Sixteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

In recent decades there have been a prolific array of policies and initiatives aiming to increase the number of girls and women involved across community sport. However, these have rarely been responsive to addressing intersectional forms of discrimination experienced by women, girls and people who are gender diverse. There is also a lack of understanding of how, at the community level, clubs respond to intersectional discrimination within their efforts to promote and support gender equity. Drawing on Hill-Collins (1990; 2017) layers of power and discourse analysis, this paper examines the gender equity work undertaken by Victorian community sport clubs to consider how clubs seek to address inequities experienced by women, girls and people who are gender diverse that experience multiple forms of oppression. Through policy and document analysis, observations and interviews with 13 local government sport, recreation and gender equality employee’s and 46 sports club leaders and members, this study examined understandings, policies, practices and processes of intersectional responses to gender equity. The findings show that most sporting clubs and local government representatives did not understand intersectionality, nor considered or enacted intersectional responses to gender equity. Local sporting contexts are (re-)producing power and dominant norms when engaging in gender equity, privileging white, able-bodied, cis-gendered girls and women.