Introduction
This essay will focus on gender issues in sport, in particular, on rugby and the reasons why there is less female participation in this sport compared to male participation. The essay uses the relational approach to feminism to explain this.
In 2009 Sport England did a survey which showed the participation rates in rugby from October 2008 to October 2009. It was found the females who participated in Rugby Union weekly was 10,000 whilst for males it was 197500. Therefore, there’s a clear difference in the participation rates in Rugby between the two genders, and this can be explained through relational feminism.
The relational approach to feminism suggests there is a clear difference between male and female interests and therefore sport is created for men and celebrates the display of masculine features (Malcom, 2008). Therefore relational feminists believe that sport is a male preserve, due to socialisation forming a social structure where men have dominant roles and females have subordinate roles (Sheard, 1973). As a result, females that partake in sports like rugby experience role conflict. If they choose to participate, it can lead to them feeling like their femininity is at risk as well as potentially being labelled with masculine traits (Hardy, 2015). Therefore, relational feminists believe that there should be a change in the structure of sport, as males and females are both different (Malcom, 2008).
Critical analysis
The link between masculinity and rugby can be drawn from the early traditions of the game where it was played in all boys public schools. The boys were made to take part in regular rugby training and encouraged to show masculine traits such as muscular strength and competitiveness (Collins, 2009). So, historically it can be seen that rugby was used by older men to develop strong young men.
Today, rugby is still seen as a sport which involves the display of many masculine traits. For example, in the recent Rugby World Cup Final, a BBC News article (New Zealand beat Australia to retain Rugby world cup) (2015) describing the match emphasised the power of the New Zealand team over the Australians. Admiring the All Blacks strength they used words such as “clattered” and “bloodied” to describe the events. This shows how the media celebrates traditional masculine traits, such as power and strength in males. Therefore, the media reinforces the fact that sport is a male preserve, and through this allow males to retain their dominance to females, where they control the structure of the sport. This has placed women within subordinate roles, which limit their aspirations to take up sports (like rugby) (Sheard, 1973). If a female does choose to take part in rugby, a man may see this as a threat to the male preserve due to women now demonstrating, for example, power and aggression, traits which have socially been considered masculine. Consequently, this often leads to men referring to female rugby players as “lesbians” to dismiss the threat. (Wright & Clarke 1999). Furthermore, Wright and Clarke (1999) argue that because of this potential threat to male dominance, the media reassures men by showing that the rugby players are feminine in other ways. They reviewed an article written in the Sunday Times called “Do women wear jockstraps?” which attempted to reassure the male readers that the female rugby players were “applying makeup” and getting “dressed up” after a game.
Furthermore it’s often believed females that take part in rugby go against society’s expectations on how they should behave. “The actions in rugby can result in bruised, battered, dirty and sometimes bloody bodies; this deviates from how society outlines the way in which female bodies should look” (Hardy, 2008: 158). This has caused females in sport, including rugby, to suffer from gender role conflict. Fallon (2007) described gender role conflict as the conflicting feelings the women experience when they try to enact both male and female roles. In her study she found that some of the participants would wear makeup and jewellery to appear heterosexual and feminine. Therefore, female rugby players may show masculine traits on the field but balance this with femininity after the game. This is called Apologetic behaviour, which is a type of behaviour that emphasises a female’s femininity (Hardy, 2015). This is more common in sports like rugby which are identified with male attributes and which have a greater threat to social ideals. This means that the female athletes emphasising feminine traits, such as the rugby players wearing make-up ensures, that they are remaining desirable to men and the media, therefore reinforcing female’s inferior status to men within sport (Connell, 1987).
Because of conflict females may experience, relational feminism suggests the whole structure of sport should be changed to follow the view point of women, so it becomes less competitive and aggressive and focuses more on things like cooperation allowing them to have more liberating experiences (Malcom, 2008). However limited successes have occurred for relational feminists in changing sport in comparison to liberal feminists who believe in correcting the social structure rather than changing it completely, so both men and women are equal and have similar opportunities (Malcom, 2008). An example of liberal feminism success, is Sport England’s “Women in Sport” campaign where 1.7 million pounds is being invested in sporting bodies, to attract more females in getting involved, therefore increasing the potential opportunities.
Conclusion
Overall, the relational approach to feminism is an effective way of explaining why there’s lower participation rates in female rugby compared to male rugby. This is overall due to the gender role conflict that the females experience when participating due to the social structure of sport, where men dominate and masculinity is celebrated in males but not females. So females feel more inclined to take up more feminine sports where they won’t be mocked or experience conflict. Therefore for a change to occur relational feminists believe the whole structure of sport needs to change, however there’s been little evidence of this successfully happening yet.
Reference lists
- Collins, T. (2009) A social history of English Rugby Union, New York, Routledge.
- Fallon, M.A. & LaRae, M.J. (2007) “An Exploration of Gender Role Expectations and Conflict among Women Rugby Players”, Psychology of women Quarterly, 31 (3) 311-321.
- Fordyce, T. / BBC news (2015), New Zealand beat Australia to retain Rugby World Cup [Online]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/34671255 [Accessed from 19/11/2015].
- Hardy, E. (2015) “The female ‘apologetic’ behaviour within Canadian women’s rugby: athlete perceptions and media influences”, Sport in Society, 18, (2) 155-167.
- Malcom, D. (2008) The SAGE Dictionary of SPORTS STUDIES, London, SAGE publications ltd.
- Connell, R. W (1987), Gender and power society, the person and sexual politics, Stanford University press
- Sheard, K.G. & Dunning, E.G. (1973) “The rugby football club as a type of male preserve”, The international review for the sport sociology, 8 (3) 5-24.
- Sport England, (2009), Active People Survey (APS) results for Rugby Union
- Period: APS2 (Oct 07 / Oct 08) to APS3 (Oct 08 / Oct 09), London: Ipsos
- Sport England (n.d), Women in Sport [Homepage of Sport England], [Online]. Available from: http://www.sportengland.org/our-work/equality-diversity/women/ [2015, 12/1].
- Wright, J. & Clarke, G. (1999) “Sport, the Media, and the construction of compulsory heterosexuality”, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 34, (3) 227-243.