| 1. |
- Johansson, Susanne
(författare)
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Sexual Relationships between Athletes and Coaches : Love, Sexual Consent, and Abuse
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Coach-athlete sexual relationships (CASR) and sexual harassment and abuse (SHA) in sport can profoundly impact athletes’ welfare and performance. Yet, it is often ignored due to sensitivity, secrecy, and lack of knowledge. There is no previous research on SHA in sport in Sweden, and legal, consensual, same-sex CASR is under-researched. The overall purpose of this doctoral thesis is to examine CASR in competitive sport in Sweden. More specifically: a) athletes’ experiences of CASR; b) prevalence of SHA in coach-athlete relationships; c) conceptual and theoretical issues to broaden the understanding of CASR and SHA, will be examined.Survey methodology is employed in Article I to explore the prevalence of SHA, coach-athlete relationship factors, and association between relationship factors and SHA. A random sample of current and former male and female Swedish athletes (n=477) aged 25 participated. Article II outlines critical issues of CASR, and theories and conceptualisations of romantic love, sexual consent, and female athlete sexual agency is further developed in the thesis research summary. Drawing on interviews with five female elite athletes aged 23-30, experiences of CASR are analysed in-depth using discourse analyses in Article III and narrative case study design in Article IV.Results show that athletes’ experiences of CASR are positively and negatively diverse but potentially problematic because boundary ambiguity, secrecy, and isolation are common. Social and ethical dilemmas may also occur because CASR intersect contrasting discourses regarding elite sport, coach–athlete relationships, and romantic love. Moreover, CASR integrate professional and private contexts in which equality and power deviate. The research illustrates empirically and theoretically how female elite athletes exercise agency and recognise consensual, mutually desired CASR where romantic love is priority. However, sexual consent can be ambivalent rather than a mutually exclusive yes/no dualism. Socially, consent is a process of negotiation informed by contextual factors, sexual agency, and social structure. In addition, 5.5% prevalence of SHA perpetrated by male coaches is reported, distributed throughout the sampled athletes’ gender, age, sport performance levels, and individual/team sports in the sample.In conclusion, this thesis expands knowledge of athletes’ experiences of love, sexual consent, and abuse in CASR. Previous evidence of SHA in sport is confirmed to include sport in Sweden. Implications for sport and sport sciences are offered.
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| 2. |
- Olofsson, Eva, 1945-
(författare)
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Har kvinnorna en sportslig chans? : den svenska idrottsrörelsen och kvinnorna under 1900-talet
- 1989
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines the conditions of womens´s participation in organized sport. The Swedish Sport Confederation and the two associations with the largest number of female members, the Swedish Gymnastics Federation and the Swedish Football Association, have been studied. Gymnastics is a traditional sport for women and is mainly a fitness sport. Soccer is a competitive sport and a new sport for women. The discussions and decisions of the sports associations regarding women and sport have been analyzed through studies of official documents, minutes and debates. An interview study with female leaders in gymnastics and soccer completes the analysis of the documents.Women represent just over a third of the members of the sports movement. Women participate in fewer sports than men. They only dominate in non-competitive and in aesthetic sports. According to this study there is no female sport or womens´sport - apart from gymnastics - only male sport with female participants.The attitude of the sports movement is that women and men are different but the form and rules of competitive sport are based on equality. The social gender system and thus mens´control over womens´ participation in sport is obvious in the sport movement. Three female counterstrategies have been identified: in the beginning of the 20th century female gymnastics coaches developed a form of gymnastics for women based on the ideology of peculiarity; in the 1970s women claimed equality with men for their breakthrough into soccer; in the 1980s women try to combine the ideologies of equality and peculiarity through male sport behaviour and the accentuation of traditional femininity. Womens´subordinate position in the sports movement is reflected in the lower valuation of womens´sport performances. Sport is an essential part of male character building. The motives of health have always been emphasized for women. The official ideology has in recent years passed on to a general accentuation of the aspects of health, which has facilitated womens´participation in sport. This is contradicted by the development of top-level sport and its manifestations in the form of for example drug-taking.
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| 3. |
- Svender, Jenny
(författare)
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Så gör(s) idrottande flickor : Iscensättningar av flickor inom barn- och ungdomsidrotten
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The context of this thesis is a four-year sports initiative called the Handshake which was launched and funded by the Swedish government and specifically targets girls. The Special Sports Federations were assigned the task of distributing the money to the local sports clubs. The clubs could apply for funding in order to carry out local projects. In the study, project applications from eight different sports were collected; both female- and male-dominated, and gender equal sports. This thesis focuses on the dominant ways of talking about girls and girls’ sport as well as the processes that shape them. Inspired by feminist post-structural theory and Foucault, the aim of this study is to examine how a special initiative for girls’ sport frames girls and their sport. The aim is also to analyze possible conditions of discourse for constructions of gender in texts specifically focusing on girls’ sports participation. The central questions are: How are girls and girls’ sport represented? In what ways and with which form of power, technologies, and techniques are girls constructed and positioned? The analysis shows how the regulatory and disciplinary processes operate in the government initiative. The identification of a specific group of girls in the Handshake initiative is an important component in the exercise of power, not least because it will inevitably convey and produce “truths” about the girls’ group. The initiative produces a number of ideas about girls and their sport, which girls are in need of special projects (and which are not) and in what way. The constructions of girls are not neutral, but normative. The position the sports movement gives itself, namely, a good and significant social force, implies that the problem lies elsewhere. Girls, and not the sport, become bearers of problem characteristics, they are obliged to change and improve. The norms, structures, and processes that cause normalization remain unchanged.
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