Search results

This chapter focuses on what we know about the intersections of gender, doping and sport and addresses the history, complexities and nuances of how gender impacts perceptions of and research on doping in sport. After establishing briefly what the physiology, psychology, media studies and sociology literature demonstrates with respect to the intersection of doping and gender, this chapter addresses how and why gender was neglected in the creation of anti-doping policies. The lack of thought toward gender in the creation of the current anti-doping system, combined with the conflation of drug testing and sex testing issues by the International Olympic Committee's medical commission in the 1960s, has led to persistent gender stereotypes associated with anti-doping rule violations. As a result, unintended overlap between sex testing and drug testing continues, with implications for the eligibility of intersex and transgender athletes.

This paper aims to conduct the first cross-sectional survey on depression, Resilience, well-being, depression symptoms and concussion levels in equestrian athletes and to assess whether past concussion rates were associated with depression, resilience and well-being.

In total, 511 participants from Canada, Republic of Ireland, UK, Australia and USA took part in an international cross-sectional, online survey evaluating concussion history, depression symptoms, resilience and well-being.

In total, 27.1% of athletes met clinically relevant symptoms of major depressive disorder. Significant differences were shown in the well-being and resilience scores between countries. Significant relationships were observed between reported history of concussion and both high depression scores and low well-being scores.

Findings highlight the need for mental health promotion and support in equestrian sport.

Results support previous research suggesting a need for enhanced mental health support for equestrians. There is reason to believe that mental illness could still be present in riders with normal levels of resilience and well-being.

This study examined an understudied athlete group: equestrian athletes and presents important findings with implications for the physical and mental health of this population.

In 2020, Sports Illustrated proclaimed its “Sportsperson of the Year” as something dubbed “the activist athlete,” choosing five athletes – LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif – that represented the term. Like so many athletes who came before them, these athletes vividly demonstrate the potential of sport to shine a spotlight on critical issues in society, yet again solidifying how sport does not exist merely as some kind of escape, but is a major stakeholder in global campaigns for social justice.

This chapter historicizes the contemporary resurgence of athlete activism, largely connected to the reawakening of Black Lives Matters (BLM) in 2020, within what journalist Howard Bryant has called The Heritage, with athletes who acknowledge and accept the charge to use their spotlights for those who have none. From the turning point of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which saw collective movements of African-American athletes culminate in the powerful Black power protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a protest that built upon the legacies of so many, to the ongoing debates that surround the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Rule 50, athletes have long understood how sport serves not only as an integral part of society but also as an agent for change. Contemporary cries for athletes to “shut up and dribble” echo past claims that sport takes place on a level playing field that transcends politics. The history of sports demonstrates otherwise, as athletes embody every imaginable, intersectional, classification of political actor.

The intent of this chapter is to examine the historical and present-day intersections of injury, impairment, pain and risk-taking in the Paralympic Movement. While much has been written about injuries that end an athlete’s career, far less consideration has been given to how an injury might launch a sports career. In this chapter, I explore the experiences of athletes for whom injury and sports participation are fundamentally entwined.

To accomplish this, I draw on sociological literature on sport and injury, psychological literature on identities and sport retirement and feminist disability theories. The discussion is further enriched by interviews with Paralympic athletes and informed by own experience as a researcher, guide and volunteer in the Paralympic Movement.

This work illustrates how systems of representation intersect to (re)produce identities. This includes demonstrating how some individuals use sport as a means of claiming an athletic identity while distancing themselves from devalued disabled identities and the subsequent impact this can have on their psycho-social well-being.

This chapter demonstrates how sociologists of sports can engage with critical disability scholarship to deepen understandings of how and why individuals with impairments enter into sport and their experiences therein.

In the months leading up to, and during, the 2021 legislative session – the most dangerous for trans athletes in the history of the United States – 1,224 news articles, public statements and opinion pieces were published through online sources about trans people having access to sport. Conducting a textual analysis of those mediated articles, we conclude that trans athletes are being used by conservative political forces to instigate a social, moral panic. We identified three primary framings being used to instil a moral panic in articles published between 1 December 2020, and 1 June 2021, inflaming the debate over trans athletes. First, trans athletes have been positioned as spectres haunting the future of sport. Second, narratives of fear frame trans women as psychologically malevolent. Finally, conservative politicians are creating a moral panic to paint themselves as protectors of cisgender girls in sport. We conclude by describing the ways fears about trans athletes are being politicized by larger conservative forces that may have especially harmful ramifications for both trans athletes and cisgender women athletes.

While sports have historically provided a space for Black males to experience a high sense of self-efficacy, the question about whether or not it transfers to educational endeavors persists. A challenge for practitioners is to ensure that Black males also thrive educationally as well as in their athletic pursuits. The author presents a brief history of Black males’ participation in sport, along with the historical implications of such participation. The utility of empowerment theory is explored within the context of promoting the college and career readiness of Black male student-athletes in high school. High school counselors’ use of empowerment theory is specifically highlighted. Specific indicators of college and career readiness are discussed, and the author posits the use of empowerment theory in counseling and advising can facilitate positive change in this process, assuring that sports remains the positive mobilizing mechanism that it can be for all student-athletes.

In August, 2015, Serena Williams, one of the most successful female athletes of all time, was body shamed in a New York Times article. The incident highlights the issue of unequal treatment of male and female athletes – while a muscular frame enhances masculinity for male athletes, a muscular physique invites body shaming for female athletes. In this study, symbolic interactionist theories regarding the generalized other are called into question. While George Mead's theorizing exhibits a nonproblematic role taking of the generalized other in a cooperative manner, this study reports the presence of paradoxical generalized others, and consequently, the incongruent role taking of a latent generalized other by individuals. This study investigates if the issue of body image exists among college female athletes, if college female athletes experience the dilemma of choosing between outstanding performance with a muscular frame or maintaining traditional female appearance. To provide answers to the question, female athletes in a midwest university were invited to fill out a survey. The survey results confirm the existence of a paradox between performance and appearance among some college female athletes.

Mothers play important roles in their families' lives. When they are high performance athletes, they need specific supports that will enable them to excel in their roles as mother athletes. The feminist qualitative research in this chapter is based on data from two studies drawn from semi-structured interviews with elite female distance runners: 14 in 2013–2014 and 11 in 2021. We address two questions: (1) what are the considerations that elite female distance runners make around planning their pregnancy(ies) and family lives? and (2) how have experiences shifted between athlete interviews in 2013–2014 and a new cohort of athletes in 2021? In order to address these questions, we drew on three complementary theoretical approaches: liberal feminism, radical feminism, and strategic essentialism. Further, we then used thematic analysis and generated three broader themes about elite female distance runners that aligned with both cohorts of athletes. First, athletes are forced to plan/strategize their pregnancies around finances, competitions, contracts, and spousal supports due to the lack of support from athletic governing bodies or corporate sponsors. Second, female athletes who choose to have children experience stress and uncertainty in their athletic careers that their male counterparts do not. Third, elite female athletes are demanding that further change occur to address these inequalities, and participants offered a number of potential solutions to improve supports for these athletes. Although solid progress has been noted in the timeframes of our two cohorts, further commitment from athletic governing bodies and corporate sponsors is needed to work toward gender equity in athletics.

The purpose of this research was to examine the role of intersectionality (multiple marginalized identities) in narratives used within online media coverage of women's sports. The authors adopted an intersectionality lens and drew from sports media literature to explore the representation of Black athletes in women's sport.

The authors conducted a quantitative content analysis of online articles from ESPN, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated from the 2020 WNBA Season. The authors coded the number of times an athlete was mentioned in an article, the athlete's race, publicly disclosed sexual orientation and gender expression. The authors used hierarchical regression to examine the relationship between an athlete's social identities and frequency of media mentions.

Within mainstream online sport media, Black WNBA athletes receive less media attention than white WNBA athletes. Black athletes who do not present in traditionally feminine ways receive the least amount of media attention, while white athletes have the freedom to express their gender in a variety of ways and still capture media interest. Within league press releases, however, there is no difference in media mentions based on race, sexual orientation or gender expression.

The findings in this research are important for sport media professionals who write stories and player-activists who are pursuing racial justice. Outlets should commit to antiracist storytelling practices. Players, player agents and players' associations—all of whom have shown their power to create change for a more equitable industry and society—should also advocate for and organize around practices that create more equitable media coverage.

This study is one of the few empirical investigations of women's professional sport that examines the influence of intersecting social identities.