KNH 475: Women & Gender in Sport
Spring 2021
Final Gender & Sport Reflection Project
As we’ve discussed throughout the semester, gender impacts our sporting experiences in a variety of different ways. From historical to modern times, gender can have structural impacts through the design of policies and regulations and what sporting spaces are open or available to us, social impacts based on our racial or sexual identities, or personal impacts through messaging and media that can affect what sports we choose to play or not play, and how our performance in those sports is judged. For your final project, I’d like you to take the opportunity to reflect on the way gender has impacted the sport experiences of you or someone you know.
The guiding questions are: a) In what ways has gender impacted your sporting experiences, positively or negatively, in whatever setting you choose (as an athlete or participant, as a family member of a participant or player, as a fan, as a consumer of sports media, etc)? b) What broader social influences do you think contributed to this impact on your sporting experiences? c) For our own selves, for our friends, or for our family members?
For this final project, you will have a few choices: a choice of subject, a choice of method, and a choice of product.
Regardless of your choices, please ensure that your final project engages with course material and incorporates at least two key concepts/topics covered in the course.
Focus/Subject
Please choose one of the following:
Yourself
Friends from your peer group (same or similar age friends-classmates, roommates, teammates, etc all acceptable!)
Family members (older, younger, same or similar age)
I would encourage you if comfortable to use the opportunity to reflect on your own experiences, but if you aren’t comfortable doing so in a submitted assignment or know someone you think would have a particularly interesting experience to share, feel free to choose a friend or family member.
Method
Please choose one of the following:
Personal reflection – a reflection on what you have observed in your own experiences with gender and sport-feel free to write down observations if this helps you organize your thoughts but there is no need to submit anything formally.
Interview – an interview with a friend, a family member, or a mixture thereof about the ways gender influenced or impacted their sport experiences
Product
Depending on your choices of subject and method, you can think about presenting your project in these ways:
A standard written paper (5-7 pages double-spaced)
A narrated presentation (10-15 minutes, similar to our video lectures-this might be an interesting way to narrate your or someone else’s sporting experiences. If you’d like a link to/instructions on how to use the screen capture software I use to record our lectures, please ask! It’s free/easy to use as long as you record for 15 minutes or less. You may know of a different/better way though since most of you are probably much more technologically proficient than I am lol)
A video or podcast (audio recording) (10-15 minutes)
In your final product (paper, narrated presentation, video, or podcast), be sure to engage with at least three key concepts and/or topics covered during the course. These might include:
Historical influences or messaging on sport participation for men or women
Gender implications in the sports industry or sports management field, if your/your subject’s future career plans involve this area
Different kinds of sporting spaces (single-gender, co-ed, scholastic vs recreational, etc)
How traditional ideas of masculinity or femininity (or non-traditional ideas) influenced your/your subject’s sport choices or participation
How media messaging has contributed to your/your subject’s sport experiences
How racial or sexual/gender identities have contributed to your/your subject’s sport experiences
The role of policies or regulations in determining sport access/opportunity/choice
We’ve covered a lot in here this semester so feel free to reference anything we’ve discussed, even if not listed above!
For example, I might choose to interview my best friend about how gender impacted her sporting experiences as an athlete and fan. I’ve decided to record our conversation as a video. The two key concepts I want to tackle are the sporting spaces available to her and if media messaging influenced her participation or fan experience. During our interview, I would ask her reflective questions like: What kinds of sport did you participate in as a child and adolescent? Was it always single-gender or were there co-ed opportunities? Did you prefer single-gender or would you have preferred a mixed-gender team setting? Did you enjoy playing on all-girls teams? Since you played softball, which is thought of as the women’s version of baseball, did you ever consider playing baseball? Why or why not? What kinds of messages did you receive about playing softball competitively through high school? Did you get different messages from the media/friends and family/others? You were a big NFL fan-what was that experience like as a woman who was a fan of a popular men’s sport? Did you know other women fans? Etc.
If I was going to reflect on my own sporting experiences, I might think about some questions like: why did I choose basketball and softball as my main sports? Did I ever consider playing baseball? Did I ever play with boys or want to play with boys? Why did I stop playing tennis, which my mom had enrolled me in at a young age, by the end of junior high? Why did I decide to try academia as a career path, even though I got my masters in sports management planning to go into the sport industry, and how was gender a factor? Did the media messaging I received with representations of women affect my self-esteem and discontinued participation in sport in high school? Why have I avoided fandom spaces populated mostly by men as I’ve gotten older? Etc.
These are by no means the only questions you can ask-just some examples! The goal is for you or your subject to reflect on the ways gender has impacted your/their sporting experience. Some of these may be things you/they have thought of or noticed before, or they may be new; they may be subtle or have had a very noticeable impact.
Please submit your Final Project via Canvas no later than 11:59pm on May 12th. It is worth 30 points.
Rubric
Criteria
Description
Points
Choice of focus/subject
Introduce chosen subject and describe rationale for this choice
5
Substance of project
Commitment to full project, meets minimum guidelines (5-7 pages for paper, 10 minute narrated presentation, 10-minute video, 10-minute podcast)
5
Engagement with at least three course concepts
In-depth and substantive engagement with at least three key course concepts/ideas interwoven into the project
15
Overall quality and effectiveness of the project
Is the project of high quality? Is it thoughtful? Does it capture a depth of thinking and reflection?
5
Total
30