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Cited by 720Sports, Gender, and SocietyGender and Feminist StudiesPhysical Education and Sports Studies

Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain

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Messner, Michael A.·1988·Sociology of Sport Journal
DOI 10.1123/ssj.5.3.197
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Abstract

This paper explores the historical and ideological meanings of organized sports for the politics of gender relations. After outlining a theory for building a historically grounded understanding of sport, culture, and ideology, the paper argues that organized sports have come to serve as a primary institutional means for bolstering a challenged and faltering ideology of male superiority in the 20th century. Increasing female athleticism represents a genuine quest by women for equality, control of their own bodies, and self-definition, and as such represents a challenge to the ideological basis of male domination. Yet this quest for equality is not without contradictions and ambiguities. The socially constructed meanings surrounding physiological differences between the sexes, the present “male” structure of organized sports, and the media framing of the female athlete all threaten to subvert any counter-hegemonic potential posed by female athletes. In short, the female athlete—and her body—has become a contested ideological terrain.

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Authors
Messner, M. A.
Affiliations
University of Southern California (US)
Corresponding author
Messner, Michael A.
Venue
Sociology of Sport Journal
Publisher
Human Kinetics
Published
1988-09
Volume
5
Issue
3
Pages
197-211
ISSN
  • 0741-1235 (ISSN-L)
  • 1543-2785
DOI
10.1123/ssj.5.3.197
OpenAlex
W1820007274
Cited by
720
References
24
Citations by year
2026: 21 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 24 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 32 · 2015: 37 · 2014: 25 · 2013: 39 · 2012: 29
FWCI
14.53
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
Sociology of Sport Journal (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Sports, Gender, and Society
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender and Feminist Studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Physical Education and Sports Studies
Keywords
female athletes, male dominance, gender relations, women's equality, female body, media framing, counter-hegemony, sex differences in physiology

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