“IT'S PART OF THE GAME”

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Abstract
Contemporary developments in sport pose a powerful challenge to the historical connections between gender, physicality, and power. This process is examined through an analysis of the production of gender in women's ice hockey. Drawing from fieldwork and interviews with players and coaches who participate at elite levels, the author considers the place of physicality in the practice of women's hockey. The analysis suggests that while women's hockey provides an important challenge to historical constructions of gender, the challenge to masculine hegemony is weakened by its construction as an alternative to men's hockey, the version of the sport that “really counts.”