Prelims

Half Title Page

The Professionalisation of Women's Sport

Series Title Page

Emerald Studies in Sport and Gender

Series Editor

Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, University of Toronto, Canada.

Editorial Board: Doug Booth, University of Otago, New Zealand; Jayne Caudwell, Bournemouth University, UK; Delia Douglas, University of British Columbia, Canada; Janice Forsyth, University of Western Ontario, Canada; Tara Magdalinski, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia; Jaime Schultz, Pennsylvania State University, USA; Heather Sykes, University of Toronto, Canada; Beccy Watson, Leeds Beckett University, UK.

Emerald Studies in Sport and Gender promotes research on two important and related areas within sport studies: women and gender. The concept of gender is included in the series title in order to problematize traditional binary thinking that classifies individuals as male or female, rather than looking at the full gender spectrum. In sport contexts, this is a particularly relevant and controversial issue, for example, in the case of transgender athletes and female athletes with hyperandrogenism. The concept of sport is interpreted broadly to include activities ranging from physical recreation to high-performance sport.

The interdisciplinary nature of the series will encompass social and cultural history and philosophy as well as sociological analyses of contemporary issues. Since any analysis of sport and gender has political implications and advocacy applications, learning from history is essential.

Title Page

The Professionalisation of Women's Sport: Issues and Debates

Edited by

Ali Bowes

Nottingham Trent University, UK

And

Alex Culvin

University of Salford, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80043-197-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-196-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-198-0 (Epub)

List of Figure and Tables

About the Contributors

Dr Carly Adams is a Board of Governors Research Chair (Tier II) and Professor of Sport History in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. As a social and cultural historian, her research explores community, identity, gender, and sport governance. Carly is the Editor of Sport History Review.

Dr Nola Agha is an Professor at the University of San Francisco. She studies inequitable redistributions of wealth, the structural forces that allow for inequities, and policies that can remedy them. This includes the public subsidisation of professional sport as well as gender inequities present in women's sport.

Dunja Antunovic, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sport Sociology at the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. She researches the relationship between sport, media and gender, with a focus on media representations of women's sport, gender issues in the sport industry, and consumption of women's sport.

Dr Jo Batey is a Senior Fellow in Knowledge Exchange (Sport and Exercise Psychology). She has been teaching at the University of Winchester since 1998. Her PhD examined the impact of expectancy effects on the feedback provided on student work.

David Berri is a Professor of Economics at Southern Utah University. He has authored or co-authored 4 books and more than 65 papers on sports and economics. Recently, his research has focused on gender issues, specifically the gender-wage gap in sports, women and coaching, and consumer demand for women's sports.

Dr Ali Bowes is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport at Nottingham Trent University. Ali is broadly interested in socio-cultural explorations of women in elite/professional sport settings. Her PhD from Loughborough University centred on gender, national identity and elite women's sport in England, which she published in peer-reviewed journals and in edited collections. She has since published research on professional women's golf, media coverage of women's sport and social media usage of elite/professional women athletes. Ali has been featured in the mainstream media, writing for The Conversation, and interviewed for the The New York Times and various podcasts.

Dr Beth G. Clarkson is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Management and Development at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests centre on three broad areas of leadership, gender, and emotion. Beth is the 2020 Celia Brackenridge International Research Award winner for excellence in scholarship on women in sport.

Dr Alex Culvin is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Business at the University of Salford Business School. Alex’s research interests lie in elite sport, business management, policy, work and gender. She is currently co-editing two books on professional women’s sport and professional women’s football respectively. Alex is chair of the Football Collective, a global network of football scholars. Alex completed her PhD in 2019, in the first study to examine professional football as work for women in England. As a former professional footballer, Alex had unique access to professional footballers and maintains considerable networks within professional sport. Alongside this, Alex has had her work published in the Telegraph Sport, BBC Sport and the Athletic. Alex tweets from: @alexculvin.

Dr Hunter Fujak is a Lecturer in Sports Management at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include sport consumer behaviour and sport broadcasting, and he has previously worked in sport consultancy as an audience and sponsorship analyst for Australasia's largest sporting leagues and events.

Clare Hanlon is a Professor at Victoria University and a pre-eminent scholar focused on building organisational and community capacity to encourage girls and women as players and leaders in sport and physical activity. Clare has led projects ranging from assisting managers to recruit and retain women in sport and physical activity programs in Malaysia, to developing and evaluating systems, policies and programs to encourage women as players and leaders in sport and physical activity in Australia.

Emma Kavanagh is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Psychology and Coaching Sciences at the Department of Sport and Event Management at Bournemouth University, UK. Emma's research centres on critically examining abuse in virtual and face-to-face sporting environments, understanding the duty of care, and enhancing safeguarding in sporting spaces.

Dr Aila Khan is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the School of Business at Western Sydney University. Her main research interest lies in social marketing. Aila is a member of the Research Ethics Committee at her University. She has been an ERASMUS scholar in Poland and Spain.

Robert J. Lake, Department of Sport Science, Douglas College, Canada, is interested in tennis, especially issues of class/social exclusion, gender/behavioural etiquette, race/ethnicity, national identity, talent development and coaching. He authored A Social History of Tennis in Britain (2015) and edited the Routledge Handbook of Tennis: History, Culture and Politics (2019).

Stacey Leavitt is a PhD Student in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. Her current research focuses on girls' and women's sport governance at both the grassroots and professional levels. Other areas of research interest include media, identity, and sport governance.

Andrew D. Linden, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sport Studies in the Department of Kinesiology at the California State University, Northridge. He researches the intersections between sport and politics, with a focus on social movements.

Dr Chelsea Litchfield is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Head of the School of Exercise Science, Sport and Health at the Charles Sturt University. Dr Litchfield's research focuses broadly on gender, sport and media, and in particular, on women and sport, gender-based abuse in social media spaces and feminist insights into sport.

Lucy Lomax is a Freelance Content Producer and Journalist. She completed her Masters in Sports Journalism at St Mary's University in 2014 and has worked in communications for various sports organisations including the English Institute of Sport and BBC Sport. Ms. Lomax now co-hosts and produces a weekly podcast around female physiology and the female athlete.

Robbie Matz is an Assistant Professor at Belmont University in the Sport Administration department. His research focuses on amateur and professional golf with emphasis on women’s golf. He is also the Managing Partner of Sport Business Intelligence, a sport consulting company that focuses on the triple bottom line of sporting events.

Brent McDonald is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Sport and a Research Fellow in the Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University, Melbourne. His research focuses on issues of diversity in sport especially at the intersection of racialisation and gender.

Fiona McLachlan is a Lecturer in Sport Studies and a Research Fellow in the Institute for Health and Sport at Victoria University, Melbourne. Her research primarily focuses on gender, sport and social change.

Donna O'Connor is a Professor of Sports Coaching and coordinates the sports coaching program at The University of Sydney. Her research focuses on coaching practice, athlete and coach development, and sports performance. Donna is a member of the NRL research board and World Congress Science and Football Steering Committee.

Dr Jaquelyn Osborne is a Lecturer in the School of Exercise Science, Sport and Health at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia. Dr Osborne researches and teaches in the psycho-social dimensions of sport, particularly in sport sociology and sport history and with a focus on gender and sports media.

Dr Keith D. Parry is Deputy Head of Department in the Department of Sport and Event Management at Bournemouth University and an Adjunct Fellow of Western Sydney University. His research interests are based on the sociology of sport, with a focus on sports fandom, health and the spectator experience.

Dr Jessica Piasecki is a Lecturer in Exercise Physiology at Nottingham Trent University. Her research interests encompass ageing and female athletes. This interest ranges from the physiological implication to sociological impact. Dr Piasecki is also an accomplished international distance runner.

Dr Jessica Richards is currently a Lecturer in Sport Management in the School of Business at Western Sydney University. Her research and teaching interests broadly focus on the sociology of sport and sport management, with a particular emphasis on the fan experience and stadium geography.

Adam Rugg is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Fairfield University. His research focuses on the intersection of sport, media, and social issues, with an emphasis on critically examining the ways in which league and team marketing negotiate issues of gender, race, and nationalism.

Suzanne Ryder is a PhD Candidate and Casual Lecturer in the Institute of Health and Sport at Victoria University, Melbourne. Her research focuses on a multi-sited examination of gender and labour relations in professional women's road cycling.

Michael Skey is a Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University. His research interests are in the areas of national belonging, globalisation, sociology of everyday life, media events and rituals, mediatisation, sport and discourse theory.

Dr Hendrik Snyders is the Head of the Department of History at the National Museum Bloemfontein and a Research Fellow at the Department of History at Free State University. His research focuses on race, sport, masculinity, memory, and colonialism. Hendrik graduated with a PhD (History) from the University of Stellenbosch.

Katie Taylor is a Doctoral Student at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University focussing on the history of female American football players. She is also a teacher at Peter Symonds Sixth Form College in Winchester where she specialises in the socio-cultural aspects of sport.

Tracy Taylor is a Professor at Victoria University and an internationally recognised sport management scholar, with 100+ peer-reviewed publications. Tracy has been awarded over $2 million in research grants and has led a number research projects nationally and internationally. Tracy's passion is diversity and inclusion in sport, and her current research explores aspects of women's professional team sport.

Hannah Thompson-Radford is an ESRC-funded Doctoral Researcher in Communication and Media in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University. Her current PhD research focuses on how elite female cricketers use and perceive social media during major tournaments. Broadly her research interests are gender, sport and digital media.

Macauley Watt is a Graduate Student at North Central College. He is currently studying Higher Education Administration Leadership and is a graduate assistant for career development. He graduated from Bradley University with a degree in Sports Communication and worked in broadcast production, managing audio and camera operations, for college sports.

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Clearly, a collection like this is not possible without the hard work and support of many. Probably most importantly though, we want to acknowledge the trailblazing women who have consistently proven their worth in sport time and time again. Sportswomen, present and future, are standing on the shoulders of giants.