Athletic Intruders: Ethnographic Research on Women, Culture, and Exercise

AFTERWORD: Pastimes and Presentimes: Theoretical Issues in Research on Women in Action

INTRODUCTION: FEMINISM, SPORT, AND BORDERS Susan J. Birrell (1988:450–502) and M. Ann Hall (1990:223–39; 1993:48–68; 1996), two of the leaders in the history of the study of sport research, present a thorough socio-historical overview of developments in the field. Taken together, their research spans the entire history of sport study, emphasizing four major cultural-historical periods, each of which generated specific foci, questions, methods, and issues related to the cultural context of women’s place in sports. The focus of Birrell’s “Discourses on the Gender/Sport Relationship: From Women in Sport to the Study of Gender Relations” (1988) is: “. . . on the past twenty-five years, when physical educators formally began to question women’s exclusion from sport. Scholarly attention to women in sport developed in three stages that roughly parallel the decades: a slow, tentative start from 1960 to 1971, a period of groping for identity and direction from 1971 to 1980, and the current trend, evident since 1980, toward greater theoretical sophistication and diversity.” A F T E R W O R D ‫ﱰﱯ‬ Pastimes and Presentimes: Theoretical Issues in Research on Women in Action ANNE BOLIN AND JANE GRANSKOG 247 Ann Hall’s articles, “How Should We Theorize Gender in the Context of Sport?” (1990) and “Gender and Sport in the 1990s: Feminism, Culture, and Politics” (1993), along with her Feminism and Sporting Bodies: Essays on Theory and Practice (1996), extend the review of feminist socio-cultural studies of women and sport into the 1990s. The seminal research carried out by Birrell, Hall, and others, coupled with a review of the socio-historical foundations and current research on women in sport, are also brought together in the edited text by D. Margaret Costa and Sharon R Guthrie (1994), Women and Sport: Interdisciplinary Perspectives . The focus of this chapter is to use this body of research to present a summary review of the study of women in sport and to situate the role and contributions made by Athletic Intruders to further this process. The paradigms shaping research on women in sports are embedded in the changing cultural matrix in which women approach sports and exercise through their bodies, through models of femininity, and in conjunction with gender inequity in a complex society. We will provide a brief overview of this history, relying on Birrell, Hall, and Costa and Guthrie but will also extend this review to include anthropology and women’s physical activity. One cannot approach the history of the study of women in sports from a feminist perspective without addressing categories of research and definitions. These include defining feminism, or more accurately feminisms, and the domain of sport. As we shall discuss , the faces of feminism have changed historically along with the changing character of sport research, and these factors are both cause and consequence of the increasing participation of women in athletic activities. The historical-cultural context for this included broader legal, political, economic, and social change invigorated by the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. However, for introductory purposes, what we are generally referring to by the term “feminism” is research in which women and gender have been made visible and centralized in inquiry into the organization of social life. This perspective relates to the feminist stance that sport is “. . . a site for relations of domination and subordination . . . and as a site of resistance and transformation” (Hall 1996:31). Feminism is de facto related to a generalized political and humanist position that will settle for nothing less than socio-cultural equality for women, with sports as a vehicle for achieving these ends. While there is a diversity of extant feminisms, the feminisms of this book are of the cultural constructionist brand that challenge an ideology of biological essentialism. Moreover, as Costa and Guthrie note (1994:231), it is precisely the development of such feminist theories that has helped to transform our understanding of women’s sporting experience while providing an important venue for challenging sexist oppression and simultaneously promoting social change. 248 ANNE BOLIN AND JANE GRANSKOG APPROACHES TO THE GENDERING OF SPORT AND THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL VOICE The symbolic realm, where meanings are enacted, reproduces and sustains the material sector that is dominated by a patriarchal politicaleconomy assuring women’s subordinate position. However, the personal and experiential, the symbolic and the interpretive are also powerful domains that may be used to challenge the established order...