On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the leading Spanish scholars on gender and
sport, Montserrat Martín, considers research on how entrenched gender identities empower
males and marginalize females. In assessing the trajectory of research, it is noted that work in the
sociology of sport has challenged and ...»»»»
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, one of the leading Spanish scholars on gender and
sport, Montserrat Martín, considers research on how entrenched gender identities empower
males and marginalize females. In assessing the trajectory of research, it is noted that work in the
sociology of sport has challenged and facilitated change in understanding gender identities with
emphasis on both the “multiplicities of difference” and on “shared affinities” in the construction
of gender. A continuing challenge has been to get past entrenched gender binaries; it is suggested
that more sophisticated intersectional understandings, about men–women, gay–straight, people
of colour and not, are needed, not only to blur boundaries, but in the process to reinvent
understandings about our gendered identities. A key challenge for the future is to provide
examples and analysis through which it is possible to show how sport, instead of reproducing
the inertia and stability of social gender identities, blurs the borders and hierarchies between and
within each of them.^^^^