Women and Sport
Continuing a Journey of Liberation and Celebration
Edited by Ellen J. Staurowsky
344 Pages
Women and Sport: Continuing a Journey of Liberation and Celebration focuses on women winning access to the playing field as well as the front office in sport. Readers will gain an understanding of how women have been involved in sport and physical activity, how they have struggled for widespread recognition and legitimacy in the eyes of many, and how they continue to carve out their role in shaping sport as we know it today and as it will be in the future.
Edited by renowned expert Ellen J. Staurowsky, widely accepted as an authority on college athlete rights and Title IX and gender equity, Women and Sport facilitates interdisciplinary, research-based discussion by providing a detailed account of contributions from women in sport. The text features a foreword by sport executive Donna Orender and 15 chapters—written by leading authorities in women and gender studies in sport—that are grouped into four parts:
• Women’s Sport in Context: Connecting Past and Present reminds readers of the historical events and influences that shape today’s landscape.
• Strong Girls, Strong Women recognizes gender differences and what it means to create equitable access to sport opportunities.
• Women, Sport, and Social Location explores how various characteristics and qualities may affect sport participation and opportunities.
• Women in the Sport Industry offers a rare and contemporary approach to examining women in sport leadership, management, and media.
Women and Sport was developed with the intent of filling a need by serving as a primary textbook and separates itself from other titles by providing an abundance of instructor ancillary materials that assist in class preparations. Pedagogical aids such as objectives, glossary terms, discussion questions, and learning activities in each chapter facilitate student understanding of the material covered. Sidebars throughout the text enable the contributors to provide thought-provoking content on topics such as media coverage of female athletes, how female athletes are used in marketing campaigns, and whether athletic competitions should continue to be segregated by sex. Readers will discover the impact of these topics in many areas of society, from biomedical to psychosocial and historical.
Through its engaging content, Women and Sport: Continuing a Journey of Liberation and Celebration serves as a launching pad for discussions that will shape society’s ongoing conversation about what it means to be a female athlete or a woman working in sport. It is an ideal textbook for adoption in interdisciplinary courses that focus on women and gender studies in sport.
Part I Women’s Sport in Context: Connecting Past and Present
Chapter 1. Women’s Sport Through the Lens of History
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Women’s Education in the Late 1800s
Female Complaints and the Suspect Science of Female Weakness
Women’s Physical Education and the Fair but Weaker Sex
Learning Aids
Chapter 2. Title IX and Beyond: The Impact of the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements on Women’s Sport
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
The Story Behind Title IX
A Brief Overview of Title IX’s Legislative History
Growth in Athletic Programs Since Title IX
What Every Citizen Should Know About Title IX
The Future of Title IX
Learning Aids
Chapter 3. Women’s Sport in the 21st Century
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Sport Involvement for Women and Girls: Changes in Baseline Data
The Concept of the Female Athlete Paradox
Paradox of the Female Athlete Warrior
Paradox of the Strong Female Athlete Who Feels the Need to Apologize for Being Strong
Paradox of Femininity and Muscularity
Transcending the Paradox: The Female Athlete Who Is Unapologetic
Separate But Equal: Does It Remove or Reinforce the Paradoxes That Affect Female Athletes?
Learning Aids
Part II Strong Girls, Strong Women
Chapter 4. Benefits and Risks of Sport Participation by Women and Girls
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Educational Attainment and Sport Participation
Physical Health Benefits of Female Sport Participation
Female Athletes, Mental Toughness, and Depression
Female Athletes and Substance Use and Abuse
Sexual Risk Prevention and the Female Athlete
Female Athlete Triad: Disordered Eating, Amenorrhea, and Bone Health
Female Athletes and Injuries
Learning Aids
Chapter 5. Physiology and the Female Athlete: Is Biology Destiny?
Katie Sell, PhD, and Sharon Phillips, PhD
Prepubescent Training Differences in Boys and Girls
Differences in Pubescent Fitness Development for Boys and Girls
Impact of Early Maturation on Athletic Performance
Menstruation and Athletic Performance
Post-Pubertal Physiological Differences and Performance Variability
Training Implications for Female Athletes
Physiological Differences and Injury Risk
Women, the Media, and Perception
Learning Aids
Part III Women, Sport, and Social Location
Chapter 6. Experiences of Female Athletes of Color
Jacqueline McDowell, PhD, and Akilah Carter-Francique, PhD
Living on the Margins: Women of Color
Sporting Experiences of Women of Color in the United States
Creating Positive Sporting Experiences for Women of Color
Learning Aids
Chapter 7. Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation: Inclusion and Prejudice in Sport
Vikki Krane, PhD
Transgender Youth Sport Participants
Post-Pubescent and Adult Transgender Athletes
Sexual Orientation and Women’s Sport
Consequences of Heteronormativity, Homonegativism, and Transnegativism
Accepting and Affirming Sport Climates
Learning Aids
Chapter 8. Women’s Sport and Aging
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Women, Aging, and U.S. Sport Participation Trends
Culture, Aging, and the Older Woman
Competitive Sport Opportunities for Older Women
Benefits of Sports Participation for Older Women
Successful Aging Through Continued Sport Participation
Barriers to Older Women’s Sport Participation
Learning Aids
Chapter 9. Women With Disabilities in Sport
Mary A. Hums, PhD
History of Sport for People With Disabilities
Participation of Female Athletes With Disabilities
Legal System as an Access Tool
Women as Leaders in Sport for People with Disabilities
The Future for Girls and Women With Disabilities in Sport
Learning Aids
Chapter 10. Women, Sport, and Sexual Violence
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Prevalence of the Sexual Victimization of Girls and Women in Sport
The Blurring of Boundaries in Coach–Athlete Relationships
Legal Avenues
Education and Prevention Programs
Learning Aids
Part IV Women in the Sport Industry
Chapter 11. Women, Media, and Sport
Marie Hardin, PhD, and Dunja Antunovic, PhD
History of Women in Sports Media
Challenges for Women in Sports Media
Parallels: Women Covering, Women Competing
Female Athletes and the Media
Learning Aids
Chapter 12. Female Leaders in Corporate Sport
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD, and Maureen Smith, PhD
Mapping Gender and the Sport Workplace
Explanations for the Scarcity of Women Working in Corporate Sport
Importance of Stories About Female Executives in Sport
Learning Aids
Chapter 13. Female Leaders in High School and College Sport Workplaces
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Gendered Nature of High School and College Sport Workplace Settings
Jobs for Women in School-Based Sport Settings
Women’s Representation in High School and College Sport Workplaces
Hiring, Retention, and Advancement of Women in School Sport Workplaces
The Future For Women in High School and College Sport Workplaces
Learning Aids
Chapter 14. Merchandising and Marketing Women’s Sports
Corinne Farneti, PhD
Women as Consumers and Fans
Merchandising and Sporting Goods Targeted to Female Consumers
Approaches to Women’s Sport Marketing
Efforts to Market Women’s Sport
Sport Marketing Tactics
Missed Opportunities to Market Women’s Sport
Learning Aids
Chapter 15. Influence of Religion and Politics on Women’s Sport
Carole Oglesby, PhD
Religion, Tradition, and Power Positions for Women in Sport Governance
Transformation of Gender Politics in Sport
Know the System
Principles and Mission of the Olympic Movement
Women’s Progressing Influence Outside and Inside Sport
Learning Aids
Epilogue: Glimpsing the Future for Girls and Women in Sport
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD
Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD, is a professor in the department of sport management at Drexel University. She is renowned as an authority on the business of college athletics, college student-athlete rights, and Title IX and gender equity. Staurowsky has been featured in numerous national media outlets and served as an expert witness in the historic antitrust case O’Bannon v. NCAA. Staurowsky draws from more than 30 years of experience as both a practitioner and scholar, having served as a collegiate athletic director at multiple colleges as well as a coach at the collegiate level of field hockey, women’s lacrosse, and men’s soccer. Before her appointment at Drexel in 2011, she was a professor at Ithaca College, where she worked for nearly two decades. Staurowsky teaches courses in women and sport, gender issues in sport, legal foundations of Title IX, and sociology of sport. She is a member of the College Sport Research Institute advisory board, the Ursinus College Board of Trustees, and various professional organizations, having previously served as president of the National American Society for the Sociology of Sport. She is coauthor of College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA Amateur Myth.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Gender imbalances persist in sport leadership at the Olympic level
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees.
The Olympic Games are the pinnacle sporting event for athletes, with more than 10,500 athletes competing in the Summer Games and just over 2,500 athletes in the Winter Games. At the most recent Summer Games in London, women constituted their highest percentage of participants ever, with 44.3 percent (4,751) competing for 205 national Olympic committees (NOCs; Smith & Wrynn, 2010; 2013). Despite the efforts to achieve gender equity among the athletes, the leadership of women at the Olympic Games as members of the IOC, NOCs, and International Federations (IFs) is nowhere near the equity achieved by female athletes. Female sport leaders at the Olympic level continue to struggle in terms of overall numbers and positions of power. This section assesses female sport leadership at three levels: IOC, NOC, and IF. Additionally, it evaluates similar parallel structures in the Paralympic Games organization.
The IOC is a male-dominated organization at every level. Founded in 1894 with 13 members, all male, the IOC governs the Summer and Winter Olympic Games and serves as the stewards of the Olympic movement. IOC membership bestows a great deal of power to its exclusive 106 members, making decisions ranging from which sports to include in the Games and the location of the Games to distribution of funding to NOCs. To address the gender imbalance in sport leadership in the IOC, in 2000, the organization established a 20 percent minimum threshold for the inclusion of women in administrative structures to be achieved by 2005 (Smith & Wrynn, 2013). Despite setting the 20 percent threshold (a figure that falls well short of 50%), the IOC and its various structures struggled to meet their own minimum standard. In 2012, for the first time in the IOC's history, they achieved their 20 percent goal, with 22 women accounting for 20.8 percent of total membership (an increase from 2008, when women made up 14.9 percent of the membership). Equally important was the historic inclusion of three women (Claudia Bokel from Germany, Nawal El Moutawakel from Morocco, and Gunilla Lindberg from Sweden) on the 15-member executive board, including El Moutawakel as one of four vice presidents. To date, there has never been a female president in the IOC's history. To address the role and status of women in the Olympic movement, the IOC has established the Women and Sport Commission and has hosted five world conferences on women and sport. There are a total of 29 IOC Commissions with women accounting for 84 of the 442 positions (19%). Of the 29 commissions, 11 meet or exceed the IOC's 20 percent standard (this is up from 4 of 31 in 2008). Six of the 29 commissions are chaired by women: the Women and Sport Commission (Anita DeFrantz), the Athletes Commission (Claudia Bokel), the Evaluation Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the PyeongChang 2018 Coordination Commission (Gunilla Lindberg), the Rio 2016 Commission (Nawal El Moutawakel), and the Youth Olympic Games Coordination 2016 Commission (Angela Ruggiero). Despite this progress, 6 of the 29 commissions have less than 10 percent female participation and 4 commissions have no female members (Smith & Wrynn, 2009, 2010, 2013).
The racial spin in tennis
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don’t really consider the amount of work required to stay tops."
In her book So Much to Live For, Althea Gibson, the African American athlete credited with breaking the color barrier at two of the most prestigious tennis events in the world, Wimbledon and the United States National Tournament (later to be called the U.S. Open), wrote, "Most of us who aspire to be tops in our fields don't really consider the amount of work required to stay tops" (Gibson & Curtis, 1968, p. 59). While Gibson's quotation was in reference to the work ethic and practice involved in maintaining champion status, we cannot help but wonder how her identity as an African American woman in the White, upper-class sport of tennis may have influenced her perspective. Years later, Venus and Serena Williams, also African American, would grace the same courts as Gibson with a stature, strength, and flair that were outside the conservative norm of tennis.
The coverage of the careers of these two women is demarked by positive experiences like Venus' successful fight for pay equality at Wimbledon to the negative experiences that Serena, Venus, and their father Richard described in 2001 at the Indian Wells tournament (known currently as the BNP Paribas Open) (Drucker, 2009; Williams & Paisner, 2009). In a scene described by veteran sportswriter Bruce Jenkins (2013) as "one of the ugliest scenes in sports history," the Indian Wells crowd of nearly 16,000 maligned Serena when she entered the stadium to warm up for her final with Kim Clijsters by booing loudly and then turning their attention to her father and Venus when they settled into their seats to watch the match.
Throughout the match, the crowd continued to taunt Serena and cheered when she made errors. After beating Clijsters, a White Belgian tennis athlete, the crowd continued to express their disapproval by booing during the awards ceremony. Media reports indicate that the backlash against Serena was a result of speculations that the Williams sisters, at the bidding of their father, had fixed the semifinal match. The atmosphere was fueled by a perception that Venus had feigned an injury, backing out of the semifinal match with her sister the day before to clear the way for Serena to advance to the final. These claims were unsubstantiated, and despite Richard's allegations that racial slurs had been directed at him ("Off-Court Distractions," 2001), their experiences were not deemed by the media or tournament director as being racially motivated (Douglas, 2005). After a 14-year boycott of the event, Serena finally returned to Indian Wells in March 2015; however, just as her sister had done in 2001, Serena also withdrew from the semifinals because of a knee injury.
Throughout the years, Venus and Serena have continued to dominate tennis with numerous Grand Slam and WTA titles. Instead of receiving constant accolades for their success, fellow tennis players viewed "all Williams" Grand Slam finals as "a little bit sad for women's tennis" and questioned whether the William sisters were good or bad for tennis (Nichols, 2002; Philip, 2002; Roberts, 2002). Serena would face similar taunts and boos at the 2003 French Open - and similar to the Indian Wells discourse, the role of race was discounted in that event as well (Douglas, 2005).
Specifically, during her semifinal match in Paris, Serena's performance was derailed when opponent Justine Henin-Hardenne, a White Belgian, put up her hand while Serena was in the midst of her first serve (in tennis, you get two chances to serve a ball into the court). Serena backed off of her serve because Justine had signaled that she was not ready, and the ball went into the net. The expected protocol would have been for the server to receive another first serve. The chair umpire, however, did not see that Justine had gestured that she was not ready. Etiquette generally requires that players offer information to clarify a situation like that; however, Justine remained silent. Serena lost the serve, the next four points, and eventually the match in front of a partisan crowd who clearly wanted the Belgian to win. Eight years later, after Justine retired, she admitted that she had intentionally withheld information that day as a way of countering what she described as the Williams' sisters capacity to "intimidate" their opponents (Chase, 2011). The lone voice in the media to acknowledge the role of race came from Serena's mom, Oracene Price, who explicitly asserted, "They wanted a blonde and a ponytail" (Vecsey, 2003).
Concerns about racism and sexism were, however, explicitly raised about Venus and Serena's recurrent placement on the No. 2 Court in the Wimbledon tournament. The sisters, along with many prominent players, questioned the reasons for these decisions. Greg Couch, a reporter for Sporting News, boldly asserted, "They still want players in white, and are stuck in a time when tennis was exclusive. Whatever their real intentions and reasons, the club looks like a walking stereotype when it deals with the Williams sisters" (Couch, 2011, para. 17). In fact, in 2010, the club spokesman acknowledged that physical attractiveness was taken into consideration while assigning players to Centre Court (Andrews, 2009). Serena and Venus have been noted for being beautiful women, but in the tennis world their beauty is denigrated because they do not "fit the typical white tennis ideal: tall, blonde and rail thin" (Couch, 2011, para. 25). In a failed attempt to be complimentary, Rolling Stone Magazine described Serena as "black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas" (Rodrick, 2013, para. 2).
Douglas' (2005) use of critical race scholarship and Whiteness offers a great counter narrative to Venus and Serena's purportedly raceless experiences in professional tennis and highlights the role that overt and hidden systemic racism and discrimination played in defining their experiences. One might ponder: Is Serena encountering racialized hostility or simply hostility? If tennis players such as Ashley Harkleroad, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, or Ana Ivanovic (all racially categorized as White) had repeatedly won Grand Slam and WTA titles, would they have been treated similarly and told that it is about time they give others a chance ("The Story," 2003), or that it is "a little bit sad for women's tennis" (Philip, 2002, p. 10)?
As exemplified by Venus and Serena's experiences, female athletes of color encounter challenges - positive and negative - that shape their athletic endeavors and affect their life experiences. While these challenges are significant, not all are known, and many are framed in a manner that reduces the athletes' contribution and dehumanizes their existence.
Women as consumers and fans
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth.
Women have more purchasing power than ever before. In fact, they now account for $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States. Over the next decade, they will control two-thirds of consumer wealth. Additionally, women make or influence 85 percent of all purchasing decisions and purchase more than 50 percent of products traditionally bought by men, including home improvement products, automobiles, and consumer electronics (Krasny, 2012). In other words, women are the ones buying soft drinks, breakfast cereals, athletic shoes - and most other everyday items.
Despite these very telling statistics, various assumptions are made about female sport consumers and consumers of women's sport. For starters, marketing executives may consider women to be uninterested in sport, therefore concluding that targeting female consumers in sport sponsorship is ineffective (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). This assumption is unlikely true, considering that more than 43 percent of athletes who competed at NCAA institutions in 2011-2012, amounting to nearly 200,000, were women (Irick, 2012).
A second assumption is that men are not interested in women's sports. Contrary to this statement, SBRnet's annual Sports Fan/Social Media Report (2012) notes that almost 59 percent of the WNBA's viewing audience is male. Similarly, 63.4 percent of the LPGA's fan base is male ("Fans of PGA," 2011). While these statistics don't represent all women's sports, it is apparent that men do indeed watch women's sports with some regularity.
Also, there is the question of whether or not female sports fans are different from male sports fans. For example, one study revealed that men preferred watching combative sports while women preferred stylistic sports (Sargent, Zillmann, & Weaver, 1998). Similarly, when asked their favorite sports, men named more aggressive sports than women did (Wann & Ensor, 2001). However, other studies have found that female fans' interests actually coincide with those of their male companions (Farrell, Fink, & Fields, 2011; Whiteside & Hardin, 2011). Assuming this statement is true, wouldn't this mean women are watching just as much violent sport as their male counterparts? Other research found that male college students tend to be more involved with sport as spectators than female students. The men invested more time listening, watching, reading, and talking about sports, and were more emotionally involved (Bahk, 2000). Women place much more value on the social aspects of attending or being involved in a sporting event (Ridinger & Funk, 2006). Research has also indicated that male sports fans differ from female sports fans in their perceptions of pre-event influences (ticket prices, advertising), present behavior (merchandise purchases, wearing of team apparel, media consumption), and future behavior (loyalty, attendance intentions; Fink, Trail, & Anderson, 2002).
The fact that fans of women's and men's sports may differ in nature shouldn't be a death sentence for women's sport. In fact, marketing strategies should differ from sport to sport, since no one blanket approach exists that will effectively reach all sport fans and markets. Embracing the differences between sports and genders is the only way marketers will be successful in marketing a unique product.
Can pregnant athletes compete?
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however.
On June 26, 2014, Alysia Montaño, defending champion in the 800-meter event who had won a total of five national titles, joined a field of top runners on the track at Hornet Stadium in Sacramento, California, during the U.S. National Track and Field Championship. What a difference a year had made in her performance, however. Montaño, known as the Flying Flower because of the signature flower she wore in her hair when she competed, had dominated the 800-meter race the previous year. This time around, she was destined for a last place finish in her preliminary heat. Then again, when she won the championship in 2013, she wasn't 34 weeks pregnant.
Just six weeks away from giving birth to her first child, Montaño's time of 2 minutes and 32.13 seconds was slow for the field and about a half a minute slower than her personal best time. Even though her time was slower, her joy in racing, the shared experience with her child, and the reception of the crowd (who gave her a rousing standing ovation) rendered her laps around the track triumphant.
When contemplating the training she would be doing for the race and wondering if it might harm both her and her baby, Montaño consulted her medical team. Because she was an elite-level athlete who had trained most of her life, she could continue to train, being watchful of signs that might suggest that she slow down or stop and adjusting to her pregnancy by cutting back on intensity as she got closer to the birthing date. "My midwives and doctors were so encouraging. You are a professional runner. Your threshold, your lactate levels are going to be completely different than anybody else's. That took away any fear of what the outside world might think about a woman running during her pregnancy," Montaño said (Cox, 2014, para. 5). She also learned that exercising as a general rule is good for expectant mothers, a growing number of whom have been athletes most of their lives.
Like Montaño, female athletes in various stages of pregnancy have challenged the public perception of what a woman is capable of doing when she is with child. Famed basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, who had a record-breaking collegiate career at Texas Tech and competed on three U.S. teams that won gold in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympic Games, is credited with making the road a bit easier for pregnant athletes after her first year in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) was delayed due to her pregnancy in 1997 (Ohikaure, 2013). She returned to the court for the Houston Comets six weeks after she gave birth to her son, contributing to a team that won the WNBA championship that year.
After the 2012 London Olympic Games, Kerri Walsh Jennings revealed that she had won her gold medal in beach volleyball with U.S. teammate Misty May-Treanor while five weeks pregnant with her third child. She was not the only pregnant athlete at the Games. Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi, the first woman to participate in an Olympics for the country of Malaysia, was eight months pregnant when she competed in the sport of shooting. While her husband was supportive of her participation, traveling with her to London, some of Taibi's friends and relatives were not. About her desire to continue with her sport during pregnancy, Taibi commented, "Most people said I was crazy and selfish because they think I am jeopardizing my baby's health. My husband said grab it as this is a rare chance which might not come again. Also, I am the mother. I know what I can do. I am a stubborn person" (Pickup, 2012, para. 6).
Fears around women's involvement in sport and risks to reproductive health have endured since the Victorian era of the 1800s to the present, emanating from gender stereotypical notions of feminine inferiority and weakness. Hoffmann, Jette, and Vertinsky noted,
A central problem with organized sport has been the way sport-related policies - particularly those enforcing sex segregation - have codified historical myths about female physical inferiority, fostering a system which, while offering women more opportunities than ever before, has kept them from being perceived as equal athletes to men. (2009, p. 26)
The warm reception Alysia Montaño received at the U.S. Track and Field Championships signaled a level of public understanding and acceptance that athleticism and womanhood in all of its variations need not be contradictory or oppositional. Still, women's sport participation and concerns about potential damage to a woman's capacity to conceive and bear children remains a consideration in the minds of some who seek to guard access to sport from women.
Related Books
