When I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, sports was defined by and for boys and men. The few girls and women who played sports were either ignored or stigmatized. That began to change dramatically in the early 1970s, as the women’s movement stimulated a continuing burst of participation by girls and women. This historic shift—and the idea that sport is a “contested terrain” of gender, sexual, and racial meanings—has animated much of my work.
First, I have explored sport as a site where the social meanings of “masculinity” are played out—including men’s institutional power and privilege, the “costs” of masculinity (including bodily injuries and emotional/relational costs), and differences and inequalities among men, especially those constructed by social class, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientations.
Second, I have sought to study sport not as some separate and insulated “sportsworld,” but rather, in the ways that it connects and resonates with, and sometimes contradicts other aspects of social life, including off-field gender-based violence, the gender socialization of children, and how parents’ participation in youth sports meshes with their own work and family divisions of labor and gender beliefs.
More on Michael Messner: http://www.michaelmessner.org/research/gender-sports/
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