Mary A. Boutilier and Lucinda SanGiovanni – The Sporting Woman

Boutilier, Mary A. and Lucinda SanGiovanni. Sporting Woman. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics,
1983. Print.

Summary:

In this book, Mary A. Boutilier and Lucinda SanGiovanni critique the theories and methodologies traditionally used to study women in sports, noting that positivist, value-neutral research fails to challenge the sexist nature of sport. They argue that “the liberal aim is to be ‘one of the boys’ and to gain equal access to an institution which we believe is in need of radical change” (47). In other words, the push for women to gain access to the historically male arena of sports has caused women to uncritically accept the androcentric foundations of the institution and adopt masculine values, thereby contributing to their own oppression. Boutilier and SanGiovanni believe that sport ha the capacity to be a liberating environment for women, but only after the foundations of the institution have been challenged to reflect women’s experiences and values as well. In order to do this, they argue that research on women in sports must be humanist in nature, drawing attention to issues of power and control and offering solutions and/or alternatives. The authors also advocate for a socialist feminist approach that acknowledges the ways in which class and sexism (and race?) intersect. The authors provide a history of American sport that reveals its androcentric and capitalist foundation: sport has become incredibly regimented and quantified, with the end goals being control of individuals and profit (through a single-minded focus on winning). Women’s participation in sport has always been accompanied by an apologetic and social acceptability is based on the image of the ideal woman, with it being deemed more appropriate for women to participate in less-competitive, non-contact, individual sports like golf, swimming, and gymnastics. They note that existing research on women in sport (in 1983) is still in the preliminary stages, not yet producing anything of theoretical significance and often being flawed by poor sample selections, essentialism, or oversimplified concepts.

Key Terms:

• conceptual maps – “assumptions, values, premises, concepts” (ix).
• SportsWorld – “that ‘amorphous infrastructure’ identified by journalist Robert Lipsyte that ‘helps contain our energies, shape our ethical values, and ultimately, socialize us for work, or war or depression’” (xiv).
• normative orientation – sport sociology that “originates by making value assumptions about what sport should be, then accumulating evidence to determine the extent to which sport reflects these assumptions” (6).
• non-normative orientation – sport sociology whose goal is “the empirical description and explanation of what is in contrast to what ought to be” (6).
• functional-systemic paradigm – “The prime concern is how persons and groups function in sporting roles and processes and how sports contribute toward maintaining society’s stability and integration.” In this paradigm “the sport sociologist’s aim is to show how and why sport maintains existing social and cultural life. The conventional arrangements, policies, ideologies, and actions that comprise sport as a social institution are rarely questioned; the connections between sport and other institutions–the family, school, government, the economy, the mas media–are treated as unproblematic; the issues of power, control, conflict, and self-actualization are ignored. ” (7).
• muckraking paradigm – “Oriented toward social change, researchers seek to challenge myths about sport, to expose covert problems as endemic to the essence of sport as presently structured, and to motivate groups and individuals to social action based on these insights” (8). The authors note that one problem to this paradigm is that it fails to offer solutions to the problems it uncovers.
• humanist-existential paradigm – “a ‘man-centered’ sociology that serves human goals and needs, one that is sensitive to forces that impinge on self-actualization for those involved in sport” (8).
• traditional/mainstream sociology – “characterized by value-neutrality, moral detachment, positivism, and the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake” (9).
• humanist sociology – “stresses a value-committed science, one that recognizes the moral involvement that sociologists bring to their work. It is an activist approach to sociology that seeks to use knowledge about social life to enhance human freedom and dignity” (9).
• liberal feminism – “sees the root of women’s oppression as caused by the lack of equal civil rights and educational opportunities for women…Liberals believe that the elimination of discrimination based on sex can be accomplished by reform within the present structure of American society…They assume that once these rights and chances are mandated, all women–regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, sexual preference, social class or marital status–will have equal access to these opportunities and will be equally rewarded for their talents” (14). Obviously, this assumption is problematic.
• Marxist feminism – “rejects the possibility of any real equality existing in a society where wealth and power exist in the hands of an elite ruling class.” They believe the root of women’s oppression is the existence of a class system in society. “Once social classes are destroyed, private ownership and profit abolished, and the means of economic production redistributed to the society as a whole, the oppression of women will disappear” (15).
• radical feminism – “insists that the major source of women’s oppression is a deeply rooted sexism requiring radical transformation of both personal and social existence” (16).
• socialist feminism – “argue[s] that both economic inequalities and sexism should be seen as fundamental and equally important forms of oppression, neither having clear predominance over the other” (16). As such, it acknowledges the interactive nature of the sources of sexism, patriarchal culture/social organization, and class oppression.
• play – “an activity which humans engage in for no other purpose or goal than the participation in the action itself…It is performed for its own sake; it is an area of free, nonutilitarian activity; it is processually complete and requires no end product; it is inherently human. To play is to be human, to be human is to play” (24).
• an apologetic – “an explanation of why it’s okay for women to be where they are not expected to be” (34).
• reactive aggression – “behavior with intent to harm” (55).
• instrumental aggression – “a by-product of working toward non-aggressive goals” (55).
• personality traits – “enduring and stable predispositions that account for the consistent patterns of individual behavior” (61).
• interactional approach – “posits an interrelationship between individual personality and situational factors” (62).
• androgyny – “the combination in an individual of both feminine and masculine behavioral characteristics” (66).
• motivational theory - “conceptualizes behavior as the product of interacting forces. These forces include not only relatively stable motives (trait-like predispositions to act in a certain way) but the activation of these motives due to specific situational factors” (68).
• symbolic interactionism – believes “that objects, actions, and individuals are devoid of meaning until meaning is attributed to them through the social processes of communication and negotiation” (85).
• false consciousness – “the subjective acceptance by subordinate groups of the dominant group’s ideology” (94).
• institution – “a cluster of interrelated values, norms, and expectations that are developed by people to meet a particular societal necessity” (96).
• informal sport – “physical activity carried out in a playful manner and mainly for the participants’ enjoyment, with rules devised by the players themselves to regulate the competition” (97).
• organized sport – “the elaboration of some elemental organization to order the sport, such as official rules, formal teams, schedules, leagues, tournaments and the like. These elements of organization are intended to benefit primarily the participants in their pursuit of the sporting experience” (97).
• corporate sport – sport that is “dominated by the demands of profit and power and is controlled by large bureaucracies” (97).
• continuity theory – “maintains that there is an integration between phases of the life cycle, and the habits, preferences, and dispositions that individuals develop become a part of life’s activities through the process of socialization” (138).
• conflict theory -
• symbolic interactionism -

Important Quotes:

• “Because sport has always been a male domain, it had developed male-centered games, styles, values, jargon, rituals, and interpersonal relations that can be summed up briefly by references to ‘locker-room’ culture and ‘jock’ roles” (xv).
• “inequities in power can lead to corruption of social relations and an estrangement of the less powerful from the meanings and enjoyment of the activities they pursue” (xv).
• “Scientists are people with consciously and unconsciously held beliefs, values, and feelings that affect every stage of the scholarly process. Our best hope is to recognize and admit to ourselves and to our readers these subjective influences and to struggle with the tension between them and the call to be as truthful as humanly possible. Our worst predicament is to pretend to be value-free, deluding ourselves and others that theory and method are immune to our subjective orientations” (6).
• “research in the name of value-neutrality supports the status quo” (7).
• “There is no intrinsic benefit to the present values, beliefs, and ideas that compromise the dominant themes of American sport and shape this powerful institution. For example, we believe that the exaggerated emphasis on competition, material success, bureaucracy, hierarchy, professionalism, and conformity are but a few sporting attributes that serve those in power and prevent sport from enhancing the quality of our lives as individuals” (11).
• “Sport, like other institutions, is conservative by nature and definition, serving to inculcate and celebrate select values, rules, and behaviors believed to be necessary for maintaining society. Like all institutions, sport channels our ideas and actions in culturally acceptable ways, limiting our vision and experience to only those approved by dominant cultural demands” (11).
• “Sport is a patriarchal institution. Sport has been created and shaped by men without regard to the existence and experience of women. It is clearly a patriarchal institution, celebrating masculine power, values, and behaviors. It is on an equal footing with political, military, and economic institutions in training, encouraging, and rewarding the primary emphases on competition, discipline, rationality, control, product and victory that reflect the major androcentric values of society and the profile of what is considered quintessentially masculine” (18).
• “there has been a general failure to extend the opportunities for women’s sports participation to minority women, poor women, older women, lesbian women, fat women, working women, handicapped women–that is, to all those women who do not fit the model image of the promising athlete, who may not be a ‘good investment,’ who do not have easy accessibility to schools and elite athletic clubs, or who want something different from what SportsWorld has traditionally offered” (18-19).
• “women’s capacities are being measured against male standards in sports that are structured to favor precisely those characteristics grounded in men’s biology. The implied assumption is that male performance is the benchmark against which females should be judged and encouraged to strive for, without a complementary attention to the deficiencies of male performance and efforts to encourage their improvement in these areas” (21).
• “The spontaneous, joyful, innovative ruleless, flexible world of play has little or no resemblance to the organized, competitive, structured, rule infested world of modern corporate sport” (26).
• “Sporting events are religious happenings; sport, according to some, has become the new ‘opiate of the people’” (27).
• “Classism pervade the history of sport as it does every institution” (35).
• “The social acceptability of sport [for women] is predicated on an ideal image of what a woman ‘should be’” (35).
• “The motivations of the participants were also legitimate only if they were ‘feminine.’ Play, enjoyment, social contact, cooperation, physical fitness, weight control–all were acceptable. Competition, aggressiveness, physical mastery, and ‘character-building’ were defined as masculine and therefore unacceptable” (35).
• “Sport is another segment of life which pits women against women and certifies that the female-to-male bond overrides and outweighs any bond between women” (44).
• “Social suspicion of the female athlete is increased when the female is black, from a lower class, lesbian, or necessarily must develop characteristics that are defined as ‘masculine,’ such as stength…Social approval is retained for sports in which the participants are all white, from higher social classes, and for whom there are no doubts about their sexual preference” (45).
• “Aggression in sport is not truly comprable to aggression in other social settings, because it is both legal and normative behavior, that is, it is an acceptable and expected feature of that particular social situation” (56).
• “blind imitation of the male model will not necessarily promote equality. Instead, the desire to beat men at their own game, to prove that women can be just like (i.e., as ‘good’ as) men reflects an admission of fundamental inferiority. It implies that women have not yet grasped the possibility that female ways may be superior to male ways, not only for girls and women but for all human beings” (60).
• “Girls have traditionally been negatively rewarded for their involvement in sport, and a successful woman athlete used to be prone to all three negative consequences of achievement: social rejection, questioning of her femininity, and disbelief that a girl could perform such athletic feats” (71).
• “The list of promised benefits [of sports] is extensive and includes the development of such characteristics as perseverance, competitiveness, drive, industriousness, and character, as well as as sense of fair play, the ability to deal with people from different social backgrounds, and the ability to win and lose graciously” (76). These characteristics are more often associated with boys than girls.
• “The societal pictures of the healthy female and the healthy athlete differ considerably. Research indicates that males are perceived as independent, active, competitive, adventurous, self-confident, ambitious, and rough, among other traits. Females, on the other hand, are perceived as dependent, passive, noncompetitive, nonadventurous, unambitious, gentle, and not self-confident…The traits attributed to women are hardly those expected on the playing field, where the valued assets are competence, self-confidence, persistence, assertiveness, and action–qualities more in keeping with perceptions of males. Again, conclusions are quite clear. To be a proper athlete, and individual must be male” (79).
• “sexism pervades the entire culture. It is promulgated by family, church, school, government, business, and other social institutions. It is taught o us from infancy and incorporated into our consciousness; it shapes our self-images and affects the way we relate to others and how we experience the world” (94).
• “any effort by women to eradicate sexism must be directed initially at two goals: first, they must throw off the veil of..false consciousness so that they can see clearly the reality of their objective situation; second, they must identify the various forms that sexism takes in society” (94).
• “sport, as an institution, has accumulated over time elements that complement those of other institutions and help it to buttress the foundations of society. It is in this sense that sport is often called a microcosm of society, reflecting the basic values, beliefs, rules, and ideas, of the larger system” (98).
• “The composite picture of an individual who participates in sport is the red-blooded, wholesome, virile man, one sound in body and mind, whose belief in religion and patriotism, guided by self-discipline and the competitive spirit, will make him successful in sport and in other social endeavors. As a socializing agency, sport allegedly instills these qualities in young boys so that they will be able to successfully assume not only sport roles but also their roles as breadwinners, workers, soldiers, and citizens” (99).
• “Sport, like the family, education, the mass media, and religion, socializes its members to maintain existing cultural patterns. It does this by instilling in people the requisite motives and skills to assume socially valued roles in other institutions and to desire the rewards offered by these institutions. It is no wonder then, that sport participation is encouraged by religious leaders, school administrators, business and labor representatives, and officials of the military and the government. Nor is it surprising that those who have been critical of sport continue to be viewed with suspicion and hostility and defined as traitors and heretics who must be exorcised from the body social. As Edwards explains it, ‘any attack upon the institution of sport in a particular society would be widely interpreted…as an attack upon the fundamental way of life of that society as manifest in the value orientations it emphasizes through sport. Hence, an attack upon sport constitutes an attack upon the society itself’” (99).
• “Sport is our ‘civilized society’s most prominent masculinity rite.’ It is on the fields, courts, rinks, and playgrounds of America that boys learn to be men and to value masculinity. It is in their games that they assert their difference from girls and their superiority over them. It is in sport that they learn to compete, to control, to take risks, to be strong, and to achieve mastery over self and others. It is in sport that they begin to understand why and how they are to become men” (101).
• “to allow women into sport would be an ultimate threat to one of the last strongholds of male security and supremacy. To put it another way, if women can play sports then ‘men aren’t really men’” (102).
• “It is in sporting activity that men are allowed the rare opportunity to express those feelings forbidden in most of their other roles. They can embrace each other unself-consciously, holding and hugging, touching and kissing without threat of ridicule and suspicion. They can express fear, hesitancy, pain and doubt and be nurtured by other men They can grieve together and be comforted. They can be irrational, cooperative, sentimental, and superstitious in he accepting presence of male camaraderie. In sum, in the absence of women, they can allow themselves to express what sexist ideology insists must be suppressed if they are to lay valid claim to being ‘real men’” (104).
• “Our concepts, hypotheses, and theoretical models should be grounded in and derived from women’s actual sporting experiences. We should not superimpose onto these experiences our preexisting ideas that stem from an understanding of men’s sport participation” (127).
• “The process of becoming people who transcend the limits of present sex-role categories and the process of participating in sport that surpasses the limits of present institutional arrangements requires that we remain receptive to criticism, suspicious of ultimate solutions, willing to be unpopular, and optimistic about our abilities to effect social change” (128).

Discussion:

This book is quite dated (1983), but it is helpful for understanding the early research on women in sports and how the crucial debates mentioned by the authors are reflected in the current literature.

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