Women’s Sport in a Masculine Field

Despite the male-dominated context in which sport has evolved and continues to be embedded, it offers a space to explore the joys of embodiment, and experience the pleasures in extending the human body in communion with others to discover camaraderie and fulfilment. It also provides a democratic impulse with inclusion of all genders, sexualities, ages, races, castes, ethnicities, religious groups, and persons with diverse abilities, not just in the realm of elite competitive sport, but also in mass and everyday recreational sporting engagement. However, this involvement has not been without daily struggle, often even violence, by those at the margins, including women, girls, LGBTQIA+ people, and others whose bodies may not conform with stereotypical ideas of femininity and masculinity.

The context for such widespread violence is the masculine nature of sport itself. It has really taken ages for women’s presence and participation in sport to reach a semblance of equality. Some sports continue to exclude women, and it is only in recent years that women have found a presence in them. Hence it needs to be acknowledged that sport prevails within a highly gendered social context.

Global Inclusion of Women in Various Sports

Women athletes first participated in the Olympics at Paris in 1900, four years after the modern Olympics began. At the games, 22 women out of a total of 997 athletes took part and competed in the sports of tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian, and golf, where golf and tennis were women-only events. In 1976, this number increased, and women formed 20 percent of all participants in the Montreal Olympics. This increased to women comprising about 40% of the total participants at the Olympics, as late as 2004. In fact, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, it was almost the same number of women (48%) participating as men.

In terms of overall presence of women in governance and management of sport, women are still under-represented. At the Tokyo Olympics, only 32 percent of accredited international technical officials were women, they comprised 13 percent of accredited coaches, and 20 percent of National Olympic Committee Chef de Missions (leaders). These statistics need to improve (IOC, 2023). This underscores the deep structures of exclusion and discrimination at the core of sport worldwide. In this context there is tremendous potential to perpetuate violence against those at the margins.

Continued Exclusion of Women in Certain Sports

The inclusion of women’s sport itself, too, has been an uphill task. In the last 20 years, the IOC has introduced a number of women’s events into the Olympic program. It was only in 2012 in the London Olympic Games, with the addition of women’s boxing, that women participated in every sport in the Olympic program that men did. It is worth tracing the introduction of specific sports for women over the years. While aquatics entered the Games in 1912, athletics and gymnastics were introduced only in 1928. Women’s volleyball and basketball were introduced in 1964, and 1976, respectively. Women’s hockey came in 1980, and football entered the Games in 1996 (IOC, 2023).

Several factors have contributed to women entering male-dominated sports, with the growing recognition and acceptance of women’s sports; equal opportunities to participate in competitions at the school and college level, the availability of training facilities and equipment; developments, including funding, in coaching and training techniques; and most of all the emergence of women role models who have broken stereotypes by persisting in competition and setting new records. An event such as the pole vault in track and field athletics is testimony to this (The Sports Reviewer, n.d.). Another event, the 3000-meter steeplechase, only became an Olympic event for women in 2008, while men ran it beginning in the 1920 Olympics.

These struggles for inclusion have been matched by resistance and backlash from those dominating the sport. A historic example of this was seen when Kathrine Switzer was shoved during the Boston Marathon in April 1967 halfway through the race as she broke the gender barrier for the Marathon, captured tellingly by the lens of Paul J. Connell of the Boston Globe (she continued and finished the race). Switzer had registered for the race, which did not permit women to participate, using just her initials and surname (Frye, 2019).

Coverage by Sports Media

In recent years, the complexity of the types of violence faced by women and marginalized persons—such as nonbinary people, LGBTQIA+ people, and others—within sport have been highlighted by media sources. The dominant practice in mainstream sports media and the commercialized sector within it, is to ignore female participants. In fact, scholars have reviewed how sports coverage has provided a platform for those who keep extending the normative constructions of gender as well as race (Oates, 2017). But journalists and whistle-blowers who keep to ethical reporting do highlight instances of exclusion, discrimination, and violence.

Women Journalists

As in the case of women within sport, the increasing presence of women in sports journalism has also contributed not just to covering women’s participation in traditionally male sports such as football and cricket but also to sensitively covering both on-field and off-field dimensions of the sport. In 1978, in a historic court case, Melissa Ludtke, a reporter with Sports Illustrated, won the right to practice her profession and cover her beat by gaining entry into the locker room of the New York Yankees, securing the same right to interview athletes and coaches as her male counterparts. The reason given by the baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn to deny women access to locker room space was to “protect the image of baseball as a family sport” and to preserve “traditional notions of decency and propriety.” But the court said that this policy violated Ludtke’s 14th Amendment rights to equal protection and due process in terms of her fundamental right to pursue her profession (Rothman, 2015). Things have not changed much in the last 40+ years, and women who did attempt to visit locker rooms for interviews found themselves faced with sexual harassment, when the players exposed themselves or made sexist and abusive remarks. With the expansion of women’s global sport, women’s leagues, and World Cup competitions, a new generation of women sports journalists have made strides in the field.

The 2023 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) Women’s World Cup, an international competition, had an array of women journalists, but their presence has not come without struggles to enter the arena dominated by men, while also mentoring and training women journalists to cover sports.

Focus on Perpetrators of Violence

Journalist Katie Strang, who covered the Larry Nassar case in 2017, speaks of the need for investigative journalism to really capture the underbelly of violence embedded within the masculine, commercial, and competitive realm of sport. For investigative journalists covering violence, the support of the institution was absolutely necessary. An investigative journalist goes beyond just reporting a criminal offence recorded by the police, to explore the contexts generating stories in which athletes co-exist with powerful men and women who can control their lives (Chotiner, 2021).

Such a role was played by Indian journalist Mihir Vasavda in 2020 when he submitted questions to the Sports Authority of India, under the Indian law permitting public access and right to information. His queries uncovered a vast morass of despicable violations and sexual abuse of minor women athletes by male coaches in 24 centers spread across the country, with 45 complaints over a period of 10 years reported in a prominent national daily (Vasavda, 2020). What is shocking is that the abuse was perpetrated by those in whose care, mentorship, and training the athletes were placed. This indicates the critical role of media reporters and journalists in ethical reporting of deep-seated violations through reports of in-depth coverage of incidents. These point conclusively to transparency and media scrutiny playing a significant role in due processes adopted by institutions in the resolution of cases of sexual harassment. Sports media has thus exposed the privileged dominant practices of not just the participants, but especially of those with authority within sports.

Violence That Scars Minds, Bodies, Careers

In the spectrum of violence and abuse that athletes face, sometimes over years by the same abuser; are sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and mental trauma. Those athletes who do not fall within the gender binary that the masculinized sporting field enforces are subject to suspicions of their gender, and technology and arbitration come into play to violate their rights and integrity. In most cases, young children, including boys, who are initiated into training for elite competitive sport are the most vulnerable (Hartill, 2010).

Sexual Harassment and Abuse

In early 2018, a Michigan state court sentenced Larry Nassar, a doctor with the Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics (the body overseeing the sport of gymnastics in the USA), from 40 to 175 years in prison for criminal sexual conduct in the first degree. Charges were first filed against Nassar in November 2016, following which more than 150 women complained against him of sexual abuse over years through their childhoods as aspiring gymnasts. As children, they were unable to voice the violation of their bodies, as it was cloaked in the guise of “treatment” that would heal them of their body’s pain to train again to achieve their dream of being an Olympic medalist. Three of these athletes were also Olympic gold medalists. A probe had begun by the FBI in 2015, but even the one witness they spoke to was not properly interviewed and the process formally documented (LaPook, 2019). Several athletes, including four-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion Simone Biles; stated before a US Senate hearing in 2021 that the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, along with the federal law enforcement agencies, failed to protect athletes from abuse, despite several of them complaining over the years; thus demonstrating the complicity of the powerful coaches, administrators, and law enforcers over vulnerable young athletes, and their condoning of sexual abuse over years (Taneja, 2021).

Mental Trauma

Simone Biles, now known as one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, spoke of her anxiety and mental health troubles publicly following the Tokyo Olympics. She admitted carrying over the scars of the sexual abuse that she, along with hundreds of others, were subject to by Larry Nassar, as she testified before a Senate Committee. At the Olympics, given her state of mind, she withdrew from some events, being unable to perform to the best of her ability (Kallingal, 2021).

Biles has not been the only one to come out publicly about anxieties and pressures that the cultures of sport put on athletes. When she was world number two, Naomi Osaka was fined $15,000 by French Open tennis championship organizers for refusing to speak to the press, and warned that she would face expulsion from the tournament if this persisted. Considering her mental health more valuable, she withdrew from the tournament. Several high profile athletes supported Osaka in her stance, signifying that it was brave to come out and speak of anxiety and vulnerability in a sport that glamourized strength and power, and a system that glorified it (Carayol, 2021). These point out the deep emotional, psychological, and mental health impacts of sporting careers that go beyond the regular physical injuries that athletes encounter.

Boys in Elite Sport

Young boys, especially in elite sport, who are subject to sexual abuse, have the mindset of the sport imposed upon them; they are unable to distinguish their self-identity from their identification with the game. Their entire subjectivity, their experience of boyhood, is co-constituted through their aspirations for excellence in the sport, into which they have put their body and soul. Coaches and mentors are those to whom they entrust their lives and who they value as ideals in their sporting lives. In such situations, reporting sexual abuse by these very same adult coaches was often an impossibility because their praise mattered more than an injury to the self. It is only later, as adults, that the athletes are able to speak of their experience, when their relationship to the sport has dimmed and they are no longer in an enchanted relationship with the sport. Unfortunately for many, even this relief may never occur (Hartill, 2010). In fact, in the Larry Nassar case, several boys, similarly scarred, came out in support of their sisters, adding their voices to their testimonies.

Body Culture in Sport and Law Enforcement

Not only is the field of sport dominated by men, but in terms of body presentations, certain sports display themselves as bastions of masculinity. American football is one such, where rugged strength and aggressiveness of the male body is celebrated within American culture. The bodies of the players, their muscular thighs visible through their tight trousers, pads showing off the broadness of their shoulders, all symbolize hypermasculinity and place them as clearly superior to women. It would seem that American football continues to keep its reputation as the last preserve of masculinity, resisting pressures to tone down aggression, through arguments against “effeminacy” or “impulses to homoeroticism.” In fact, this behavior on the field, elevating them to the status of heroes, is enacted in everyday life; at celebrations, in clubs, and in other spaces where violence is condoned. Several National Football League players have been involved in numerous cases of crimes against women and murder cases as well (Gems & Pfister, 2009).

In India, too, wrestling, which historically has been considered a male sport, twice Olympic medalist Sushil Kumar was accused of murder following a dispute over property, where Kumar beat a former junior national champion to death. The close links of the region in northwest India to violence and hooliganism, from where many young men come to wrestling academies, are blurred as many of them return to a life of crime in a situation of rising unemployment. For many of these young men, Kumar was a hero to be emulated in sport (Vasavda & Manral, 2021).

Whereas male bodies are celebrated for presenting as masculinized, female bodies are expected to present in sexualized ways. Particular female sports enhance sexualized femininity; for instance, gymnastics, ice-skating, and synchronized swimming have routines that contain sexually suggestive movements, postures, and poses that border on the erotic. Sportswear and athletic gear also contribute to the promotion of a sexy image. While these images conform to dominant heteronormativity, they objectify female bodies rather than value their sporting ability—unlike that of men (Hargreaves, 1994). A highly masculine presence in sports governance and management contributes to a reinforcement of this norm. Despite this, some sportswomen seek to reject these images and clothing to present themselves in loose-fitting, comfortable, and non-objectified sportswear. Some of these have led to conflicting situations.

In July 2021, the Norwegian women’s beach handball team was fined 1500 euros for wearing “improper clothing” at the European Championship by the European Handball Association’s Disciplinary Commission. The rules demand that women wear bikini bottoms; when the team led a protest wearing shorts for their match, they were fined (Radnofsky, 2021). These rules and regulations show the patriarchal character of governing bodies in sport that prefer objectification of women’s bodies that denies them dignity as sportswomen.

Feudal Cultures

In other contexts, such as India, the feudal social relations, patronage, and power wielded by those in authority to grant opportunities for participation in elite competitions through favoritism and quid pro quo form the ground for sexual abuse. In 2023, several women wrestlers and a few men—Olympian, World Championship, Asian, and Commonwealth medalists—came out to protest the sustained sexual harassment, groping, stalking, and abuse over years by the President of the Wrestling Federation of India, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, a powerful member of the ruling party of India, and a six-time member of Parliament of India. They protested with clarity and awareness that this protest and coming out publicly against a powerful leader meant an end to their careers. Despite their sustained protest, the government did not set up processes to ensure justice, but took the side of the bosses in the federations that control the sport. Nevertheless, the wrestlers continue their protest in innovative ways (Mehrotra & Gupta, 2023).

Suspecting Gender, Targeting Racialized Bodies

When Dutee Chand, an Indian woman athlete, was barred in 2014 from international track and field competition because the amount of naturally occurring testosterone in her body had exceeded the amount stipulated by the Hyperandrogenism Regulations of World Athletics, she challenged the regulation. (As a medical term, hyperandrogenism refers to high levels of androgens (sex hormones) such as testosterone, in bodies of any sex) (Doherty, 2024). The Court of Arbitration in Sport (CAS) said that the regulation was not supported by scientific findings and sought new evidence to prove that Dutee could be disqualified for not fulfilling her eligibility as a “female” athlete. Dutee won her case, temporarily. Despite evidence emerging through feminist research on the complexity of sex and gender, the institutions of law and science prefer to abide by an “ideologically driven binary alternative” (Pape, 2021b, p. 17). The debate over the court’s decision spoke of how there is an over-representation of women of color from the Global South against whom complaints are lodged. This corresponds with a history of the targeting of black bodies as not up to the mark of femininity which is the normative prerogative of white women.

Queer Identities and Sporting Cultures

While gender has been a matter of much interrogation, it has not been easy for athletes to express their sexuality and sexual preferences as well. Dutee Chand, India’s star sprinter, came out in 2019 as a queer woman, who had been in a relationship with her woman partner since 2017. But she had to face a lot of hostility and backlash even from her family who lived in a village in Odisha state, including her sister and mother. However, the environment in the country at that time with the Supreme Court of India reading down the sections in the law that criminalized same sex relationships, helped in individuals like Dutee’s coming out. She received support from the sporting fraternity even when she faced isolation from her family (Ninan, 2021). But not everyone was as fortunate as Dutee; Pinki Pramanik, another star Indian athlete and Asian gold medalist, was charged with sexual assault by her female partner and she faced much anguish and disgrace for months by the police, hospital authorities, and the media before all charges against her were dismissed by the courts (Times News Network, 2012). Despite these stories of distress and humiliation, sport globally has had an increased presence of queer, lesbian, and gay athletes openly competing. The Tokyo Games of 2020 and the Paris Games of 2024 are evidence of this (Yip, 2024).

Questioning Gender: Body, Gender, and Sexuality

The last word on gender has not been spoken. This is so in the case of Caster Semenya, a South African 800-meter runner and winner of the Olympic gold medal at the Rio Olympics in 2016, who was subject to scrutiny about her gender. Semenya’s extraordinary performance in the 2009 World Championships had the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), now World Athletics, say that they were going to investigate ambiguities about her gender (Vox, 2019). There was hostility in the local press which questioned her gender, while her country, South Africa, supported her and celebrated her victory as a daughter of the nation. Caster Semenya and several others like her, including Dutee Chand, who had challenged the IAAF regulations, have bodily attributes that complicate the binary gender.

The IAAF’s Hyperandrogenism Regulations that indicate how much naturally occurring testosterone is permitted in women’s bodies, work against women athletes, especially from the Global South. Such policing of natural differences in bodies did not cover male athletes such as Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps, for it seemed just a “natural advantage.” The subsequent processes of the Court of Arbitration in Sport, a body comprised of mostly white men, claimed that it was “necessary to discriminate against Semenya to preserve the integrity of female athletics,” (emphasis added) and imposed the invasive regulation of taking steps to reduce the level of naturally occurring testosterone in her body. It seems that while science is still grappling with the questions of gender, the targeting of women of color from the Global South by white male dominated governing bodies of sport continues (Vox, 2019; Pape, 2021a). The raging debate has supporters as well as detractors.

The reality of the lives of intersex athletes are only emerging. But evidence from activism is also being reflected in the field of sport. The Malta Declaration that emerged as a statement of the Third International Intersex Forum in 2013 included the demand that intersex people are able to participate in competitive sport, at all levels, in accordance with their legal sex. It also demanded that the medical community recognize that medicalization and stigmatization of intersex people results in tremendous trauma and mental health concerns (The Malta Declaration, 2013).

Histories of Humiliation

The history of such regulations determining the eligibility of women (but not men) to compete in Olympic sport is a history of humiliation and contention. Prior to the 1930s the presence of women who had differential sexual development or who did not conform to the dominant constructions of femininity in the Global North were subject to gender testing through “nude parades” or gynecological examination. From the 1930s this shifted to chromosomal testing to fit into the binary sex categories and was made mandatory for all women competitors from the 1968 Olympics to the 1990s. When the test was criticized by members of the scientific community, it was abandoned and a far-less transparent regime was adopted. From here the testing was subject to intervention in any suspicious case. Thus, not only was this political but subjective as well, throwing to the winds any semblance of reliance on science and expertise, making it wholly arbitrary. From the 2000s, the struggles and battles of several women athletes such as Santhi Soundararajan of India in 2006, Pamela Jelimo of Kenya in 2008, and finally Caster Semenya from South Africa in 2009, brought focus on the need for an overhaul of these regulations. Women were being singled out, especially from the Global South, pointing to the discrimination based on gender, race, and nationality emerging from sporting bodies (Pape, 2021b).

Global Policy and Athletes’ Activism and Advocacy

Athlete rights activist and researcher Payoshni Mitra says that the culture of surveillance and suspicion is very much a part of global competitive sport. She has, in her research on sexuality, gender, and sport, realized that it is only by supporters being there to care for and struggle with these athletes on the margins that global sporting bodies can be called out for their racist, heterosexist, classist, and gender bias. Mitra had supported Dutee Chand as well as Santhi Soundararajan in their struggle against the power of global bodies that are ready to exclude any differently presenting woman athlete. In Chand’s case, Mitra was appointed by the Sports Authority of India as her mediator-cum-advisor in the case at the CAS in Geneva. She speaks of the lack of ethics in the manner in which the international federations enforce gender eligibility regulations. Being one of the 10 experts on the panel supporting Caster Semenya in her case in 2019 against the IAAF regulations before the CAS, Mitra says that such regulations will definitely lead to violation of the gender rights of local women athletes by the national federations who will now enforce these regulations (Gopal, 2023; Jyoti & Ratnam, 2018). The work of athlete rights activists and those who have had traumatic experiences, as intersex athlete Ugandan runner Annet Negesa, has been to campaign against these regulations and to ensure that such women athletes do not “drop out” of sporting careers.

Extending Governance Structures

It would be appropriate to recall that it was a long struggle to bring about the passage of Title IX in 1972, a national law in the USA that prohibits discrimination in education programs or activities, including sports, on the basis of sex. This led to massive participation of young women and girls in sport with funding priority for female sports. With the passage of the Equality Act, sex has extended to include gender identity. While this has been welcomed by transgender, non-binary, and intersex athletes, it has created a divide among women’s rights activists. Since 2020, numerous states across the USA have taken legislative measures that are harmful to all transgender and intersex youth (not only athletes). It raises questions of how state and society can go beyond this impasse, and extend the benefits of rights gained through feminism, to those at the margins of the gender binary.

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Further Learning

Human Rights Watch. (2023, March 31). Sex testing rules harm women athletes. News Release. Sex Testing Rules Harm Women Athletes | Human Rights Watch

Snelson, F. (2023, March 23). The story of England’s first women’s team: Subversion, scandal, & skill. PlanetFootball. The story of England’s first women’s team: Subversion, scandal & skill

Vox. (2019, June 29). The problem with sex testing in sports [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiCftTLUzCI