Sport and the Oppression of Women

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Abstract
Recent analysis of sexism in sport has tended to take a simplistic view of the situation based on the assumption that if equal numbers of women and men played sport, then equality would have been achieved; a rather similar assumption to the equal opportunity view of education and paid employment. However, if we are to take the issue seriously, we must realise that the relationship between sport and gender inequality is much more complex than this. This paper attempts to tease out some of the ways in which sport contributes to male dominance in general, rather than merely to the perpetuation of sport's own internal, unequal structure. It is suggested that sport serves to ritually support an aura of male competence and superiority in publicly acclaimed skills, and a male monopoly of aggression and violence. A corollary of this is an inferiorisation of women and their skills, and their isolation from the ultimate basis of social power—physical force. These effects act to support patriarchal ideology and are usefully seen as occurring through a process which Lukes, following a well established sociological tradition, designates as the mobilisation of bias.

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