Women's artistic gymnastics is commonly understood to require early entrance and intense training during childhood. Most gymnasts retire before reaching adulthood. In recent years, the gymnast population at the highest level has "aged." In this article, we adopt a socio-pedagogical perspective to explore the training contexts, pubertal…

In this paper we focus on the lived experiences of multidisciplinary scholars as we navigated and coalesced into a productive, interdisciplinary collaboration. We pull from our foundations in feminist methodology and provide excerpts from personal journals and reflexive group interviews to provide a behind-the-scenes account of the inner workings…

The lesbian label exists within sport's heterosexist and heteronormative context as a means to subvert women's status, power, influence, and experiences. As such, there exists a lesbian stigma that contributes to sport's documented gender disparities. While acknowledged that some women may manage their gender and sexual identities to evade…

The power and performance model of sport stresses a sport ethic of doing "whatever it takes" to win (Coakley, 2004). Uncritical acceptance of this model may lead to various health-compromising behaviors. Employing achievement goal theory, we examine why female athletes may adopt the power and performance approach. An ego motivational climate and a…

Consequences of nonconformity to hegemonic femininity in sport often include sexist and heterosexist discrimination. This leads many sportswomen to emphasize feminine characteristics to avoid prejudice and discrimination. Females perceived as too feminine are sexualized and trivialized, leaving women to carefully balance athleticism with hegemonic…

Considers constructs and operation of homophobic discourse surrounding female athletes, employing Foucauldian notions of discipline and discourse and feminist critiques of the gendered body to depict female athletes as nonconformist to the discipline of femininity. The paper argues that homophobic discourse exists in response to this nonconformity…