Safeguarding is a major area of research, policy, and practice for contemporary sports scholars, practitioners, and stakeholders. In recent years, the concept of safeguarding (broadly: the prevention of harassment and abuse) as applied to sport settings has expanded to include not only sexual harassment and abuse, but also individual (e.g. disordered eating; self-harm), relational (e.g. psychological, physical, sexual harassment and abuse), and organisational (e.g. systemic discrimination; medical mismanagement) forms of violence. In 2016 the International Olympic Committee published its landmark Consensus Statement on non-accidental violence (harassment and abuse) in sport (IOCCS). Concomitantly, sports organisations have increasingly regulated women's eligibility through 'female eligibility policies' under the premise of safeguarding. This is particularly exemplified by World Athletics' 2019 Female Eligibility Regulation (WAFER). The WAFER, however, has received substantial critique, particularly in terms of the systemic discrimination and medical harm that it has been shown to enact on certain groups of marginalised women. In this article, we undertake a comparative document analysis to evaluate female eligibility regulations within the framework of contemporary sport safeguarding policy and practice. Our analysis finds that safeguarding, especially with regard to 'fairness' and women athletes, adopts a conflicting identity due to three primary reasons: (1) lack of organisational accountability; (2) focusing on interpersonal harms rather than systemic violence; and (3) attention to science over athlete voice. As such, we conclude by urging a critical re-examination of the conceptualisation and implementation of safeguarding, positioning organisational violence enacted through female eligibility policies as a sports safeguarding issue.
Nike, a US-headquartered transnational corporation lauded for its putatively empowering women-centered advertisements, frequently releases nationally/regionally focused advertisements depicting women determinedly engaging in physical activity and, in doing so, overcoming gendered barriers and stigmas. Indeed, the global ubiquity of the empowered (Nike-clad) woman illustrates Nike’s role in advancing women’s empowerment, both in the US and globally. Universalizing “just do it” beyond geographical borders, Nike’s form of transnational feminism centers on a carefully manufactured, Western-centered image of empowered female athleticism. However, this notably contradicts transnational feminist efforts to reject the universalization of Western-centered representations of women. Using a critical cultural studies approach in concert with a transnational feminist framework, we analyze six recent Nike advertisements (the United States, Mexico, the Middle East, Turkey, India, and Russia) and critique the corporation’s universalization of neoliberal postfeminist messaging within its global marketing strategies. We find that Nike utilizes three thematics to extend their caricature of the (Nike-powered) female athlete beyond the spatial and symbolic borders of the US market: responsibilitization, competitive individualism, and empowerment. We conclude that Nike normalizes a white, Western-centered neoliberal postfeminism, undermining the structural and sporting realities of the non-white/non-Western women their promotional campaigning seeks to embolden.
Women's sport remains a contested realm that frequently features standards and regulations premised on women's inferiority and physiological distinctions from men. In response to these purported sex-based differences, a range of protective policies have been implemented to ostensibly ensure women's safety and health, defend “fair competition” in women's sport, and/or prevent the violation of social and medical boundaries that define who is a “woman.” Yet, protective policies encompass a multitude of rationales and strategies, demonstrating the malleability of “protection” in terms of who is protected and why. In this article, I draw from Michel Foucault's theory of “governmentality” to investigate the nuances of protective policies, especially their placed importance on sex differences. To do so, I examine three case studies: World Athletics’ (WA) 2019 female eligibility policy, WA's 2019 transgender eligibility policy, and the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) consensus statement on relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). Using document texts and semi-structured interviews with eight scientists involved with developing the case studies, I find that protective policies are developed through messy and often contentious processes that selectively draw from varying knowledges and discourses. This then culminates in contrasting methods of defining, protecting, and governing women athletes and their bodies.
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