Essay On Masculinization Of Sports

Educational institutions are essential for the social processes that build the cultural meaning of sport and its connection to masculinity and femininity. Schools, as well as parents, peers and the media, take part in the process of defining the cultural meaning of sport as masculine, constructing and emphasizing the social norms, which encourage males to play sports so that they develop a masculine identity. The association of sport and masculinity, in other words the masculinization of sport, forms and describes both men’s and women’s relationship to sports. At the same time that men are fortified to participate in sport to reinforce their masculinity, the creation of sport as a mainly male activity calls into question the relationship between female athleticism and femininity. I believe that there are at least two ways that educational institutions participate in the masculinization of sport: firstly through the structuring of sport leadership, and secondly through the cultivation of a masculine culture in their sports programs.
They do this at the level of athletic culture, by linking sport leadership (and, by extension, competence in sport) with masculinity, and at the level of experience, by placing female but not male athletes in a situation where their gender is an added vulnerability in a relationship that is already defined by a marked imbalance of power. However, the leadership structures in sport are just the beginning of the analysis of the masculinization of sport. A broader account of sex inequality in sport must look at how institutions shape sexism and male dominance within the culture of sport