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Exploring Implicit Gender Bias in Community Perspectives of Australian Rules Football
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mackenzie Glazbrook
Traditionally masculine sports, like Australian Rules Football, have an extended history of excluding women from participatory opportunities, facilitating discriminatory stereotypes that sport is primarily for men. Historical research has demonstrated sport as an important factor in socialisation processes that enforce traditionalist gender norms within society. This reinforces contemporary stereotypes that may limit the development of women’s professional sport, given the importance of consumers in the financial sustainability of sporting leagues. Guided by social role theory in a series of studies, we develop an in-depth understanding of the diversity in perspectives surrounding the recently established women’s Australian Football League and the various factors that encourage and dissuade consumption of women’s football. In the current study we aimed to measure implicit gender bias in consumers of Australian football, through hypothetical vignette scenarios comparing the skills of women and men players. This was achieved using an experimental design in which participants assessed the competency of players through scales developed from attribution theory. This research extends contemporary research in the field suggesting discrimination against women in the sporting industry remains, but manifests in a more covert manner compared to historical accounts of explicit prejudice. It is expected the results of this research will reflect inconsistencies between explicitly expressed opinions surrounding women’s sport and the covert attitudes measured. Findings from this research yield valuable insights for the further development of an industry that encourages diversity and inclusion.
Tracing the Trick: Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding as Socio-Technical Networks
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session María-Victoria Pérez-y-Pérez
In professional sport, equipment, technologies and other non-humans or ‘technical actants’ are critical in defining, assessing and practicing elite performance alongside humans or ‘social actants’. Though the place of technical actants is always central in any social domain, including sports, their importance has often been neglected in sociology for a focus on the relationships between humans such as athletes, coaches and judges. An Actor-Network Theory (ANT) framework shifts this focus by recognising the mediating force of non-human actants, thereby offering a way to reveal unexpected forms of power. Drawing on findings from an ANT-inspired ethnographic study of a professional freestyle ski and snowboarding (FSS) park and pipe team, I provide a way to understand how non-humans can have agency and affect sports performance, proposing that power is shared among human and non-human actants. For example, to raise the amplitude or degree of difficulty of a trick requires the constant care of the FSS assemblage of human and non-human actants to achieve stability within the assemblage. Importantly, it is the size, shape and scope of the assemblage that will determine what is produced; different kinds of assemblages will produce different kinds of effects; assemblages are individualized rather than universal and therefore can be highly unstable. Thus, tracing the work that goes on to achieve stability within the FSS trick assemblage can provide insights into how professional FSS continues to evolve.
Developing Trauma-aware Community Sport Programmes for Young People from Refugee Backgrounds
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robyn Smith
Community sport programming has become increasingly utilized in Western resettlement countries to enhance the wellbeing and integration of young people from refugee backgrounds. While sport can provide opportunities for social interaction, belonging, and positive emotions, it can also be a site for social exclusion and re-traumatization, which may be particularly problematic for young refugees who have experienced trauma. While there is growing recognition in wider community sport programming of the need to adopt trauma-aware approaches, which seek to recognize the manifestations and impact of trauma on the individual and establish practices that respond accordingly, these approaches have not yet been applied in the context of sport and young people from refugee backgrounds. This innovative three-year-long Participatory Action Research study in London, England examines how community sport and leisure programmes are designed for and understood by young people from refugee backgrounds. In this paper, we draw from interviews with stakeholders, participant observation field notes, and the young people’s photo diaries, to critically examine how Quarmby et al’s (2022) trauma-aware principles of (1) safety and wellbeing, (2) routine and structure, (3) positive relationships, (4) youth voice, and (5) promoting strengths and self-beliefs were experienced and negotiated by the young people and staff in the context of a sport-based programme. These novel findings not only identify what works for young people from refugee backgrounds in community sport programming but also offer significant practical guidance for sports organizations and practitioners hoping to embed trauma-aware principles in programme design/delivery.
