The Professionalisation of Women’s Sport

Issues and Debates

Ali Bowes, Alex Culvin, Ali Bowes, Alex Culvin

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781800431973
• eBook ISBN: 9781800431980
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

As women's sport continues to grow and develop there is an increasing need to critically examine the conditions in which women as athletes operate. The Professionalisation of Women's Sport discusses the processes of professionalisation in women's sports as distinct from, and different to, that seen in men's sport, identifying different challenges that face the growth of women's elite sport.

Within this collection, the complex and often fragmented nature of women's involvement across a range of sports are critically discussed. Contributions span the fields of sport sociology, sport history, sport economics and beyond, and across the varying geographical contexts of North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa. Examining American football, basketball, cricket, cycling, golf, ice hockey, tennis, rugby union and rugby league, scholars consider the emergence of professionalisation, the role of the media, and experiences in and of women's (semi-)professional sport.

The Professionalisation of Women's Sport is an essential reference point for any student, researcher or professional interested in, or working in, elite women's sport settings.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Issues and Debates in the Professionalisation of Women's Sport

Ali Bowes and Alex Culvin

Abstract

This chapter introduces and sets the scene for a discussion on women's sport in a professional era. Initiated in the wake of the second-wave feminist movement in America in the 1950s with the professionalisation of golf and tennis, the move for other women's sports to be professionalised has been slow, sporadic and marred with difficulties. However, since the turn of the twenty-first century, there have been significant changes in the landscape of elite women's sport. Alongside an overview of the developments in elite level women's sport, we conceptualise the terms ‘professionalisation’, ‘professional’ and ‘professionalism’. Furthermore, the chapter identifies the scope of the book, drawing upon the importance to consider women's sport as distinct from men's sport and identifying issues that are specific to female athletes, such as maternity and the gender pay gap. We also recognise the diverse and multiple nature of women's identities, highlighting the intersectionality of female athletes in professional sport (specifically around race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and national identity).

Keywords: Professionalisation; women's sport; gender; professional; semi-professional; sport as work

Introduction

In light of the well-documented boom of women's sport across the globe, there are increasing moves towards the (semi-)professionalisation of elite women's sport. Considering women as professional athletes is not a new phenomenon, but it is becoming increasingly common in a diverse range of contexts. Specifically, Lough and Geurin (2019) indicate that the evolution and professionalisation of women's sports has been dramatic, and the industry will continue to grow. Women are claiming space in sport at the highest level, receiving more column inches, more airtime and, for some, more financial reimbursement than their predecessors could have dreamt of. The world of women's sport is constantly shifting and progressing, although women's sports are often discussed as a poor relation to ‘real’ sport, that is men's sport. There are experts on women's sport who try to understand, dissect and even explain this asymmetry between the sexes. Similarly, the media are keen to portray annually that ‘now is the time for women's sport’. The focus of this conversation tends to be how we can make women more equal to men in sport. However, more pressing questions are: where are women's sports now and where are they going?

Men's professional sports stars are often associated with celebrity lifestyles and financial gain (Andrews & Jackson, 2001). However, most women athletes do not own a flashy sports car, a holiday home or consider themselves a celebrity. Their careers are short, insecure and precarious, all of which, compounded by their gender. They operate in a sports market that places value on traditionally male characteristics of aggression, strength, stamina and speed. Commonly heard sentiments have limited our imagination for women's sport: a woman should not be aggressive or competitive. Or can she? Women's sports will never gain as much interest as men's sports. Or will they? Who wants to watch women's sport when the ‘real’, men's version – more competitive, aggressive, faster and stronger version – dominates television, print and digital media? However, in recent years, women's sport has shown that with a big enough stage and with the correct framing, it can draw in both crowds and interest. Thus, women's involvement in professional sport is both interesting and challenging in the same regard yet has warranted only limited attention in academic circles. This book aims to redress this imbalance.

The purpose of this collection is twofold: firstly, to document and critique the increasing professionalisation seen in some women's sports, across the globe. We do this by drawing attention to the way in which this process is unique – and by that we mean distinct from the professionalisation processes in men's sport – and both bound by and influenced by wider social structures. Secondly, it will go some way to outlining the nuances involved for women as professional athletes and highlight the complexities of women carving out a career in the male-dominated space of sport. Important to note here is that the shift into professionalisation is one dominated by characteristically imperialist sports, by Western sports organisations. With this in mind, this collection presents a variety of case studies from different sports and contexts, each highlighting the complex, multi-faceted and at times problematic nature of women's involvement in professional sport. As Lenskyj (2012) notes, women's experiences of elite sport are shaped by discrimination and oppression – not only due to their gender but also along lines of race, ethnicity, sexuality and social class. Contributions in this collection pay attention to the intersectional nature of women's varied experiences in professional sport, acknowledging that women's experiences as professional athletes are not homogenous.

The initial interest for putting this book together stems from our experiences as women interested in sport, where professional women athletes were something of a dream. Spending time in and around the professional women's sports world – Ali supporting and researching women's professional golf, Alex playing and researching women's professional football – prompted our academic interests in documenting the changing face of women's sport as it undergoes a process of professionalisation. It was clear to us that the lived reality of being both a sport professional and a woman is one of contradiction; a fine balance of gratefulness in the opportunity to get paid to play, offset with financial precariousness, shaped by gendered expectations, coupled with the feeling that women are second-class citizens in the sports field. Despite this, the business of women's sport is one that continues to grow, and, significantly for this edited collection, making a living from sport is no longer seen as the exclusive domain of men (Williams, 2013). The remainder of this introduction sets the scene for the collection, highlighting the conditions that have led to the increasing professionalisation of women's sport, providing a brief historical overview of women's inclusion in sport, documenting significant junctures in the professionalisation of women's sport, before defining the key terms that will underpin the rest of the collection.

Women in Sport

The inclusion of women in sport, both in recreational and professional terms, is one that has been mediated by societal-gendered expectations. It is an oft-cited notion that sport is ‘an institution created by and for men’ (Messner & Sabo, 1990, p. 9), orientating itself according to male values and norms. Sport has been inherently rooted in assumptions of hegemonic forms of masculinity (Messner & Sabo, 1990), which has historically made women's involvement in most sports problematic. Despite this, some women have had the opportunity to participate in sport and physical activity, although that is often along racialised and classed lines, and has in some instances involved the transfer of money. It is important to recognise that the relative newness of women's sport often presented in the media is not a fair representation; the history of women's sport is extensive and important to the current context. As Guttmann (1991, p. 1) states, ‘blanket statements about the pre-nineteenth-century exclusion of women from sports are commonly uttered in blissful ignorance of the historical record’, although it is noted that women's sports history has often been underwritten, relatively ignored in sports history accounts, and in accounts on the history of women in general (Osborne & Skillen, 2010). Importantly, the history of women in sport is often one that privileges the experiences of middle-class women from predominantly white, Western nations (Nauright , 2014).

Western women did much of the early work in writing women into accounts of sport history, and as such, the history of women in sport is still emerging (for example, Nauright, 2014). The history of women in sport in the Western world is one that has often been constrained by gender norms and/or medical myths (Gregg & Taylor, 2019). In both the United Kingdom (Osborne & Skillen, 2010), the United States (Gregg & Gregg, 2017), and Canada (Lenskyj , 1986), Victorian ideals shaped appropriate sporting behaviour, especially for white women. The frailty myth, alongside the ideology of motherhood and images of middle-class femininity, contributed to the systematic subordination of women in sports for ‘years to come’ (Hargreaves, 1994, p. 43), rendering sport inappropriate for women. Subsequently, women took part in little or no physical activity. In Australia in the early twentieth century, opportunities were extremely limited, and most women did not have the time, energy, or money to take part in sport (Little, 2014). Assumptions of social class, heteronormativity, racial norms, and women's frailty were interwoven throughout society and embedded into a cultural logic of who can and cannot be involved in sport. However, this is not to say that women were not taking part in any form of sport, and there are examples of pioneer women in sport throughout history.

Feminist commentators on sport have highlighted sport as a ‘fundamentally sexist institution that is male dominated and masculine in orientation’ (Theberge , 1981, p. 342), although women have continued to engage with sport as both athletes and spectators. Indeed, ‘women's movement into sport (as athletes and spectators) has challenged the naturalization of gender difference and inequality, which has been a basic aspect of the institution of sport’ (Messner & Sabo, 1990, p. 9). However, women's involvement in sport has historically been embedded with dominant ideologies of gender, race, social class and sexuality. While the ‘glass ceiling’ on women's involvement in sport may be lifting, it sits at different heights for different women, and it is at its highest for white, middle- or upper-class, heteronormatively feminine athletes. However, there are prominent women in sport who are shifting that narrative, notably by two of the most visible women athletes in world sports: the openly gay US women's soccer captain and 2019 world player of the year Megan Rapinoe, and the most successful woman tennis player of all time, Serena Williams. More recently, athletes are challenging the very notion of the term ‘woman’, with intersex South African athlete Caster Semenya and openly transgender Canadian soccer player Quinn highlighting the complexity of sex categories. Women operating in a sporting space are often restricted by normative notions of what it means to be a woman in a biological sense, as evidenced by World Rugby's position on transgender women in the sport, which adds further complexities to the notion of women as professional athletes.

Women's continued presence in sport, and their increasing position as professionals in this space, has the potential to subvert restrictive gender norms (Bowes & Kitching, 2020), although arguably this relies on parity, especially in the levels of support received by athletes. Women have operated as professionals in sport, in some form, throughout history. The trailblazers of sport in this regard have contributed to a reimagining of the capabilities of women. The proceeding discussion presents a brief history of women as professional athletes, accepting that the discussion is not complete, but a presentation of some key junctures in the professionalisation of women's sport.

Women in Professional Sport

The history of women in professional sport is one that is fractured, fragmented, and dominated by imperial sports in Western countries. Monetary exchange often occurred for women involved in pedestrianism and boxing in the late nineteenth century, yet cycling has been positioned as the oldest professional sport for women, as described by Suzanne Schrijnder's contribution. However, it was the individual games of golf and tennis that really broke new ground for Western women in sport, specifically in the United States. Initiated in the wake of the second-wave feminist movement in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably with the formation of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and later the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), the sports are now considered the most successful, popular and lucrative forms of professional women's sport. The move for other sports, and specifically team sports, to follow this shift towards a professional era has been erratic and marred with difficulties.

Weiller and Higgs (1994) highlight the development of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) as one of the first, yet most successful, professional team sports for women in the history of the United States. Founded in 1942 amid World War Two as a response to the decreasing interest in men's Major League Baseball, where over 1,000 players were drafted into the Army (Weiller & Higgs, 1994), the AAGPBL existed until 1953. Attendance peaked in 1948 with over one million paid admissions (Weiller & Higgs, 199...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figure and Tables
• About the Contributors
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction: Issues and Debates in the Professionalisation of Women's Sport
• Section A: The Emergence of (Semi-)Professionalisation
• Section B: The Impact of Mediatisation
• Section C: Experiences in and of (Semi-)Professional Women’s Sport
• Index