of birth of each child, since earlier birth brings that little bit extra maturity which in turn gives a significant advantage in sports selection procedures (Lemez, 2012). This is an interesting approach because it correlates drop out with school and club selection procedures, which run on an annual basis. If factors like this are found to affect all sports, including women’s rugby, then a change to school and club selection procedures to take account of differences in the month of birth would be a measure that could be taken to enhance retention. Valuable though this research is, it is not likely to present a full solution to high withdrawal rates from sport. A more general chapter on children’s withdrawal from sport in highlights the importance of goal setting, and continual monitoring and adjustment of goals as the key to maintaining motivation among participants in sporting clubs and activities. It appears that as cognitive, affective and physical capacities change in early adolescence, and a number of factors can contribute to a decision to withdraw, including “having other things to do, boredom, lack of success, too much pressure, loss of interest, friends leaving, expense, injury, work, and problems with facilities or support” (Whitehead, 1993, p. 109). It has been suggested that in the domain of elite sports, with the exception of football, there is a lack of reliable data on the influence that injuries have on the sports participation of young people (Steffen and Engebretsen, 2010, p. 485). In women’s rugby there is neither the infrastructure, nor the funding, to carry out exhaustive monitoring of such factors, and yet they may be significant in influencing young women to leave the sport and take up other, less physically demanding or risky activities. Some earlier studies have shown that gender/role conflict is a reason why some women drop out of sport (Sage and Loudermilk, 1979). This has been reviewed again more recently with some support (Miller and Levy, 1996) and with some disagreement (Fallon and Jome, 2007). It is suggested by Fallon and Jone (2007) that a focus on gender-role conflict may be an outdated view, since many women display resiliency in the face of discrepant gender-role messages coming from the mainstream, and enjoy carving out for themselves a gender and a role in a way that is powerful and helps shape their environment. Times have certainly changed in terms of the visibility and at least partial acceptance of lesbians in mainstream popular culture, for example, and this may be one factor which reduces the amount of conflict which women in sport perceive. The only way to ascertain the truth of the matter is to conduct longitudinal research into the patterns of drop out that occur in women who participate in specific sports. One such empirical study of 336 French female handball players between the ages of 13 and 15 was conducted over three years (Guillet et al., 2000). This sample were all active in the sport at regional level, and they trained on average 4 hours per week. In French culture handball is regarded as a traditionally “sex-inappropriate sport,” and so in some ways it is a cultural equivalent of rugby in the UK. The method of this study was to administer a questionnaire designed to measure femininity (on the basis of asking subjects to rate themselves on attributes such as being affectionate, taking the lead, etc) and then categories the participants on the basis of their answers into categories labelled feminine, masculine, undifferentiated and androgynous. The subjects were monitored to check how long they remained active in their sport, and the exact point of dropout was mapped against the gender categories. The results showed that “feminine and undifferentiated girls stopped the practice of handball significantly earlier than did girls who fell into the categories “masculine” and “androgynous” (Guillet et al., 2000, p. 417). The amount and the timing of dropout was different for each category: after 823 days (the equivalent of three playing seasons) the surviving proportion of players was 76% of the androgynous players, 69% of masculine, 56% of feminine and 50% of undifferentiated groups (Guillet et al., 2000, p. 420). The authors believe that though withdrawal from sport is typical of both boys and girls in this age group, the drop off is higher in girls and they make a link with gender role conflict theory. They cite the evidence for this in the difference between feminine girls’ dropout rates at the end of the first year of practice of 38% as opposed to the average of all other categories’ dropout rates of 16%. This study is intriguing because it suggests that there may be different factors at work at different ages since the pattern of dropout is not constant through time and not consistent across the different categories. The authors speculate that stereotypical media images have a role to play in this and conclude “If barriers remain in sporting practice, only the cross-gender-typed and androgynous types try to climb over them” (Guillet et al, 2000, p. 421). This article by Guillet et al (2000) is discussed at length because it is one of the few studies to use an empirical method to try and establish reliable facts about dropout levels in women’s sports. It gives good information on when the dropouts occur, but it is rather less reliable when it comes to working out exactly why they occur, and why they occur at these particular points. It serves therefore as both a good model to follow, in terms of method, and a warning of the danger of making assumptions based on missing data. There may be many other reasons for dropout, which were not considered in this article such as pressure of academic work at school, or other competing leisure interests which have nothing to do with gender identity and conflict. This is an area which requires much more research. Preliminary conclusions and areas for further investigation This literature review has shown that women’s sports have come a long way since the restrictions and exclusions of the early twentieth century. Women’s role in sport has matched women’s role in society, with phases of opposition to the dominance of men’s sports during the various feminist waves, and a gradual realisation that “central to the development of women’s sports is the issue of female agency and empowerment … although a strong tendency exists for sports to reproduce dominant culture, the potential also is present to transform it.” (Hargreaves, 1994, pp. 287-289). This means that in looking for reasons why women drop out of rugby, it is important to examine why they participate in the sport in the first place, and what other factors in their lives influence them to stay with the sport or move on to other forms of recreation, exercise and social context. The reasons for drop-out are likely to be diverse and complex – as diverse and complex as the many women who participate in rugby. Gender-role conflict may well be a part of the explanation why at a certain stage in their development young women choose to abandon rugby, but it is by no means the only reason, and it does not explain why some women choose to go on an pursue their interest in rugby well into adulthood. More research is needed in order to find more appropriate theories for thinking about women rugby players. 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