This article explores the potential for martial arts to support transformation and community building for women. Findings indicate women can derive many individual benefits from learning martial arts. Yet, the benefits must extend beyond the individual level to create social change. Based on an evaluation of literature on women's experiences…

Traditional narratives of sport posit winning as the defining goal in ways that can feel and be exclusionary to young people and result in a lack of enjoyment and subsequent decision to avoid or discontinue involvement in sport. This is particularly true for girls and young women who participate in sport at lower rates and quit at higher rates…

The current debate swirling around the inclusion of transgender individuals in sports is a complex and nuanced issue. This article reflects on how athletic organizations have historically dealt with this dilemma, as well as covers key legal battles that have surfaced in recent years in secondary schools and universities across America. With the…

Despite the growing popularity of women's ice hockey in North America, players continue to face limitations because of the prohibition of body checking. In this paper, we argue from a liberal feminist philosophical perspective that this prohibition reinforces existing traditional stereotypes of female athletes. Because the women's game does not…

The experiences of female sports fans have been largely marginalised in academic research to date and little research has examined the formative sporting experiences of female spectators. This article draws on 51 semi-structured interviews with three generations of female fans of one (men's) professional football club (Leicester City), to consider…

This article explores the possibilities of epistolary criticism within the realm of sport studies and aspires to encourage scholars to consider the use of non-traditional sport memorabilia and source materials when telling emotive stories about sport and sport practices. The use of letters and the letter-writing format to tell a personal narrative…

Tickets to college sports--and men's and women's Division I college basketball in particular--may appear on the surface no different than tickets members of the public may buy to attend professional sporting events. But unlike professional franchises, colleges are non-profit organizations and, in many cases, public institutions. Decisions around…

Prior research has found that referees are harsher toward sporting offenses in regional-level matches between women than in regional-level matches between men. We tested whether this bias also occurs at a higher, national level of competition, despite the greater pressures for objectivity and fairness at this level. Referees' decisions were…

Between 1972 and 1978 U.S. high schools rapidly increased their female athletic participation rates--to approximately the same level as their male athletic participation rates--in order to comply with Title IX, a policy change that provides a unique quasi-experiment in female athletic participation. This paper examines the causal implications of…

This first-of-its-kind report on gender and high school sports participation, "Progress Without Equity: The Provision of High School Athletic Opportunity in the United States, by Gender 1993-94 through 2005-06," flows from an analysis of high schools that is unprecedented in its national and historical scope. It uses merged data from the Civil…

Title IX of the Education Reformation Act was passed in 1972 for the purpose of providing equality between males and females in intercollegiate sports. Since its inception the disparity between men's and women's varsity athletics programs has persisted throughout American colleges and universities. Discrimination and equal protection concerns…

This research examines the phenomenon of sexist naming of women's athletic teams at four-year colleges and universities in the southern United States. Drawing on theoretical and methodological insights from feminist scholarship on gender and sports, gendered language, and intersecting systems of race and gender inequalities, the author analyzes…

In 2004, the Women's Sports Foundation published the first edition of "Her Life Depends On It" (Sabo et al.). At that time, it was clear that evidence-based research confirmed that regular physical activity and sport provides the critical foundation, in no small part, that allows girls and women to lead healthy, strong, and fulfilled lives. Now,…

Mixing methods has recently achieved respectability as an appropriate approach to research design, offering a variety of advantages (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to outline and evaluate a mixed methods approach within the domain of coaches' decision making. Illustrated with data from a policy-capturing study on…

An increased awareness of the gendered traditions of physical activity portrayed in vintage book series for girls and boys may provide teachers with a deeper understanding of (still) current ideological assumptions affecting female and male participation in sport and recreational activity. This article explores a unique girls' fiction series about…