New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures Feminist Futures for Sport

This book examines the historical present as a turning point for women who are moving into traditional masculine cultures of team contact sports. The authors investigate how shifting gender dynamics are reshaping sports practices, organisations, and representations. They ask: What happens when women’s sporting bodies enter spaces that have historically excluded them? How is this change embodied, experienced, and navigated by athletes, stakeholders, and organizations within the broader sports ecosystem? And how does resistance to gender equality manifest in different forms? Exploring how the challenge of gender inequity materialises through the relations and actions that are transforming sport organisations in complex ways, the book suggests that change must be translated in time and space, recognising the global and local forces that shape the sociomateriality of sport practices, organisations and assemblages. The pursuit of gender equity in sport as a political, economic and cultural phenomenon, raises key questions about how ‘value’, ‘markets’, ‘space’ and ‘time’ materialise through gendered formations. In this way the authors articulate a feminist future of sport for the present. Adele Pavlidis is Director of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and an Associate Professor of Sociology at Griffith University, Australia. Simone Fullagar is Chair of the Sport and Gender Equity research hub at Griffith University, Australia. Wendy O’Brien is Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith University, Australia. This book examines the historical present as a turning point for women who are moving into traditional masculine cultures of team contact sports. The authors investigate how shifting gender dynamics are reshaping sports practices, organisations, and representations. They ask: What happens when women’s sporting bodies enter spaces that have historically excluded them? How is this change embodied, experienced, and navigated by athletes, stakeholders, and organizations within the broader sports ecosystem? And how does resistance to gender equality manifest in different forms? Exploring how the challenge of gender inequity materialises through the relations and actions that are transforming sport organisations in complex ways, the book suggests that change must be translated in time and space, recognising the global and local forces that shape the sociomateriality of sport practices, organisations and assemblages. The pursuit of gender equity in sport as a political, economic and cultural phenomenon, raises key questions about how ‘value’, ‘markets’, ‘space’ and ‘time’ materialise through gendered formations. In this way the authors articulate a feminist future of sport for the present.