'Who Is The Boss?" - Three Case Studies on Authority Patterns and their Consequences
Aarhus University
Parents from low-income families organizing sports participation for their children
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anne Annink
Parents from low-income families experience several barriers in organizing sports participation for their children. Although municipal policies are focussed on offering support to alleviate the financial burden, for registration fees and outfits for example, parents indicate that they experience many more barriers. Examples are time constraints and difficulties with planning, multi-problems and other priorities, lack of transport and the route to the club being too long and unsafe. Furthermore, parents experience barriers to actually apply for financial support. In the Netherlands, municipal and private funds offer financial support for children aged 18 or below from families with 125% or less from minimum income. Parents indicate that they don’t always know financial support is available or they feel ashamed to apply. When parents do apply, they find the procedures, which differ from city to city and from fund to fund, very complex. During the application procedures, which can be online or via an intermediary, parents often have to submit many documents and income data. Furthermore, yearly budgets are limited because of which not all registration costs are covered. Other costs for outfits, sports attributes, transport or Topsport fees are also not always covered. Lastly, not all sports clubs are affiliated with the clubs. Therefore, children from low-income families cannot participate at all sports clubs of their preference.
Athletes’ voice in elite sports policy’s outputs and outcomes
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jan Willem van der Roest
The Netherlands are a country that is able to compete in elite sports at the highest levels. When world championships and Olympic and Paralympic medals are considered, the Netherlands have been among the twenty best sporting nations of the world for more than a decade (Gracenote, NOC*NSF, 2020). At recent Olympic Games, the country even reached a top-ten position. These accomplishments are the result of carefully planned national strategic approaches (Van der Roest, De Bosscher & Shibli, 2022). Although this systemic approach might be successful, its legitimacy is increasingly being questioned in public debates. The one-sidedness of aiming at medal-winning success at global events is becoming problematic. Moreover, there is a discourse shift apparent from the above outlined focus on outputs (e.g. global medal-winning success) towards an orientation on outcomes (the societal value of sport, such as building national identity or asking attention for climate change) that can also be observed in other nations. However, two problems can be observed in these debates. First, athletes have never been included in determining what objectives should be included on the output level. After all, athletic performances can be defined more broadly than just focusing on global medals. Second, athletes voices are also not included in the shift from output orientation towards outcome orientation. Yet, for the policy to be effective, one could argue that athletes’ voices are crucial in this respect.
The realization of inclusion for LGBTI+people in sport clubs
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Inge Claringbould
Football club VV-ABIM (fictious name) intends to pay attention to creating a safer sports climate for LGBTQI+ players and wonders how to tackle this. The reason is that since the club has started with women's football, five years ago, there are some openly lesbian or bisexual women among them. These women are generally satisfied with the club, but are regularly disturbed by the homophobic or sexist comments from some men. Moreover, the National Sports Agreement pays a lot of attention to promoting a more positive and inclusive sports culture and all clubs have to pay attention to the agreement. There is a general agreement within the club that LGBTQI+ people are welcome and should feel safe, but some the board members realize that it may not yet be safe enough within the club. This is evidenced by the complaints of some women and the fact that not they do not know a single man who is out of the closet within the club. At the same time, there is resistance among some board members to taking specific measures for the safety of LGBTI+ people. They consider themselves quite inclusive and open to everyone. It is also believed that homophobic comments are made within the club, but that they are absolutely not intended to insult gays. Additionally, board members appear to be somewhat overworked by all the measures taken by municipalities and ministries to achieve inclusiveness and there is a lack of volunteers to carry out all these measures.
