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Sport mega-events are more than just large-scale gatherings and celebrations of human athletic achievement; they are also arenas through which groups and individuals perform, reinforce, challenge and disrupt identities, power and status. Understanding that sport is widely recognised as a practice through which normative ideas of gender are both reinforced and challenged, this book explores how this is magnified in the context of sport mega-events with their associated global media attention, elite performance, and social and cultural relevance.
As sport mega-events become ever more prominent in popular culture, and are used by governments as tools to stimulate national and regional development, critical analysis of the gendered aspects of mega-events is increasingly important. Featuring a range of mega-event case studies and conceptual discussions, Sport, Gender and Mega-Events shows the significance of mega-events to wider sporting practices, and considers how these highly mediatised global phenomena both reflect and help shape broader ideas about gender, sex and identity in and beyond sport.
Demonstrating how mega-events represent an important context through which to explore questions related to sex, gender and identity, Dashper’s exquisitely collated chapters unpick mega-events as gendered entities and showcase how they both position athletes in relation to one of two binary sex positions – male or female – and also push the boundaries of what we see and accept as recognisably gendered male or female bodies and identities.
'The book as a whole invites us to view issue of gender and mega-events as a multifaceted phenomenon that can be studied from multiple perspectives and theories, and as such is useful for both scholars and students of sport studies and critical event studies.'
Katherine Dashper is Reader and Director of Research Degrees at the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management at Leeds Beckett University. Her research applies a critical sociological lens to examine practices of sport, leisure and work, particularly focusing on gender issues and interspecies encounters.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Sport, gender and mega-events; Katherine Dashper
Section 1. Problematising gendered bodies and behaviours
Chapter 2. Sex testing in sport mega-events: fairness and the illusive promise of inclusive policies – situating inter* and trans*athletes in elite sport; Anna Adlwarth
Chapter 3. Ethical relativism and sport mega-event gendered discourses: uneasiness towards the dominant play of women in sport; Lindsey Darvin and Ann Pegoraro
Section 2. Masculinity, sport and mega-events
Chapter 4. Not feeling so mega, but still being a mega star: Exploring male elite athletes’ mental health accounts from a gendered perspective; Charlie V.L. Smith
Chapter 5. Security, Locality and Aggressive Masculinity: Hooliganism and nationalism at football mega-events; Jonathan Sly
Chapter 6. The Formula One paradox: Macho male racers and ornamental glamour ‘girls’; Damion Sturm
Section 3. Gender, disruption and transformation at mega-events
Chapter 7. “Dare to Shine”: Megan Rapinoe as the Rebellious Star of the FIFA Women's World Cup 2019; Riikka Turtiainen
Chapter 8. Who owns the ball? Gender (dis) order and the 2014 FIFA World Cup; Jorge Knijnik, Rohini Balram, and Yoko Kanemasu
Chapter 9. I gotta feeling … Let’s turn to the people! The 2018 Football World Cup in Russia; Katarzyna Raduszyńska
Section 4. Gender, sport and mega-events: Moving towards equality?
Chapter 10. Sport Mega-Events as Drivers of Gender Equality: Women’s Football in Spain; Celia Valiente
Chapter 11. The Solheim Cup: Media Representations of Golf, Gender and National Identity; Ali Bowes and Niamh Kitching
Chapter 12. Flag Before Gender Biases? The Case for National Identity Bolstering Women Athlete Visibility in Sports Mega-Events; Andrew C. Billings and Patrick C. Gentile
Chapter 13. Conclusions: Sport, gender and mega-events: looking to the future; Katherine Dashper