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…

Background: Female learning of movement in elite combat sports has not been studied enough to date. Literature on movement learning and teaching of complex skills has not, to date, focused on karate, and the scarce literature on the learning of elite karate practitioners mostly does not focus on women. Nevertheless, women fighters participated in…

This article highlights key points in the process of collaboration, creation, and assessment of a digital exhibit that tells the story of a larger digital collection, and its use in project-based assignments for a course on women's sporting experiences. The exhibit is intended to be both a classroom research tool and a model of digital…

This article will highlight key points in the process of collaboration, creation, and assessment of a digital collection intended to be used initially as a classroom tool, in addition to being a model of digital scholarship that can be used for research from anywhere in the world. This project originated from a class assignment for a course in…

The successes of 2012 in women's sports are worth celebrating--but professionals should not forget the important issues that still need to be addressed.

To assist readers who have specific interests, the WSF [Women's Sports Foundation] has created a series of Research Briefs from Her Life Depends On It III. Her Life Depends On It III is the Women's Sports Foundation's comprehensive report that reviews existing and emerging research on the links between participation in sport and physical activity…

Research analysing the operation of power within sport and physical activity has exposed the marginalisation and exclusion of women's sport in explicit and institutionalised ways. However, for women in recreational and alternative physical activities like surfing, sporting experiences lie outside institutionalised structures, thus requiring…

Background: Status or value in sport and physical education (PE) contexts is often associated with performances of highly proficient sporting bodies, which produce hierarchies of privileged and marginalised gendered and racialised positions. This may be communicated through text and images shared within school, physical cultures and media that…

In 1914 opportunities for working-class women's sports participation were limited and peripheral, but the 1980s, policy reforms resulted in the then Sports Council identifying women as a "target group". Subsequently the notion that barriers to women's participation are issues to be identified and resolved has become commonplace in…

"Her Life Depends On It III" (HLDOI) is the Women's Sports Foundation's comprehensive report that reviews existing and emerging research on the links between participation in sport and physical activity and the health and well-being of American girls and women. As with the previous editions in 2004 and 2009, this study also confirms that…

National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD) is a nationally celebrated event that promotes sport and physical activity opportunities for girls and women. Over 1,500 events and activities are held annually in all 50 states to celebrate and promote female participation in sport. This article introduces the sport/activity-clinic model of the NGWSD…

The purpose was to examine the impact of an email intervention campaign to increase physical activity among women. Participants' activity levels were assessed at baseline, immediately following the intervention and one year post intervention. (N = 475) received weekly Walking Tips Intervention Emails (WTIE) for 6 weeks. Participants were primarily…

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…

Opportunities for women in sport have expanded, whereas the media-driven ideal female continues to have a slender body. To attain the body that society has promoted, college-age females are vulnerable to psychological disordered eating risk. This study examines relationships among physical activity, body composition, and psychological eating…

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,…