Introduction 


 

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The Sport Nexus and Gender Injustice 
 

Ann Travers, Simon Fraser University 

                                  

Abstract: Male-dominated and sex segregated elite professional and amateur sport
1
 in North 

America constitutes a "sport nexus" (Burstyn, 1999; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003) that combines 

economic and cultural influence to reinforce and perpetuate gender injustice. The sport nexus is 

an androcentric sex-segregated commercially powerful set of institutions that is highly visible 

and at the same time almost completely taken for granted to the extent that its anti-democratic 

impetus goes virtually unnoticed. The sport nexus’s hegemonic role in defining sporting norms 

(Coakley & Donnelly, 2004) means that its role in shaping lower level amateur and recreational 

sporting institutions and cultures is highly significant. Fraser (2007) defines gender justice, and 

hence democracy, in terms of "participatory parity," that is, material and cultural equality for 

women. The sport nexus itself is characterized by highly gendered occupational segregation 

(Coventry, 2004). It further contributes to gender injustice, homophobia and transphobia by 

promoting the ideology of the two sex system (Fausto-Sterling, 2000) and gendering citizenship 

as fundamentally male (Burstyn, 1999). Feminist strategies for sport reformation attempt to 

reduce or eradicate the role of the sport nexus in legitimating and perpetuating gender injustice. 

In this article I consider the potential of these strategies and conclude with a set of 

recommendations for transforming organized sport at both elite and recreational levels. 

 

 

Fraser (2007, 2000, 1997, 1993, 1987) has a long history of writing within the tradition of 

feminist political science/feminist theorizing on democracy and the public sphere (see also 

Pateman & Mills, 2007; Pateman, 1989; Paxton & Hughes, 2007; Barnes, Newman, & Sullivan 

2007; Conway, 2004; Young, 2000; Benhabib, 2004, 2002, 1996). Such feminist criticism of 

liberal-democratic theories and their supposed representation in western democracies is a well-

established intellectual tradition. This work reveals that granting women de facto citizenship has 

not alleviated the problems resulting from the androcentric biases of liberal democratic theory 

and western democracy: the very role of citizen has been conceptualized and actualized as a male 

role (Pateman & Mills, 2007; Pateman, 1989; Young, 2000).  

In her most recent work, Fraser contributes the concept of “participatory parity” as a measure 

of gender justice (2007). She contends that gender justice is a condition of democracy defined by 

cultural equality (recognition) and material equality (redistribution) (2007, p.25). Gender 

injustice results when women are denied participatory parity by being culturally devalued and 

economically marginalized. For a society to be considered genuinely democratic, therefore, 

Fraser argues that women need to be culturally and economically included. As Fraser (2008, p.1) 

explains in a recent interview, gender justice, and hence democracy, requires 

                                                 
1
 At the World and Olympic level 

 



 

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social arrangements that permit all members to participate in social interaction on a par with 

one another. So that means they must be able to participate as peers in all the major forms of 

social interaction: whether it's politics, whether it's the labour market, whether it's family life 

and so on. And parity of participation is quite demanding. It is not enough that there be 

simply the absence of legal discrimination; it means that you have all the effective conditions 

for really being able to participate.  

 

The realm of sport in general and that constituted by the sport nexus, in particular, clearly 

qualifies as a “major form of social interaction.” As such, conditions of participatory parity that 

are undermined in or by the sport nexus are incompatible with democracy. 

The power of participatory parity as a measure of gender justice depends on the very definition 

of gender justice itself. If gender justice is defined in accordance with a narrow focus on women 

as an uncomplicated category, many of the failings of second wave feminism – to address the 

interlocking social forces of gender, race, class and sexuality (Lemert, 1999) – are likely to be 

replicated. Furthermore, without queer feminism's anti-essential reading of sex, gender and 

sexuality (Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Burke, 1996; Butler, 2004, 1990; Haraway, 1997, 1991), much 

of the role of the sport nexus in contributing to gender injustice will remain invisible. The 

ideology of the two sex system itself is centrally implicated in gender hierarchy and supports 

sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. The sport nexus normalizes and reinforces the ideology of 

the two sex system to the detriment of women, gays and lesbians and the non-normatively 

gendered (gender queer and transgender persons). A queer (anti-essential) approach to the 

concept of participatory parity and gender justice reveals the role of the sport nexus - elite male 

dominated sex segregated professional  and amateur sport - in normalizing, legitimating and 

perpetuating the cultural and material marginalization of women and the non-normatively 

gendered. 

Common sense views of sport - including its portrayal by mainstream media - tend to insulate 

the sport nexus from critical examination, whether by trivializing it - as merely entertainment, 

recreation or as a hobby for spectators - or valorizing it - as a grand expression of so-called 

national or universal values. In keeping with the critical tradition of Sport Sociology, I draw 

attention to the role of the sport nexus in promoting and perpetuating gender injustice through 

the cultural and economic marginalization of women and the non-normatively gendered. Much 

of the critical work on gender and sport that documents its role in reinforcing orthodox 

masculinity and perpetuating sexism, however, fails to challenge the sex segregated structure of 

sport itself. This structure is coercive and in itself represents gender injustice (McDonagh & 

Pappano, 2008). 

The role of the sport nexus in contributing to gender injustice includes the institution‟s 

powerful role in normalizing and legitimating the ideology of the two sex system (Fausto-

Sterling, 2000). This ideology plays a significant cultural and economic role in the attendant 

devaluation of women, gays and lesbians, and transgender people. It is no accident that Fausto-

Sterling‟s Sexing the Body (2000) begins with a devastating critique of gender verification (sex) 

testing at the highest levels of sport to establish the failure of science to demarcate boundaries 

between male and female bodies. The measuring of bodily capacity and limitations that the sport 

nexus is purportedly organized around underscores its significant cultural role in the hierarchical 

demarcation of both sex and race boundaries (Douglas & Jamieson, 2006). That these socially 



 

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generated boundaries are culturally understood as natural and unmediated by social forces makes 

them all the more unassailable. 

 

 

The Sport Nexus and Citizenship 

 

The sport nexus plays a significant role in gendering citizenship as male (and white and 

heterosexual). In her analysis of sport in western society as a “sacred rite,” Canadian scholar 

Varda Burstyn (1999) documents the ways in which sport functions as a “men‟s club” that is 

used to consolidate male domination. Her specific claim is that sport solidifies masculine 

privilege and the related masculine subtext of citizenship and national identity. McDonagh and 

Pappano (2008) observe that American women's second-class citizenship in the world of sport 

translates into and mirrors women's second class citizenship in the nation itself.  In contrast to 

such racially inadequate accounts of masculine privilege, however, there is evidence to suggest 

that African-American and African-Canadian male participation in the sport nexus may actually 

reinforce racist assumptions about black physicality and unintelligence thereby, somewhat 

ironically, perpetuating racism through inclusion (Hoberman, 1997; Abdel-Shehid, 2005). My 

focus in this article is on the antidemocratic role of the sport nexus in perpetuating gender 

injustice (the cultural and material devaluation of women and gender transgressors), through its 

role in celebrating hegemonic masculinity and normalizing the two sex system, thereby 

institutionalizing and reinforcing gender inequality, homophobia and transphobia.   

The sport nexus genders citizenship as male by defining and reinforcing hegemonic 

masculinity and justifying (white, heterosexual) male supremacy (Connell, 1987; Anderson, 

2005).  In this role it complements and increasingly supplants the criteria of military service as a 

masculine qualifier for full citizenship (Mosse, 1988). In one of her earlier contributions, Fraser 

(1993) outlines the historical process whereby the role of citizen was conceptualized and 

actualized as a male role since it was ultimately dependent on an individual‟s ability to 

participate in political debate and, crucially, to defend his country in time of war. These qualities 

have been historically constructed as masculine rather than feminine (Fraser, 1987). While I 

grant the claim that Fraser and others make (Solaro, 2006; Feinman, 2000; Young, 2000) 

concerning the historical connection between masculinity, military service and citizenship, I 

contend that the role of the soldier and the military in embodying and celebrating orthodox 

masculinity in the west has declined considerably since the Vietnam war. This can be attributed 

to the public‟s awareness of the extent to which military forces are disproportionately made up of 

marginal rather than privileged members of the male population - in terms of class and race - 

(Jeffreys, 2007) and the public‟s increasing skepticism about the justness of wars starting with 

Vietnam, then the Falklands, through to the two U.S. led campaigns against Iraq and Canada‟s 

military involvement in Afghanistan (Solaro, 2006).  

The highly publicized and celebrated battles that men wage on the football field, the baseball 

diamond, on the basketball court and on the ice provide powerful pedigrees for male leadership 

in both sporting and non-sporting arenas. And not incidentally, the more closely a sport is tied to 

national identity, the greater the emphases are on its inherent masculinity and the need to erect 

barriers to female participation (Ring, 2008). For example, the sport of hockey is proclaimed by 

many to be "Canada's game." The Canadian men‟s hockey team victory over the Soviet Union in 

1972 is understood as a defining moment in Canada's nationhood; former star hockey player 



 

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Wayne Gretzky's celebrity status in Canada is much higher than that of any of the nation's 

political leaders (Whitson & Gruneau, 2006). And in the United States where the sport of 

baseball is heralded as the "national pastime," legal challenges were necessary to enable girls to 

participate in Little League.  Even so, Little League responded to the legal requirement to gender 

integrate by establishing a softball division and streaming girls into it (Ring, 2008; McDonagh & 

Pappano, 2008). At the college level, efforts to resist gender equity requirements resulting from 

the passage of civil rights legislation (Title IX) culminated in the successful - but dubious - 

achievement of a "contact sport" designation and hence exemption for baseball (Ardell, 2005).  

With the exception of individual „cheaters‟ who are caught using illegal performance 

enhancing substances, the heroic status of the successful male athlete and the appropriateness of 

the sport nexus for conferring such noble status are beyond mainstream reproach (Beamish & 

Ritchie, 2003). The image of the white male or (good) black male athlete - Tiger Woods as 

opposed to Michael Vick - (Banet-Weiser, 2004; Zirin, 2007) as heroic warrior in the sport nexus 

(Burstyn, 1999) resonates historically, nationally (Miller, Lawrence, McKay & Rowe, 2001) and 

symbolically to produce a gendered (and raced) cultural understanding of citizenship that denies 

women equal recognition. This has both cultural and economic consequences.  
 

 

The Sport Nexus and the Gender Binary 

 

While sport in North America (and much of the world) is organized around binary notions of 

biological difference between males and females (Kirby & Huebner, 2002), queer feminist 

science and theory (Butler, 2004, 1990; Fausto-Sterling, 2000, 1992; Haraway, 1997, 1991) 

reveals the extent to which the taken-for-granted gender binary  is as much constituted by 

assumptions about its existence as by the existence of distinctive and natural differences between 

only two sexes (Butler, 2004; Fausto-Sterling, 2000, 1992). Insights from postmodernism and 

queer feminist science have been incorporated into the literature on gender and sport to 

contribute powerful insights regarding the role of sport in normalizing and reinforcing the 

ideology of the gender binary and male supremacy (Pronger, 1990; Kane, 1995; Rothblatt, 1995; 

Theberge, 2000). The revelation that this two sex system is ideological rather than natural 

(Fausto-Sterling, 2000) underscores the role of sport in promulgating a vision of a stark 

biological divide between male and female bodies that is intricately bound up with gender 

injustice for women and gender transgressors throughout society. As Kane notes, the 

establishment of gender difference is a “product of patriarchal social construction” (1995, p. 

191). „Male‟ and „female‟ bodies are produced, in corporeal terms, in social contexts that assume 

and privilege male athletic competence at the expense of female physical development (Young, 

1998; Pronger, 1990). The institutionalization of the two sex system as natural through the male-

dominated, sex segregated sport nexus contributes to the cultural and economic marginalization 

of women and gender transgressors in the world of sport itself and beyond. 

The sport nexus not only demarcates hierarchical boundaries between men and women that 

resonate throughout society but plays a role in normalizing compulsory heterosexuality and 

gender conformity. This has powerful consequences for gays and lesbians, genderqueer and 

transgender people. Because of their equation with effeminacy, openly gay male athletes, or 

suspected gay male athletes, have been overtly discriminated against, harassed, and occasionally 

victimized by homophobic violence. No gay male participant in the elite levels of North 



 

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American team sport has come out of the closet prior to retirement (Anderson, 2005); women 

athletes – regardless of their sexuality or personal tastes, for that matter - are routinely required 

to conform to orthodox heterosexual feminine norms in response to homophobia. For women, 

homophobia is a tool of sexism in restricting women‟s access to athletic development and 

participation in sport. Homophobia equates female athletic accomplishment with lesbianism.  

Thus, for men, the higher one‟s achievements in the sporting realm, the less suspicion there 

exists regarding homosexuality. In contrast, the more success a woman achieves in sport -with 

some differences depending on the sport - the more suspect her sexuality becomes (Griffin, 

1998).   

The sport nexus is no more a welcoming place for gender deviants than it is for gays and 

lesbians. Despite recent policy changes at the highest levels of organized sport to include post-

operative transsexuals, the very investment of this policy in the two sex system closes doors. In 

2003, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) adopted a policy to allow transsexual athletes 

to compete in their legal gender category provided they have been fully (surgically and 

hormonally) transitioned for two years prior to competing (BBC Sport, November 14, 2003).  

This policy serves to reinforce binary gender and preserve the assumption of male athletic 

superiority. Several scholars (Teetzel, 2006; Sykes, 2006; Cavanagh & Sykes, 2006) have 

observed that institutional anxiety about transsexual participation in sport is for the most part 

limited to concerns about male to female transsexual athletes rather than female to male 

transsexual athletes. This anxiety rests on the taken for granted convictions that men and women 

are fundamentally different and that all males are athletically superior to all females. The 

predominant assumption of male athletic superiority that characterizes this “unfair advantage 

discourse” (Sykes, 2006) in sporting policy has a powerful hold on western consciousness. In 

spite of evidence that human variation is inconsistent with a two sex system (Fausto-Sterling, 

2000) and failed attempts by the International Olympic Committee‟s medical commission to 

develop a definitive test for female athletes (Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Sykes, 2006), gender deviant 

athletes must achieve dimorphic physical and hormonal conformity or face exclusion. The sport 

nexus normalizes, legitimates and reinforces the ideology of the two sex system with 

marginalizing consequences for girls and women, gays and lesbians and gender transgressors 

within the world of sport and beyond. 

 

 

The Gendered Economy of the Sport Nexus 

 

Key sports in North American society are characterized by material (economic) gender injustice; 

but the role of these sports in celebrating masculinity and normalizing assumptions about female 

inferiority and the underlying ideology of the two sex system have a powerful cultural effect 

which in turn shapes economic opportunities. Sport plays an important role in normalizing 

gender inequality by emphasizing differences between male and female bodies to celebrate 

masculine superiority and by disproportionately rewarding male participants through extensive 

opportunity structures and disproportionate patterns of remuneration (Heywood & Dworkin, 

2003; Hall, 2002; Theberge, 2000; Burstyn, 1999). The fact that the names of professional 

women‟s sport associations need to be specifically gendered while men‟s remain unmarked (for 

example, Ladies Professional Golf Association vs. Professional Golf Association; Women‟s 

National Basketball Association vs. National Basketball Association) is a powerful example of 



 

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the cultural assumption that sport is a male realm. Sport is simply assumed to be a male 

prerogative unless an exception is noted. The combination of its highly masculinist character and 

its importance in valorizing competition, hierarchy and nationalism (Coakley & Donnelly, 2004) 

makes the sport nexus a key player in contributing to gender injustice.  

A symbiotic relationship exists between elite sport and mainstream sports media to the extent 

that such sports media needs to be understood as an integral part of the sport nexus. Mainstream 

sport media play an important cultural and economic role in the sport nexus‟s celebration of 

masculinity through male sports and male athletes and the diminishment of women athletes and 

women‟s athletics (Walton & Butryn, 2006; Messner, Dunbar, Hunt, 2000; Van Sterkenburg & 

Knoppers, 2004). The role of sport media in making men‟s sports economic juggernauts 

underscores the relationship between economic and cultural social forces, the very dimensions 

that Fraser draws on in her definition of participatory parity. Studies of print and television 

media coverage of sport demonstrate the extreme marginalization of women's sport and women 

athletes (Messner et al., 2000; Van Sterkenburg &  Knoppers, 2004). When women's sports and 

women athletes are covered, they are far more likely to be sexualized than their male 

counterparts (Vincent, 2004). When women make progress in arenas typically identified as 

exclusively male, sexual representations are used to establish cultural boundaries that reproduce 

male supremacy (Birrell & McDonald, 2000; Robinson, 2002). It is no accident that Danica 

Patrick's success in Formula One racing was coupled with a semi nude photo shoot in Sports 

Illustrated’s hallowed (soft porn) "swimsuit edition" in 2008. This strategy for preserving male 

supremacy is borne out in a recent study (Kane, 2008) on the effect of sexist marketing strategies 

for women‟s sports. Kane found that the use of sexual objectification as a marketing tool, rather 

than building a greater fan base and greater interest in women‟s sports, actually undermines the 

female/pro-female (parents of girls, for example) fan base of women‟s sports while failing to 

generate a male fan base. 

The economic gender injustice that characterizes key sports is evidenced in occupational 

segregation and pay inequity (Kay, 2003). Many of the most lucrative sports are sex segregated 

and exclusively male at the professional level (hockey, baseball, football). Where opportunities 

for women to play sport professionally do exist, significant pay inequity is the common 

condition. Ladies Professional Golf Association winnings fall considerably below (mens) 

Professional Golf Association winnings; only recently has the sport of tennis begun the practice 

of paying men and women equally. The example of pay inequity in the one major North 

American professional sport that has a women‟s league as well as a men‟s league is powerful. I 

provide below a comparison of National Basketball Association (NBA) and Women‟s National 

Basketball Association (WNBA) salaries. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

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TABLE I: NBA VS. WNBA 2006/2007 

 

 NBA*  WNBA** 

Base Salary $427,163  $30,000 (rookies) 

$42,000 (veterans) 

Maximum $18,257,750 $79,400 

Average $4,500,000 $55,000 

 

Notes:  

* http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/basketball/nba/team.salaries/index.html 

** http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/sports/basketball/19wnba.html 

This, of course, leaves out perks (NBA per diem of $106 versus WNBA per diem of $60) and 

sponsorship deals with advertisers (LeBron James ranks #1 with a $90 million deal over 7 years).  

 

In an article in Forbes (www.forbes.com), on July 28, 2004, Kurt Badenhausen states that 

 

The income inequality that exists between men and women isn't just taking place in the 

boardroom or on the factory floor-it's also taking place on the playing fields of profession-al 

sports. In the United States women only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man does. In the 

world of sports the gap is even bigger. The World's 50 Best Paid Athletes is the only Forbes 

list comprised entirely of men. The 50th highest-paid athlete over the past 12 months was 

basketball's Andre Miller, who made $15 million. The top-paid female athlete during that 

time was Serena Williams, who earned $9.5 million, followed by her sister Venus, who 

made $8.5 million. The top-paid men: Tiger Woods and Michael Schumacher, who both 

banked $80 million. You could put together a list of the 100 highest-paid athletes and still not 

find a woman on it. 

 

In a 2006 update, the top paid male athlete for that year was Tiger Woods who earned $87 

million. The top paid female athlete in 2006 was Maria Sharapova who pulled in over $20 in 

sponsorship deals in addition to her prize money from tennis tournaments (difficult to ascertain 

but probably not more than 3 million). Like Anna Kournikova, Sharapova‟s marketability relates 

largely to her physical appearance rather than to her feats on the court, even though she is far 

more accomplished than the former. Sharapova‟s stereotypical blonde beauty marks her as an 

appropriate object of male heterosexual desire (Crissey & Crissey Honea, 2006; Stead, 2003) – 

in contrast to the black noncompliance of the Williams sisters (Douglas, 2005) or the openly 

lesbian and heavily muscled Amelie Mauresmo. 

 

 

Feminist Strategies for Reforming the Sport Nexus 

 

Feminist strategies for reorganizing sport away from its role in promoting gender injustice fall 

loosely into four different approaches. In order to increase gender justice in and through sport we 

should: 

 

http://www.forbes.com/


 

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1. replace the current institutional structure of sport with non-competitive, non-hierarchical 
celebrations of physicality (radical feminist);  

2. focus on and support elite women athletes as gender troubling figures and hence agents of 
change (third wave); 

3. entirely eliminate sex as an organizational category (postmodern feminist); or 
4.  eliminate male-only sporting spaces while maintaining sporting spaces for girls and 

women (liberal feminist; queer). 

I examine these strategies for their potential to increase participatory parity for women and 

gender transgressors and conclude with recommendations for reforming professional and 

amateur sport to achieve greater gender justice. 

 

1.  We Should: Replace the Current Institutional Structure of Sport with 

Cooperative, Non-Hierarchical Celebrations of Physicality;  

 

Radical and cultural feminist scholarship shares the belief that "male supremacy and the 

subjugation of women [is] indeed the root and model oppression in society and that 

feminism[has] to be the basis for any truly revolutionary change (Donovan, 1987). It is up to 

feminists to model institutions and processes characterized by internal democracy - that is, 

shared decision-making in a nonhierarchical context (Heywood & Dworkin, 2003). While not all 

of the authors I invoke here are necessarily inclined to identify as radical or cultural feminists, 

their critiques of the sport nexus and recommendations for change are highly consistent with this 

paradigm. These scholars (Burstyn, 1999; Pronger, 1999; Birrell & Richter, 1987) indict sport in 

its current patriarchal capitalist iteration and seek to replace it with cooperative and 

nonhierarchical celebrations of physicality and play based on feminist principles of cooperation 

and inclusion. They seek sweeping changes to eliminate sports‟ endemic violence and 

hierarchical structure and call for new social institutions and practices that include and benefit 

everyone. Such an approach equates the competitive and hierarchical organization of sport with a 

destructive (orthodox) version of masculinity and advocates for feminist sport reformation away 

from hierarchy and competition and towards recreation, expression, play and cooperation. 

Critics of the current masculinist, competitive, hierarchical model of sport do not necessarily 

see the recent increase in women's participation as a step toward gender justice (Suggs, 2005). 

From this perspective, Nike‟s recent "Just Do It" campaign aimed at women consumers is an 

encouragement to define gender equality as the ability to play with the boys - without 

questioning the rules of the game or its purpose. The rules of the game, however, are linked, at a 

fundamental level, to gender inequality, homophobia and transphobia. 

Burstyn articulates a cultural feminist critique of sport as a men‟s club that consolidates male 

power and is thus anti-democratic. She makes a connection between masculine and corporate 

dominance of sport and advocates the de-masculinizing and de-corporatization of the sport 

nexus. Burstyn condemns “the „sacrificial‟ nature of sport for both sexes” (1999, p. 275) and the 

brutality sport inflicts upon boys and men and models as appropriate social behaviour. She seeks 

a societal and institutional shift away from aggressive and competitive structures that harm both 

sexes and exclude many from participation to cooperative and physical recreation activities that 

involve and benefit the majority. 

Advocating what I would term a postmodern cultural feminist approach to sport, Pronger 

(1999) views gender as a relationship rather than as an identity assigned to a body. This is 



 

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significant in that he believes that women are as capable as men are of performing orthodox 

heterosexual masculinity. Pronger contends  that sport promotes a specific and narrow form of 

masculinity: one that focuses on territorial expansion (penetration) and resistance to incursion: 

“The team whose desire produces the most invasive phallus, which is called offensive strategy, 

and tightest asshole, known as defensive strategy, wins the game” (1999, p. 382). While 

challenging essentialist notions of sex difference by viewing masculinity as a cultural 

construction that women can partake in, Pronger emphasizes the role of sports in normalizing the 

subjugation of women through the construction of “a set of binaries that emanate from the 

traditional homophobic construction of desire: winner/loser, top/bottom, dominant/submissive, 

phallus/asshole.” These binaries, “have their fundamental logic in the patriarchal construction of 

masculine/feminine as the proper dispositions of men and women, respectively” (1999, p. 384). 

In the world of sport as it is currently practiced, Pronger observes, there are no “willing 

bottoms.” He links this kind of performance to gender injustice and advocates for non-

masculinist and anti-homophobic sporting practices for everyone.  

In tandem with feminist critiques of the sport nexus as fundamentally masculinist, cultural and 

radical feminist sport scholarship celebrates feminist possibilities for the transformation of sport 

(Birrell & Richter, 1987; Lenskyj, 2003). Key feminist principles of sport include cooperation 

and shared power and decision-making (an end to hierarchical and competitive relations in sport 

- between players and between coaches and players); and the creation of an environment that 

emphasizes participation, inclusion, safety and joy over ability and winning. Such a cultural and 

radical feminist overhaul of sport would obliterate the sport nexus and much of amateur sport as 

we know it.  In its place, I surmise that the varied recreational activities for people of all ages and 

walks of life typical of municipal Community Center programming would be expanded 

infinitesimally.
2
 

 

 

Prognosis for Gender Justice 

 

Condemning and seeking to transform aggressive/combative/hierarchical sporting places and 

practices as expressions of heterosexual masculinity embraces an essentialist view of non-

egalitarianism as fundamentally masculine and therefore deleterious. Such a position is 

reminiscent of the sex wars of the 1980s that saw some feminists defining out of the movement 

so-called „male-identified‟ women who advocated pro-sex, anti-censorship, S-M-embracing 

politics (Duggan & Hunter, 1995). The institutional privileging of certain traits as inherently 

masculine or feminine - even if you believe, as Pronger (1999) does, that these traits can be 

performed by anyone - simply rearranges the terrain of gender injustice rather than reducing it.  

In addition, such an inadequately nuanced analysis of male power fails to address the dynamics 

of race and class (Carrington, 1998) that produce different relationships of privilege and 

inclusion - for women and for men.  This oversight reflects an analysis of gender relations as the 

foundation of all oppression (Donovan, 1987); an analysis much-maligned by antiracist, queer 

and postmodern critiques of second wave feminisms (Hines, 2005; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003). 

 

                                                 
2
 For example, http://vancouver.ca/parks/cc/mtpleasant/index.htm. 

 

http://vancouver.ca/parks/cc/mtpleasant/index.htm


 

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 2.  We Should: Focus On and Support Elite Women Athletes as Gender Troubling 

Figures and Hence Potential Agents of Change 

 

In response to the fracturing of the essentialist identity politics of feminism‟s second wave, 

particularly by antiracist, postmodern and queer critiques, a tradition of scholarship self-

identified as "third wave" emerged. Third wave feminism integrates postmodern, queer and 

antiracist deconstructions of essential identities and binary based epistemologies. According to 

Hines, “in third wave feminism, multiple female identity positions are recognized and attention 

is paid to the ways in which women's identities are constructed in relation to difference" (cited in 

Reger, 2005, p. 73). A third wave feminist perspective on sport and gender justice focuses on the 

role of the sport nexus in constructing women's identities and the potential of elite women 

athletes to resist and trouble stereotypical gender norms. (Heywood & Dworkin, 2003).   

Third wave feminists contest radical and cultural feminist arguments that view competition as a 

„male‟ trait. Critical of gender essentialism, they view progressive and competitive physicality in 

sport as neither fundamentally male nor fundamentally bad. Not only should fiercely competitive 

and highly successful women athletes enjoy feminist legitimacy, they insist, but they should be 

valued for the powerful sociocultural role they play in the disruption of the gender binary 

(Heywood & Dworkin, 2003).   

Drawing on a Foucaultian analysis of oppression and activism that emphasizes resistance and 

refusal (Foucault, 1982), third wave feminism celebrates and promotes resistance to gender 

norms in and through the highly public setting of competitive sport as a mechanism for achieving 

greater gender justice. According to this perspective, by refusing and resisting rather than 

accepting and actualizing stereotypical gender norms, gendered power relations are inevitably 

altered.  Far from viewing contemporary women athletes as being co-opted by a corporate, anti-

feminist nexus of domination as Burstyn does, or as performing, albeit ably, for Pronger, an 

oppressive masculine script, Heywood and Dworkin argue for the value and potential of Sport as 

“the Stealth Feminism of the Third Wave” (2003, p. 29). Stealth feminism celebrates the role of 

women athletes in actively resisting and refusing the ideology of the two sex system in particular 

and binary based epistemologies in general. 

Much of the gender troubling potential of powerful women athletes rests on possibilities for 

media representation. A third wave feminist emphasis on representation directs critical attention 

to the role of mainstream sport media as part of the sport nexus in perpetuating a male dominated 

two sex system. In a highly influential article Kane (1995) argued that the gender binary 

paradigm in sport is grounded in biologically deterministic notions of gender polarity and 

features an emphasis on difference and the dismissal and deliberate invisibility of similarities 

between male and female athletes. This invisibility is essential for upholding male dominance 

and is achieved through the symbiotic relationship between mainstream sport and mainstream 

sport media (Kane, 1995, p. 191). Kane insists that a more accurate model for sport reporting 

portrays the gender continuum. A third wave feminist perspective celebrates the gender troubling 

leakages that are occurring in traditional sport media reporting as a result of women's 

participation. Coverage of women athletes whose performance flies in the face of assumptions of 

male athletic superiority undermines the ideology of the two sex system by making the gender 

continuum visible. 

   

 



 

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Prognosis for Gender Justice 

 

What is particularly powerful about this third wave strategy of focusing on and celebrating 

women athletes as gender troubling figures and hence potential agents of change is that it is 

already happening if only in a small way with the increasing visibility of powerful women 

athletes in North American society. We are seeing greater attention to gendered overlaps and 

performance – one has only to think of the Nike ads of the new millennium pitting a sweat-

soaked Mia Hamm against Michael Jordan on a seemingly level playing field - even at the same 

time as male athletic superiority remains virtually taken for granted. Resistance is powerful:  

attention to gendered overlaps in performance has the potential to undermine assumptions about 

sex difference that rationalize gender inequality; the joy and empowerment that some girls and 

women experience and demonstrate in competitive athletics disrupts common sense assumptions 

about women, about sports, and about men.  Glimpses of the gender continuum can be found in 

mainstream media coverage of "crossover athletes" (Roberts, 2005, p. 7) - elite women athletes 

who are competing in traditionally male only sporting contexts - and the occasional reporting of 

performance overlap between male and female athletes. 

While Western history is replete with examples of women competing against men in sport, a 

postwar amnesia regarding this history seems to have taken hold (Ring, 2008; Hall, 2002). Even 

the explicitly feminist challenge to male dominance in sport and beyond made on the tennis court 

and in mainstream media by Billie Jean King in 1973 seems to have disappeared from cultural 

memory. Beginning in the early 1990s, seemingly without this historical precedent, a number of 

women have competed with and against men in typically male-only sporting arenas. Called 

"crossover athletes" by The New York Times, a term that continues to emphasize binary gender, 

these women include Manon Rheaume and Hayley Wickenheiser in hockey, Annika Sorenstam 

and Michelle Wie in the PGA, and Danica Patrick in Formula One Auto Racing. While most 

sports media coverage reinforces the status of these athletes as interlopers or mere spectacles, the 

cultural visibility of such women engenders third wave feminist excitement. There are also 

glimmers of doubt regarding male/female athletic performance gaps. Successful male athletes, 

such as Ernie Els of the PGA, have publicly stated their support for a gender integrated elite 

professional golf tour (Sportsnet Canada
3
), for example. 

 In its October 23, 2007 NBA Preview Issue, Sports Illustrated features a four page pull-out 

centerfold under the caption “Inch by Inch: The All-Time, All-Size All-Stars.”
4
 The subtitle 

asked “Who‟s the best at every height? Pro, college, men and women all included?  Is it Bird or 

Magic? Elgin or Oscar? Shaq or Wilt? Calvin Murphy or Sue Bird?” This colourful centerfold 

displays a tallest to the smallest lineup of players who are purportedly the best ever by height. It 

begins at 7‟7” with Manute Bol and ends at 5‟3” with Mugsy Bogues. Both these players are 

men but the 5‟8” slot is awarded to Sue Meyers, the 5‟6” to Dawn Staley and 5‟4” to Suzie 

McConnell. In addition to the three women who are identified as the best ever at their heights, 11 

of the 72 runners up, listed under the winner of each height category, are women – starting at 

6‟4” and ending at 5‟3”. In this continuum-based showcase of the best North American 

basketball players of all time by height, out of 101 players listed, 14 are women. This is precisely 

the kind of sport journalism that third wave feminists are calling for - sport journalism that 

                                                 
3
See http:www.sportsnet.ca  

4
 Sport Illustrated. October, 23, 2007 

 



 

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renders the gender continuum visible! Given the discrimination that girls and women experience 

in sport, it is rather incredible that more than 1 out of 10 of the best basketball players are 

women. We can only imagine what this centerfold might look like if potential female 

professional basketball players were sought out and nurtured to the same extent that male players 

are! The overlap between elite men and women players could only increase! 

I share the third wave feminist sense of excitement and possibility in response to the increased 

visibility of powerful women athletes and I feel vindicated by evidence that some women 

dominate not just other women but the entire field as well. But while I grant the power of sports 

media coverage of gendered overlaps and performance, the gender troubling figure of the elite 

woman athlete championed by sport media continues to have a white and heterosexual subtext. A 

few individual women superstar athletes have emerged – notably soccer player Mia Hamm, 

thanks in large part to Nike‟s use of her image in an effort to increase its consumer base among 

women. Mia is a gender troubling figure in terms of stereotypes of feminine frailty but her 

cooptation has played a role in the selling of a new “beauty myth” (Wolf, 1992) for women that 

combines heterosexual femininity and a “six pack.” She is white and heterosexual; a good girl. 

The absence of the black and powerful tennis superstar Williams sisters - often subjected to 

censure from sport media for uncorroborated poor sportsmanship (Douglas, 2005) - or openly 

lesbian Amelie Mauresmo in sport marketing speaks to the kind of gender troubling that will be 

tolerated.   

 

3.  We Should: Entirely Eliminate Sex as an Organizational Category in Sport 

 

Queer postmodern feminism‟s deconstruction of the two sex system as ideological rather than 

natural (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, 1992; Haraway, 1997, 1991; Butler, 2004) supports an argument 

for the elimination of sex segregated sport. This argument can be summed up as follows:  First, 

differences in men‟s and women‟s athletic performances can be attributed to social, political, 

economic, and psychological discrimination rather than biological factors. Given the cultural 

context within which athletes develop and perform, there is no uncontaminated data to support 

essential performance related differences between men and women (Pronger, 1990). Second, 

sport is implicated in translating the ideology of the two sex system into the material reality of 

bodies that conform to sexist expectations (Young, 1998). As such sport helps to mask the very 

gender diversity it plays such an important role in containing (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). Third, the 

very separation of girls from boys and women from men constitutes gender injustice. The legal 

reforms that require equal facilities and equal investment in sport and recreation opportunities 

and facilities for girls and women reinforce rather than diminish gender injustice. Rothblatt 

(1995) argues that just as racial segregation in sport has been abolished on the basis of the 

revelation that race is not meaningful as a biological category, so too should sex segregation.  

Drawing on the landmark court case Brown versus Board of Education 1954  to make the case 

that sex segregation is no more acceptable than racial segregation, Rothblatt states that "separate 

is never equal" (1995, p. 73). For these reasons, therefore, all levels of sport should be radically 

restructured to eliminate sex identity as a basis for organizing, separating or grouping 

individuals. For similar reasons, sex should be eliminated as an identifying category in 

government documents, in legal requirements for marriage, and as a basis for separate public 

facilities such as washrooms. In sport, this strategy would see the elimination of sex categories in 

all levels of competition. No sporting organizations would be closed to women and indeed all 



 

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sporting organizations would be sex integrated - including those for girls and women. Sex 

identity would cease to be relevant as an organizing category or in terms of eligibility 

requirements.   

 

 

Prognosis for Gender Justice 

 

Such an across-the-board elimination of sex as a category for structuring sport might benefit a 

small minority of athletes currently categorized as girls and women possessed of an extreme 

degree of athletic ability, including the mental toughness required to play with and against men, 

many of whom can be expected to resist their inclusion. For a few of North America's most elite 

women athletes who are denied equal material opportunities and cultural rewards, such a 

restructuring could be unprecedentedly beneficial. Consider Canadian women's hockey superstar 

Hayley Wickenheiser , for example, or teenage golf phenom, Michelle Wie. 

 Hayley Wickenheiser is considered to be the best female hockey player in the world and her 

play in multiple Olympic Games has been dominant. While there is a long tradition of women 

playing hockey in North America (Theberge, 2000), opportunities have been scant in comparison 

to those available to boys and men. There is no professional women‟s hockey league to parallel 

the men‟s minor league system not to mention the National Hockey League and indeed no 

expectation that any will develop in the near future; only the establishment of women‟s ice 

hockey as a medal sport in the 1998 Olympics has created more (non-professional) opportunities 

for women. Where separate leagues for girls do not exist in Canada and the United States, girls 

have used the courts to gain the right to play on boys‟ teams (Theberge, 2000). Regardless of the 

increasing participation of women, hockey continues to be a male preserve (Adams in Whitson 

& Gruneau, 2006). The identity of hockey as a sport is explicitly linked to Canadian masculinity 

and the NHL in particular is an “arena of masculinity” (Pronger, 1990). Wickenheiser broke 

ground and held her own among men as the first female player other than a goaltender to play in 

a men's professional hockey league when she played on a Swedish team for parts of two seasons 

in 2003 and 2004. She has just signed a contract to play for a third tier Swedish men's hockey 

team (Spencer, 2008, p. S5).   

Michelle Wie provides another powerful example.  In addition to her ability to drive a golf ball 

more than 300 yards - on par with many male golfers - Wie has made headlines and suffered 

scathing commentary from male and female players alike for playing both Professional Golf 

Association (PGA) and Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) events (Millward, 2008)
5
.  

While she has not been particularly successful in PGA events - mostly failing to make the cut - 

many of her male competitors have fared worse without experiencing criticism from media and 

fellow athletes for playing in the event at all. If professional golf ceased to be sex segregated and 

was organized, instead, by an ability-based (handicap) hierarchy, players like Wie would 

participate in tournaments they were able to qualify for. This would be a big step, at least in 

                                                 
5
 Most recently, in the July 30, 2008 edition of The Globe and Mail, LPGA legend and one time female interloper in 

a PGA tournament Annika Sorenstam, chastised Wie for forgoeing the LPGA British Open in favour of a PGA 

tournament. Sorenstam and other members of the LPGA tour have said that Wie should instead be learning to win 

on the women's tour, not attempting to qualify on the men's tour. 

 



 

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formal terms, considering that several high-profile golf clubs in Canada and the United States 

continue to be restricted to men only.   

 Eliminating sex segregation entirely, however - including spaces and organizations reserved 

for girls and women - would constitute a major setback for the participation of girls and women 

in sport.  Just because something is socially constructed - in this case, the two sex system with its 

assumption of female inferiority - does not mean it is not "real"; social forces have material 

consequences (Young, 1998; Lemert, 1999). Eradicating single-sex sporting spaces for girls and 

women without a prior cultural overhaul would mean that girls and women would be subjected 

to sexist and masculinist sporting cultures that discourage their participation. Rather than make 

visible the considerable overlap between sex categories and sporting outcomes, a sharp decline in 

female participation would reinforce cultural beliefs about sex differences and female inferiority.  

The tiny minority of elite women athletes who would flourish under such a restructuring would 

be so distanced from the majority as to be viewed as abnormal. Entirely eliminating sex as an 

organizational category in sport would result not in participatory parity and hence gender justice 

but in greater cultural and material marginalization. One potential advantage of this strategy, 

however, relates to transgender participation. The irrelevance of sex status would put an end to 

the contested and difficult social negotiation and assignment of individuals to the gender binary.  

There would be no need, for example, for an International Olympic Committee policy for 

transsexual participation or for transgender persons to produce official documents attesting to 

their sex category assignment. In this regard, then, a measure of gender justice might be 

achieved. 

 

4.  We Should: Eliminate Male-Only Sporting Spaces While Maintaining Sporting 

Spaces for Girls and Women  

 

Going beyond the above strategy for eliminating sex as a basis for organizing all sport, this 

strategy makes a distinction between coercive and voluntary forms of segregation (McDonagh & 

Pappano, 2008). It calls for an end to male-only sporting spaces while maintaining the right of 

girls and women to organize separately. The adoption of this strategy would require sporting 

spaces and institutions that are currently all-male to abolish formal and informal mechanisms for 

single-sex recruitment, development, participation, leadership and employment.   

The strategy of pursuing greater gender justice by eliminating sex segregation in sport is 

consistent with a liberal feminist emphasis on individual rights, freedom from discrimimation 

and meritocracy (Madsen, 2000), values that are purportedly fundamental to western 

democracies. The abolition of sex segregation in sport at both the highest levels and in many 

recreational contexts is required to achieve the formal gender equality – enacted thus far through 

occupational and human rights measures outlawing sex discrimination - that western nations take 

such pride in (Ware, 1992). An absolute end to discrimination in sport is yet another step in 

ensuring that merit, not ascription, determines opportunity and reward structures. The 

discrimination against women codified in professional and amateur sport policy and institutions 

is one of the last legal frontiers in the struggle against sexist discrimination. In an interesting 

parallel, liberal feminists have advanced similar arguments to justify the full inclusion of women 

in the military - including combat roles (D‟Amico & Weinstein, 1999). A rights-based liberal 

feminist approach includes affirmative action measures to address inequalities in abilities that 

result from long term discrimination.  McDonagh and Pappano (2008) call for an end to sex 



 

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segregation in sport with the proviso that single-sex sporting spaces be retained for girls and 

women: “all sports competitions should be based on the abilities of the individuals who seek to 

play, not on stereotypical attributes of sex or race groups. The only exception…is voluntary 

segregation for a subordinate group in order to compensate for past discrimination” (McDonagh 

& Pappano, 2008, p. 28) 

This liberal feminist emphasis on meritocracy supports an analytical parallel between sex 

segregation and racial segregation and their eradication as a necessity for social justice.  

McDonagh and Pappano (2008) claim that the coercive nature of sex segregated sport in North 

America is an injustice and must be abolished. Coercively sex segregated sport makes women 

second class citizens off the field and fails to reflect actual physical differences between the 

sexes. McDonagh and Pappano draw on the same U.S. legal decision - Brown vs. Board of 

Education, 1954 - that Rothblatt does as noted above to assert similarities between racial and sex 

segregation. The forced separation of girls and boys and women and men is related to gender 

inequality; the very assumption of difference amounts to injustice. This strategy for reducing 

gender injustice requires an end to the social, political and legal tolerance of sex discrimination 

that characterizes North American sport today. But the abolition of sex segregated sporting 

spaces and institutions should not extend to those organized as single-sex spaces for girls and 

women. As a subordinate group, girls and women should be able to "choose participation on 

either a sex integrated or voluntary sex segregated basis" (McDonagh & Pappano, 2008, p. 80). 

From this perspective, voluntary segregation aimed at increasing group standing is an acceptable 

social practice for minority groups but not for dominant groups. 

 

 

Potential for Gender Justice 

 

While gender inequality persists in Canada and the United States, civil rights-based challenges to 

occupational segregation have eliminated most legal barriers to the full participation of women 

in all aspects of society (Matthews & Beaman, 2007; McDonagh & Pappano, 2008). And some 

of the major barriers to the full participation of girls and women in (mostly amateur, that is, non-

financially remunerative) sporting activities have been removed (Yurako, 2002). But while legal 

challenges have resulted in the integration of some sporting spaces (Little League Baseball, for 

example, Ring, 2008; McDonagh & Pappano, 2008), most coercively sex segregated sporting 

spaces remain a taken for granted fact of life. Title IX - the most significant civil rights 

legislation relating to the participation of girls and women in sport in the United States – 

amounts to both a step forward and a step backward in the fight for gender justice in sport and 

beyond. Title IX‟s requirement that federally funded institutions and programs offer equal access 

and opportunity to girls and women has contributed to gender justice by recognizing girls and 

women as athletes and providing institutional structures for their sporting activities (Cooky & 

Macdonald, 2005). In spite of considerable increases in the participation of girls and women in 

sport following the signing into law of Title IX, however, this legislation continues to reinforce 

and promote gender injustice for girls and women by emphasizing the distinct and inferior status 

of women athletes. According to McDonagh and Pappano (2008), this is because the ultimate 

impact of Title IX was to normalize female inferiority rather than to promote real gender justice.  

While they acknowledge that Title IX "was important, even critical.... it unfortunately 

reinforced-rather than challenged-the belief that women are inherently inferior to men" (p. 223).   



 

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Abolishing single-sex sporting spaces for boys and men while maintaining them for girls and 

women would increase gender justice in sport and beyond in several ways. First, it would send a 

clear message through legal stipulations preventing male only policies and practices that sexist 

discrimination directed at girls and women is no more tolerable than racist discrimination 

directed at people of colour. Gender integrating the sport nexus would put an end to the last 

formal institutional frontier for enacting and showcasing sexist discrimination. This would have 

powerful positive cultural and material consequences for the status of women. Secondly, 

allowing girls and women to learn sport and compete with boys and men would improve their 

athletic ability, thereby lessening the culturally produced disadvantage that is the product of 

sexist discrimination. McDonagh and Pappano (2008) cite educational research that 

demonstrates the performance improvement of disabled students in integrated - that is, non-

segregated - classroom environments to draw a parallel with the merits of sex integration. They 

insist that enabling girls and women to compete with boys and men in sport will increase female 

performances. Thirdly, this strategy for reducing the role of the sport nexus in perpetuating 

gender injustice would maintain important single-sex opportunities for girls and women that are 

necessary as long as their minority status persists. This strategy‟s distinction between coercive 

and voluntary segregation supports the abolition of one and the maintenance of the other in a 

manner that is consistent with Rawls‟ (1999) „difference principle‟ for social justice, according 

to which discrimination is considered acceptable only when it reduces the marginalization of 

disadvantaged groups in society. The current male-dominated, sex segregated sport nexus 

maintains the status quo of gender injustice; forcing gender integration of this institution would 

be a step towards attaining participatory parity for women. 

The potential of this strategy for increasing gender justice in sport and beyond requires 

attention to a few challenges. First, maintaining single-sex sporting spaces for girls and women 

may perpetuate gender injustice if these spaces adopt binary based policies for inclusion.  

Second, where sporting spaces are currently gender integrated, many are characterized by a 

climate of sexism and misogyny that keeps all but the bravest and almost freakishly  talented 

girls and women from participating. As mentioned before, Little League Baseball responded to 

legal requirements to include girls by developing a program of Little League Softball and 

streaming girls into it (Ring, 2008; McDonagh & Pappano, 2008). It took more than 25 years 

after that for a girl to actually participate at the highest level of Little League baseball in the 2005 

Little League World Series (About.com:Baseball). And, in an attempt to break out of a recent 

batting slump, members of the Chicago White Sox Major League Baseball Team used their bats 

to symbolically rape a blow up doll in their locker room (Sportsnet Canada). Many male-only 

sporting spaces are sexist, misogynist and homophobic; harsh informal resistance to gender 

inclusion can be expected. It is not just that so many of the spaces of the sport nexus are male 

only; they tend to be fundamentally misogynist, homophobic and transphobic as well.  

Abolishing formal barriers to the participation of women cannot be assumed to address this 

foundational component of sport. Furthermore, to take up the parallel between racial and gender 

segregation in sport that Rothblatt and McDonagh and Pappano draw: desegregation does not 

necessarily reduce social injustice. Hoberman‟s (1997) indictment of the role of racially 

desegregated sport in perpetuating racism suggests that just as racism has been accomplished 

through inclusion (emphasis on black physicality over intellect; invisibility of blacks who are not 

athletes, entertainers or criminals; drawing black youth away from the classroom and onto the 

sportsfield; the illusion that desegregation means that racism is a problem of the past) sexism and 



 

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gender injustice may morph and survive through inclusion. Danica Patrick‟s recent Formula One 

racing success and concurrent sexualization suggests this possibility. 

In addition to these concerns there are the inherent problems associated with liberalism‟s 

celebration of meritocracy as the ultimate expression of democracy. Fraser‟s concept of 

participatory parity incorporates an economically socialist dimension in its indictment of 

hierarchy as inconsistent with democracy. I suggest that combining a queer feminist suspicion of 

the naturalness of all bases of hierarchy (Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Haraway, 1997, 1991) with 

Fraser‟s standard of participatory parity has the potential to sufficiently radicalize the liberal 

feminist basis of this fourth strategy to increase its inclusive potential. Fraser‟s concept of 

participatory parity as a measure of gender justice complements queer feminist science‟s 

deconstruction of the two sex system as ideological and provides a powerful mechanism for the 

indictment of the sport nexus as anti-democratic. Sport, like other social institutions that operate 

to privilege some members of society while marginalizing others, must be transformed away 

from binary-based biological epistemologies that privilege white corporate masculinity.  

Applying a queer feminist turn to this strategy for reducing gender injustice by eliminating 

coercive segregation in sport ensures that the struggle for gender justice includes not only 

women and girls but gays, lesbians and gender transgressors as well. This makes it possible to 

generate both concrete, justifiable structural and procedural changes to sport institutions and 

practices, while retaining sufficient open-endedness to push for ever-increasing parity for all 

participants. Below is a list of recommendations for institutional change that begin to provide a 

vision of this approach‟s power for change: 

 

 

Recommendations  

 

The Sport-Nexus and Sport Media 

 

 Eliminate legal protection for male only professional sporting spaces; 

 Require all levels of sport to conform to occupational human rights standards relating to 
non-discriminatory practices with regard to development, recruitment and promotion. 

 Provide women and transgender persons with the option of sharing the general locker room 
with men or utilizing an equally equipped separate space while ensuring that formal team 

meetings and discussions are conducted in an inclusive space. 

 Adopt a zero tolerance policy for racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia with 
consistent and meaningful consequences for violations; 

 Consider and grant requests for government accreditation and support only for sporting 
organizations that demonstrate compliance with human rights requirements relating to the 

inclusion of women and gender transgressors; 

 Grant and renew broadcast licenses only to organizations that demonstrate a commitment 
to gender justice in their organizational structure and in all aspects of sports coverage. 

 

Amateur Sport 

 

 Eliminate legal protection for male only sporting spaces at all levels of sport; 



 

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 Provide women and transgender persons with the option of sharing the general locker room 
with men or utilizing an equally equipped separate space while ensuring that formal team 

meetings and discussions are conducted in an inclusive space. 

 Adopt a zero tolerance policy for racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia with 
consistent and meaningful consequences for violations; 

 Require amateur sport at all levels to invest equal resources into the recruitment, 
development and support of male and female athletes; 

 Certify and provide public facilities exclusively to amateur sporting associations that 
require all leadership personnel to undertake formal accredited training relating to gender 

justice in sport. 

 Allow and support organizations for girls and women only; 

 Require such organizations to adopt trans-inclusive policies (Travers, 2006). 
 

 

The Sport Nexus: As Solid as the Berlin Wall 

 

The abolition of sex-based structural barriers to the participation of girls and women is, arguably, 

only a few court cases away. Legal challenges have already resulted in the ability of girls to play 

on boys‟ teams when no girls‟ teams are available and even when there are (less competitive) 

girls' teams available. In contrast, boys‟ efforts to play on girls‟ teams have failed (McDonagh 

and Pappano, 2008).  This indicates that lower courts in the United States seem to have 

distinguished - at least implicitly - between coercive sex segregation as sexist discrimination and 

voluntary sex segregation for girls and women as a partial, legal remedy for decades of 

discrimination.  These legal challenges have begun to alter the structure of amateur sport but this 

process will not be complete until a pivotal case or two reaches the highest courts and - to 

parallel the impact Brown vs. Board of Education 1954 had on the formal structure of racism - 

results in an end to the structure of legal sex discrimination. The legal erosion of institutional 

gender injustice in amateur sport will inevitably ripple up to professional sport at all levels. 

 Increased opportunities for girls and women to participate in sport and the emergence of 

powerful women athletes – both those who excel in women‟s sport and those who “cross over” –

have created fertile ground for pivotal legal challenges to male-only sporting spaces. The 

celebration of girls and women as athletes represents a cultural shift. This shift is generating a 

powerful group of pro-girl allies in the quest to end at least some facets of gender injustice in 

sport. Importantly, these allies include parents of girls and women – a small but astute 

percentage of “soccer moms” and hockey dads who are angered by sexist discrimination against 

their daughters and are willing and able to use the courts to fight back.   

Challenging as it is, changing the sexist structure of sport is relatively easy compared to the 

difficulty of transforming the entrenched mysoginist, homophobic and transphobic culture of 

sport and sporting spaces. After all, the inclusion of men of colour in formerly white, male 

sporting spaces has only partially changed the culture and material consequences of racism in 

sport and beyond and not necessarily in ways that decrease racial injustice. Gay men participate 

in sporting spaces through amateur to elite levels but often pay the price of secrecy, fear and 

sexist and homophobic collusion in order to do so. It is entirely valid, therefore, to criticize 

liberal feminist strategies aimed at achieving legal change for failing to provide means for 

altering the culture of gender injustice that is foundational to male-dominated sporting spaces. 



 

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Merely including girls and women in these spaces is insufficient to accomplish this. And yet, the 

cultural power of inclusion is never insignificant as it provides a basis of legitimacy for further 

social justice initiatives.  

The shake-up of sport I propose is incredibly radical and yet consistent with the democratic 

norms North Americans so ardently codify and pay lipservice to. It is this consistency that 

creates an opening for legal challenges to achieve at least some of the above recommendations. 

As a result, it is not as impossible as it seems. As history has shown, significant institutional 

social change is never out of the question. For example, African Americans in the United States 

have used democratic ideology to de-legitimize racism through legal challenges and the 

achievement of civil rights legislation that prohibits racism. Heroically fought for, this Civil 

rights legislation has had an impact: racial inequality remains a fact of life but racism is 

disavowed and formal barriers to equality have been eliminated (Morris, 1984). The 1947 racial 

integration of Major League Baseball that is so celebrated - and taken for granted - by the sport 

today was bitterly resisted at the time and for more than a decade after (Lapchick, 2001).  While 

many people never expected same-sex marriage to be legalized in Canada, homophobia persists 

and same sex marriage is but one component of efforts to reduce it. This legal victory provides 

increasing legitimacy to struggles against homophobic gender injustice.  The sport nexus 

contributes significantly to gender injustice but its ability to do so will be eroded as the legality 

of its practices of exclusion is contested. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

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