| 1. |
- Svender, Jenny, et al.
(författare)
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Promoting girls' participation in sport : discursive constructions of girls in a sports initiative
- 2012
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Ingår i: Sport, Education and Society. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1357-3322 .- 1470-1243. ; 17:4, s. 463-478
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- What does it mean to promote girls’ participation in sports and which girls are seen as needing support? In this article we focus a government-financed sports venture and scrutinize the frames governing what is possible to say about girls and their participation in sports. By analyzing project applications from local sport clubs we investigate how the category of girls is discursively constructed in projects designed to promote girls’ sports participation. The study employs the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, power, biopower and normalization. The analyses show that teenage girls in particular are in focus and a number of ideas are presented about what becoming a teenage girl means. We consider the projects as part of governmentality. Framing girls as both ‘capable’ and ‘at risk’ is reasonable in liberal governing, where they become subjects of scrutiny, regulation and productivity.
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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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