England’s proxy warriors? Women, war and sport

Abstract

It has been claimed that the one place Englishness exists in on the sports field (Robinson, 2008), and often it is men's sport that appears central to creating a sense of English national identity (Tuck, 2003). However, in light of England's recent sporting success across multiple women's sports (namely cricket, netball, association football and rugby union), there warrants a need to begin to question the place of these women in discussions of the nation (Bairner, 2015). Drawing on extensive interview data with women who have represented England at sport, this paper seeks to 'give a voice' to these women whose experiences have often been ignored by both the popular press and academics alike. This research discusses the way in which English women represent their nation, both on the field of play and more broadly, and sheds light on the complexity of the intersections of gender and national identity. It is argued that, through playing international, representative sport, the women actively embody the nation, with national identity often overriding gendered identity in these instances. In this sense, they become proxy warriors for the nation.

Radical right populist politics in Hungary: Reinventing the Magyars through sport

“…With specific reference to the Cold War era, in which Hoberman was writing, he noted that his work: ...interprets the political cultures of sport as proxy warriors in a larger ideological conflict which has pitted Marxist dogma, in its variety, against its two historical adversaries: first, fascism, and then the postwar non-Communist bloc, which runs the gamut from quasi-fascist (anti-Marxist) dictatorships to the (anti-Marxist) liberal democracies. (Hoberman, 1984: 6) Whilst this conceptualisation of sportspeople as 'proxy warriors' clearly resonates with the ideological clash between 'East' and 'West' in sporting 'mega-events' such as the Olympic Games in the Cold War era (Grix, 2013;Peppard and Riordan, 1993;Roche, 2002), it has also possessed explanatory value for analysing the nature of the interconnection between sport, politics and the 'nation' in various post-Cold War geographic contexts (Bowes and Bairner, 2018;Cashmore, 2005;Jedlicka, 2018;Merkel, 2009). The ability of sport to evoke nationalist sentiments and support amongst a nation's population has, therefore, unsurprisingly not gone unnoticed by political leaders, autocratic or democratic alike.…”

Print Media Narratives of Bullying and Harassment at the Football Association: A Case Study of Eniola Aluko

“…Who is represented in the sports media is connected to ideas about national identity and representation. Bowes and Bairner (2016) demonstrate how media representations of Britishness for female athletes are complex, contradictory and often differ from male athletes representations. In this respect, who represents the nation in sport is about power (Black, 2016).…”

Three Lions on Her Shirt: Hot and Banal Nationalism for England’s Sportswomen

“…For example, while Harris and Clayton (2007) have also proclaimed football as the national English sport, they state that this has allowed it to “embody the nation’s collective claim to authority in a power relations sense and, as such, provides the ideal arena for the creation of heroes and figures of hegemonic masculinity” (p. 213). We then see the nation in masculine terms and a development of a masculine Englishness (Bowes & Bairner, 2018), and this is significant in England where sport is one of the only social institutions that separates, or marks out as different, the home nations within the United Kingdom. With sport being so central to the development of an English national identity, it is obvious that women should be positioned as outsiders to this relationship (Black & Fielding-Lloyd, 2017).…”

“…Both the nation and sport, then, rely on social constructions of masculinity and femininity as framing devices, and Bowes and Bairner (2018) draw attention to the masculine construction of Englishness in sporting contexts. The relationship between women, the construction of nations, and the reproduction of national identities remain generally underresearched, which serves to write women out of literature on sporting nationalisms, too (Bowes & Bairner, 2018). Given that the literature on women and sporting nationalisms is woefully underdeveloped, as a result, their experiences have seldom been directly addressed.…”

“…National identity is then constructed, established, and confirmed through the achievement of male sports stars. Harris and Clayton (2007) explain that, subsequently, “male sports stars emit the masculine status of the nation’s men” (p. 214), and as such it would seem that the Englishness that is most often imagined is masculine (Bowes & Bairner, 2018). Men’s football provides a tangible representation as to what it means to be English.…”