“You’re Not Allowed Body Checking in Women’s Hockey”: Preserving Gendered and Nationalistic Hegemonies in the 2006 Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament

Poniatowski, Kelly

doi:10.1123/wspaj.20.1.39

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This intersection of age and (dis)ability with gender substantiates our claim therefore that not only does hegemonic femininity underpin the experiences of women as athletes (e.g. Harris and Clayton, 2002; Krane, 2001b; Poniatowski, 2011), it can affect the careers of women coaches too.…”

Section: Concluding Thoughtssupporting

confidence: 75%

Surviving rather than thriving: Understanding the experiences of women coaches using a theory of gendered social well-being

Norman

Rankin-Wright

2016

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

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In shifting our gaze to the sociological impact of being in the minority, the purpose of this study was to substantiate a model of gendered social well-being to appraise women coaches' circumstances, experiences and challenges as embedded within the social structures and relations of their profession. This is drawn on indepth interviews with a sample of head women coaches within the UK. The findings demonstrate that personal lives, relationships, social and family commitments were sidelined by many of the participants in order to meet the expectations of being a (woman) coach. We locate these experiences in the organisational practices of high performance sport which hinder women coaches from having meaningful control over their lives. The complexities of identity are also revealed through the interplay of gender with (dis)ability, age and whiteness as evidence of hegemonic femininity within the coaching profession. Consequently, for many women, coaching is experienced as a 'developmental dead-end'. IntroductionThe coaching literature and indeed, sport and gender research more broadly, is saturated with studies and writing around the issue of women's underrepresentation as coaches. The consensus is that the coaching profession has long been and continues to be, a white male dominated occupation and that this is a global issue. Within the UK, the context for the present study, the statistic remains that only one in five qualified coaches are women (Sports Coach UK, 2011). Globally, figures reveal that one in ten accredited Olympic coaches are women (Norman, 2014). To provide country-specific examples, Australia currently have no women as national managers for any sport other than for gymnastics and netball (Robertson, 2016). In Germany, 10% of high performance coaches and 13% of professional coaches are women (Robertson, 2016).Paradoxically, in Finland, a country known for its societal and political embrace of the notions of gender 2 equality, men are in the majority in coaching. In team sports, two thirds of head coaching roles are taken by men (Robertson, 2016). In Canada, the percentage of women in both high performance coaching and university head coaching roles is approximately 20% (Coaching Association of Canada, 2012;Donnelly and Kidd, 2011). Within the UK, the underrepresentation persists despite an improvement in wider social attitudes and legislation towards equality and diversity within the UK society (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2010) and the action in response to this legislative pressure by sporting organisations and national governing bodies. Since the introduction of the 2010 Equality Act by the UK Government, within sport and coaching there has been an increasing interest in and emergence of equalities on the agenda of policy makers and organisations (Nottinghamshire County Council, 2010), as part of a broader trend towards mainstreaming equality across the sectors (Mulderrig, 2007). Sporting governing bodies and organisations are seemingly providing more opportunities for minor...

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Section: Concluding Thoughtssupporting

confidence: 75%

Surviving rather than thriving: Understanding the experiences of women coaches using a theory of gendered social well-being

Norman

Rankin-Wright

2016

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

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“…126). In her analysis of the media coverage of the 2006Women's Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament,Poniatowski (2011) identified how commentators pointed to the illegality of bodychecking to construct players in a way that "serves to support stereotypes of femininity-frailty, weakness, passivity and inferiority" (p. 44). Within the parameters of this study, it is important to position bodychecking as a mediatized event, loaded with affective weight, and interrogate how it functions within the flow of affect from, to and between the viewer and sport media.…”

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confidence: 99%

Frozen Out: Audiences, Affect and Women’s Hockey

Gall¹

2021

Preprint

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Every four years, millions of Canadians watch women play hockey during the Olympics. Yet when it comes to regularly scheduled professional games, that audience dramatically decreases. In 2019, low audience numbers led to the closure of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and put the future of professional women’s hockey in jeopardy. As with many women’s sports, broadcasters argue the cost of production is too great, the value of airtime minutes too high to take the financial risk of televising the women’s game without guaranteeing viewers for advertisers. Activists and athletes argue that the audience must be built through broadcaster investment. While scholars have examined hockey for its representational power to define national and gendered identities, there has been shockingly little research into the hockey audience. This mixed method audience reception study seeks to explore the viewing inconsistencies of the audience for women’s hockey. Quantitative results from an online survey (n =685) provided data about viewing habits, perceptions and knowledge. This data informed qualitative focus groups (n = 25) that in turn provided contextualization and reasoning for the quantitative data. Mixed method analysis intersected grounded theory with audience reception, sport media, feminist studies and affect theory to identify a persistent discursive strategy framing women’s hockey as “pure” for resisting the crass commercialization, incessant violence and individualistic star system of professional men’s hockey. I argue that women’s hockey becomes the manifestation of the Canadian myth of hockey; men’s hockey as it used to be. As a nostalgic placeholder devoid of context, contemporary women’s hockey functions within a double bind; virtuous and elevated yet non-viable as a commercial enterprise. This ensures that the sport remains precarious at best. “Pure” women’s hockey also functions as a postfeminist essentializing discourse that solves the gender risk of hockey’s hypermasculinity while disavowing women’s physically aggressive play and sport media’s affective currency. Whereas Olympic women’s hockey relies on patriotic pride for audience affective engagement, professional women’s hockey is framed by cognitive contradictions, “pure” but commercial, gender normative but transgressive. Confused and disconnected from the game and players, audiences are left unaffected.

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Lacrosse History, a History of One Sport or Two? A Comparative Analysis of Men's Lacrosse and Women's Lacrosse in the United States

Wiser

2014

The International Journal of the History of Sport

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“You’re Not Allowed Body Checking in Women’s Hockey”: Preserving Gendered and Nationalistic Hegemonies in the 2006 Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Surviving rather than thriving: Understanding the experiences of women coaches using a theory of gendered social well-being

Surviving rather than thriving: Understanding the experiences of women coaches using a theory of gendered social well-being

Frozen Out: Audiences, Affect and Women’s Hockey

Lacrosse History, a History of One Sport or Two? A Comparative Analysis of Men's Lacrosse and Women's Lacrosse in the United States

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