Introduction: why a Research Handbook on Gender and Diversity in Sport Management

Abstract

The involvement of women in sport and the excellence shown by women athletes is no longer headline news. The gender ratio of participants at the Olympic Games is near 50%. Although not all leaders in sport must have an athletic career, this significant number of female athletes suggests the presence of a large pool of women knowledgeable in sport who can take on leadership positions and work in sport management. However, in the growing sub-field of sport management research, gender is significantly less prominent as a research topic. Two recent and thorough reviews of the literature on the obstacles encountered by LGBTQ+ in sport revealed that most of this literature focused on athletes rather than on sport leaders or managers (Denison et al., 2021;Shaw & Cunningham, 2021). Similarly, a review of research about gender and sport organizations in five major sport sociology journals revealed that when articles have focused on gender, they have primarily, but not exclusively, explored the gendering of sport participation rather than the gendering of sport work/leadership (Knoppers et al., 2023). While much sport research currently champions the role of women athletes, Marissa Banu-Lawrence et al. (2020) add that "[t]he interaction between gender and leadership development remains an underexplored body of research" (p. 570