This project aims to investigate the growing visibility of women in contact sports in Australia and the multiple forces that influence their participation
The project, funded by the Australian Research Council, also seeks to generate new knowledge in the area of feminist theory, cultural theory, and sport management. Expected outcomes of this project include enhanced capacity of contact sports to include and support women's participation through policies and practices that work towards gender equality and long-term sustainability. This project should provide significant benefits, such as greater equality for women in sport and more equitable conditions and media representations.
The rise of women’s participation in contact sport has made gender inequity and opportunity visible in new ways through public debate about Australian cultural life. This project will provide insight into the forces driving change and identify strategies for the development of equitable policies and practices that will sustain women’s participation into the future. The research will advance knowledge about the transformation of sport cultures across all levels.
Dr Adele Pavlidis
Leading this project is Dr Adele Pavlidis. Adele is a social scientist and writer who draws on a range of methods to better understand the world we live in. Having graduated with a PhD in Sport and Leisure Management, she has a deep understanding of the relations of power that influence governance and the formation of community.
Students and HDR candidates
- Erin Nichols (PhD)
- Lisa Nicholls (Honours)
In the media
‘The stars aligned’: Ash Barty’s Wimbledon win is an historic moment for Indigenous people and women in sport
Background
There is an extraordinary level of support for women’s contact sport. The Australian Football League Women's (AFLW) launched its first season, with paid players and quality media production in 2017, with a broadcast deal made with Channel Seven and Foxtel, while the Australian women rugby sevens team won Gold in the Rio 2016 Olympics. Sport journalist Simon Massey (2016) notes: ‘I’m confident that historians will look back at 2016 as a defining year in women’s sport, an awakening to its untapped potential. The decisions we make over the coming years will be crucial to its ongoing success’. With sport entangled in identity politics (Farquherson & Marjoribanks, 2003; Rowe, 2016) and new technologies (Redhead, 2016), the cultural context of inequality in women’s contact sport matters as Australia continues to grapple with sexism, discrimination and gender-based violence.
There is a pervasive belief, particularly in Australia, of the goodness and power of sport – what Coakley (2015) calls, the ‘Great Sport Myth’. But sport is an affective, embodied cultural formation, evoking strong feelings of national pride, excitement, and belonging, as well as aggression and violence. Sport evokes powerful feelings and is celebrated for its ability to break down barriers and build healthy communities (Hoye & Nicholson, 2009). Yet, research demonstrates that sport is not all-inclusive. Women are one group that has been excluded and marginalised, from recreational to elite levels. The situation has changed in some sports, such as cricket. However, in contact sports marginalisation, contestation and discrimination has been a continual dynamic at play that shapes public debate over the value of women’s participation.
Access to sport matters, particularly as an integral part of ‘cultural citizenship’ in Australia (Rowe, 2017), yet women’s growing participation in contact sports continue to challenge long-held cultural norms about sport that privileges masculine bodies (Messner, 1988). As Toffoletti (2016) has argued, discrimination and sexism towards female athletes are often understood as a problem of women’s own making (inferior biology and skill), rather than the result of unequal power relations. It is these gender dynamics that have fuelled a range of feminist responses that challenge marginalisation in the public sphere and open up new spaces of dialogue.
New media technologies (Antunovic & Hardin, 2012; Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2014) in particular are changing feminism rapidly. This has resulted in new conceptualisations of post-feminism, DIY feminism, and emerging social media feminism. In sport, social media campaigns, such as Proctor and Gamble’s #likeagirl, the grassroots Australian #bootsoff supporting female AFL (Australian Football League) players in their pay disputes, and the recent ‘Change our Game’ (http://www.changeourgame.vic.gov.au/) campaigns have gained the attention of women and girls around the world and contribute towards the complex assemblages that are shaping and reshaping the physical and digital field of sport.
Aims and approach
The project has three core research aims:
- Identify the multiple strategies that are needed to sustain, at elite and grassroots levels, women’s successes in contact sports;
- Generate new knowledge about the contemporary sport-assemblage and identify the multiple actors (human and non-human) that are shaping the growth and increasing visibility of women’s participation in contact sport in Australia, and;
- Investigate the significance of social media for enabling feminist voices and influencing public discourse around in/equality in women’s contact sports.
Theoretically the project will advance new ways of thinking about the affective relations that shape the gendered performance of sport in relation to different publics (for example, how playing, watching, managing contact sport feels within the dynamics of power that challenge or reinforce gender inequities). These insights can support policy development through more nuanced understandings of gender and embodiment, as well as more sustainable and equitable practices in sport management.
Methods and data collection
The project will specifically focus on the elite successes and growing recreational participation of women’s contact sport in Australia and involves four streams (at times overlapping).
- Stream 1: Multimodal ethnography: immersing the researcher in both face-to-face and online contexts (Murthy, 2013) in the overlapping communities of fans, supporters, players, policy-makers, sport administrators and scholars involved in women’s contact sport in Australia
- Stream 2: In-depth interviews with elite athletes and grassroots/social athletes involved in contact sport in Australia. Interviews will explore issues of embodiment, as well as provide background to the key issues faced by women in these sports. As part of the interviews women will be asked to provide visual representations of themselves (either via Instagram, Facebook or digital images) and speak to their self-representation and embodiment. This phase includes interviews with AFLW players, roller derby (focus on those who no longer play) and competitive power-lifting.
- Stream 3: Feminist tensions. Qualitative content analysis of social media posts (Facebook and Twitter) will examine the complex web of relations between sport bodies (National, State, community), commercial interests(products, sponsorship, public funding) and women.
- Stream 4: Policies and practices of sport management: In-depth interviews will be conducted with team entourage - exercise physiologists/sports medicine professionals, referees, coaches, and administrators. Questions asked will explore the policy and knowledge base from which decisions are made. This phase is currently underway with a focus on strength and conditioning coaches and their knowledge base around sex and gender.
Publications
- Pavlidis, A.. Fullagar, S. and O’Brien, W. (under contract). A Collision Course for Change: Gender Equity in Women’s sport. Palgrave Macmillon, UK.
- Nichols, E., Pavlidis, A. and Nowak, R. (2021), “It’s like lifting the power”: Powerlifting, digital gendered subjectivities, and the politics of multiplicity, Leisure Sciences
- Carlini, J., Pavlidis, A., Thomson, A. and Morrison, C. (2021), Delivering on social good - Corporate social responsibility and professional sport: a systematic quantitative literature review, Journal of Strategic Marketing (SI on Sustainable Development Goals) https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2021.1881147
- Rodriguez Castro, L., Pavlidis, A., Kennelly, M. and Nichols, E. (2021), Sisterhood and affective politics: The CaiRollers mobilising change through roller derby in Egypt, International Journal of Cultural Studies, January [online] https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920987237
- Sotiriadou, P. and Pavlidis, A. (2020), Gender and diversity in sport governance, in Shilbury, D. and Ferkins, L. (eds), Routledge Handbook of Sport Governance, Routledge.Pavlidis, A., Toffoletti, K. and Sanders, K. (2020). ‘Pretty disgusted honestly’: exploring fans’ affective responses on Facebook to the modified rules of Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW). Journal of Sport and Social Issues, October [online] https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723520964969
- Pavlidis, A., Kennelly, M. and Rodriguez Castro, L. (2020), Shame, pain and fame: Sportswomen losing in Australia’s mainstream media reporting, Sport in Society, June [online] https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2020.1777101
- Pavlidis, A. (2020). Being grateful: materialising ‘success’ in women’s contact sport. Emotion, space and society. 35, 100673
- Pavlidis, A., Rodriguez Castro, L. and Kennelly, M. (2020), White Women Smiling? Media Representations of Women at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Sociology of Sport Journal, 37(1), 36–46
- Pavlidis, A. (accepted July, 2019), Roller derby as a ‘new sport’, in Tjønndal, A. (Ed.), Innovation and the Emergence of New Sports, Routledge.
Keynotes and presentations
- Pavlidis, A. 2020, ‘Sexuality and gender in sport’, The Australian Sociological Association Social Science Week
- Pavlidis, A. 2020, ‘Troubled derby subjectivities: spaces and practices for becoming’. Young people, cultural practice and wellbeing. Newcastle Youth Studies Network, August 27
- Pavlidis, A. 2019, ‘Developing sportswomen in diverse social and cultural environments’, keynote address for the Centre for Elite Performance Expertise and Training at Macquarie University, November 7 and 8.
- Pavlidis, A. and Fullagar, S. 2019, ‘Making “space” for women in sport in Logan City Council’, Lessee Forum, Logan City Council, August 6.
- Pavlidis, A. 2019, ‘Being grateful: materialising “success” in women’s contact sport’. Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences Seminar Series, University of Queensland, June 7.
Engagement
Over the course of the DECRA project Adele, with various collaborators and with support from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and the Griffith Department of Hotel, Tourism and Sport Management, has hosted Griffith University's Women and Sport symposium.
Speakers and distinguished guests have included:
- 2017 - Dr Sarah Kelly (University of Queensland), Kerry Harris (Focus Consultants), Glynis Nunn-Cearns, OAM (Olympic champion), Professor Kristine Toohey, AM (Griffith University), Dr Kim Toffoletti (Deakin University), Danielle Warby (Siren: a women sport collective), AnneMarie White OAM (Journalist), Sam Huges (Gold Coast City Council), Dr Lisa Hunter (Monash University), Keeown Rawnsley (Rugby League), Dr Caroline Riot (Griffith University), and Associate Professor Popi Sotiriadou.
- 2018 - Matti Clement (Australian Sport Commission), Dr Hazel Maxwell (University Tasmania), Dr Indigo Willing, OAM (Griffith University), Tora Waldren (Girls Skate Brisbane), Evie Ryder (Girls Skate Brisbane), Heather Reid, AM HonDUniv, Dr Brianna Larsen (Griffith University), Dr Annette Brömdal (University of Southern Queensland), Professor Richard Pringle (Monash University), Dr Kate O'Halloran (Siren: a women sport collective/freelance journalist), Chantella Perera (KOJO), Dr Faith Valencia-Forrester (Griffith University), Dr Rebecca Olive (University of Queensland), Bridie Kean (University of Sunshine Coast/member, Australian wheelchair basketball) and Ella Sablijak (member, Australian wheelchair basketball).
- 2019 - Kate Palmer (Sport Australia), Associate Professor Ruth Jeanes (Monash University), Professor Murray Drummond (Flinders University), Professor Clare Hanlon (Victoria University), Dr Millicent Kennelly (Griffith University), Fiona McLarty (Gold Coast Suns), Kim Crane (Surf Australia), Associate Professor Sandy O’Sullivan (University of the Sunshine Coast), Dr Laura Rodriguez Castro (Griffith University), Dr Diti Bhattacharya (Griffith University), Dr Donna Little (Way to be consulting), Deb Savage (Surf Australia)
Adele has also featured in several podcasts and worked with Logan Together on their strategic advisory community for their active community partnerships program.