Abstract
This paper will introduce readers to the field of sports in theRepublic of Ireland with specific reference to changing power relationsbetween the sexes. It will situate a present-day social phenomenon, that is,Irish females’ increasing involvement in what are seen traditionally as maleassociatedsports such as Gaelic football, rugby and soccer, within the contextof social processes in which more or less independent groups of people(that is, male and female sportspeople) are becoming more interdependent.Qualitative data including 12 in-depth interviews with high performance(elite) female athletes (conducted between 1999 and 2002), three in-depthinterviews with leading Irish sports officials (1999–2003) and participantobservation notes (from the author’s involvement in the field of sports sincethe early 1990s) will be used to examine aspects of the sport–gender nexusin Ireland. These will be situated within a sociological analysis of the emergenceand development of sports for women since the 1970s, and they willbe used to argue that the relatively slight shift in the balance of power infavour of females since the 1970s has led to feelings of emancipation amongstfemales and resistance amongst males, though this resistance is graduallybecoming weaker. Elias’s theory of ‘established–outsider’ relations will beapplied to suggest that females who participate in sports such as rugby,soccer and Gaelic football to a lesser extent, can be described as an ‘outsider’group, that is, as one that has lacked the organisational resources and networksof mutual assistance to significantly shift the uneven balance of powerbetween the sexes. Moreover, typical of outsiders in their relations with theestablished, dominant stereotypical views of females remain embedded inthe personality structures of ‘outsiders’.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 66-85 |
| Journal | Irish Journal of Sociology |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published (in print/issue) - 17 Mar 2005 |
Bibliographical note
Reference text: Birrell, S. and C. Cole (eds) 1994 Women, Sport and Culture. Champaign, Ill.: HumanKinetics.
Bourke, A. 2004 ‘Women’s football in the Republic of Ireland: past events and future
prospects,’ pp.162-82 in F. Hong and J. Mangan (eds), Soccer, Women, Sexual Liberation.
London: Frank Cass.
Burton-Nelson, M. 1994 The Stronger Women Get, the More Men like Football: Sexism and
the American Culture of Sport. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Byrne, A. and M. Leonard (1997) Women and Irish Society: A Sociological Reader. Belfast:
Beyond the Pale.
Males and females in sports in Ireland 83
IJS 05.1 2005 09/08/2005 11:29 Page 83
Clarke, G. 1997 ‘Playing a part: the lives of lesbian physical education teachers’, pp. 36–50
in G. Clarke and B. Humberstone (eds), Researching Women and Sport. London:
Macmillan.
Connell, R. 1990 ‘An iron man: the body and some contradictions of hegemonic masculinity,’
pp. 83-97 in Messner, M. and D. Sabo (eds), Sport, Men, and the Gender Order:
Critical Feminist Perspectives. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Curtin, C., P. Jackson and B. O’Connor 1987 Gender in Irish Society. Galway: Galway
University Press.
Dowling, C. 2000 The Frailty Myth: Redefining the Physical Potential of Women and Girls.
New York: Random House.
Dunning, E. 1986a ‘Preface,’ pp. 1–19 in N. Elias and E. Dunning, Quest for Excitement:
Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Dunning, E. 1986b ‘Sport as a male preserve: notes on the social sources of masculine
identity and its transformations,’ pp. 267–84 in N. Elias and E. Dunning, Quest for
Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Dunning, E. 1992 ‘Figurational sociology and the sociology of sport: some concluding
remarks’, pp. 221–84 in E. Dunning and C. Rojek (eds), Sport and Leisure in the
Civilising Process. London: Macmillan.
Dunning, E. 1999 Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence and Civilisation.
London: Routledge.
Dunning, E. and J. Maguire 1996 ‘Process-sociological notes on sport, gender relations and
violence control’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 31 (3): 295–317.
Elias, N. 1956 ‘Problems of involvement and detachment’, British Journal of Sociology 7
(3): 226–52.
Elias, N. 1987 Involvement and Detachment. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Elias, N. 1991 The Society of Individuals. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Elias, N. and J. Scotson 1994 The Established and the Outsiders. London: Sage (orig. 1965;
the 1994 edition contains the 1976 Introduction written for the Dutch translation).
Goudsblom, J. 1977 Sociology in the Balance: A Critical Essay. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hartmann, I. and G. Pfister (eds.), 2002 Sport and Women: Social Issues in International
Perspective. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis.
Hill, M. 2003 Women in Ireland 1900–2000. Belfast: Blackstaff Press.
Inglis, T. 1998 Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern
Ireland, 2nd edn. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.
Kew, F. 1997 Sport, Social Problems and Issues. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Lenskyj, H. 1986 Out of Bounds: Women, Sport and Sexuality. Toronto: Women’s Press.
Liston, K. 2002 ‘The Gendered Field of Irish Sport,’ pp. 234–47 in M. Corcoran. and M.
Peillon (eds), Ireland Unbound: A Turn of the Century Chronicle. Dublin: Institute of
Public Administration.
Liston, K. and G. Menzies (eds), 2004 Women and Sport: Fifth Report for the Joint
Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sports, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht
Affairs. Dublin: Stationery Office.
Liston, K. 2004 ‘Some reflections on women’s sports in Ireland’, pp. 206–23 in A. Bairner
(ed.), Sport and the Irish. Dublin: University College Dublin Press.
Loyal, S. 2004 ‘Elias on class and stratification’, pp. 122–39 in S. Loyal and S. Quilley
(eds), The Sociology of Norbert Elias. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mennell, S. 1998 Norbert Elias: An Introduction. Rev. edn, Dublin: University College
Dublin Press.
84 Irish Journal of Sociology
IJS 05.1 2005 09/08/2005 11:29 Page 84
Mennell, S. and J. Goudsblom 1998 Norbert Elias On Civilisation, Power and Knowledge:
Selected Writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Murphy, P., K. Sheard and I. Waddington 2000 ‘Figurational sociology and its application
to sport’, pp. 92–106 in J. Coakley and E. Dunning (eds.), Handbook of Sports Studies.
London: Sage.
O’Connor, P. 1998 Emerging Voices: Women in Contemporary Irish Society. Dublin:
Institute of Public Administration.
O’Dowd, L. 1988 The State of Social Science Research in Ireland. Dublin: Royal Irish
Academy.
Scraton, S., K. Fasting, G. Pfister and A. Bunuel 1999 ‘It’s still a man’s game? The
experiences of top-level European women footballers’, International Review for the
Sociology of Sport 34, (2): 99–113.
Scraton, S. and A. Flintoff (eds), 2002 Gender and Sport: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Sheard, K. 1997 ‘Aspects of boxing in the western “civilising process”’, International
Review of the Sociology of Sport 32 (1): 31–59.
Sheard, K. and E. Dunning 1973 ‘The rugby football club as a type of “male preserve”:
some sociological notes’, International Review of Sport Sociology 8: 5–24.
Smyth, E. 1997 ‘Labour market structures and women’s employment in the Republic of
Ireland’, pp. 63–81 in A. Byrne and M. Leonard (eds), Women and Irish Society: A
Sociological Reader. Belfast: Beyond the Pale.
The Grip, 1996 Women in Sport. Dublin: Radio Telefís Éireann. No. 2: Series 3.
Van Krieken, R. 1998 Norbert Elias. London: Routledge.
Van Stolk, B. and C. Wouters 1987 ‘Power changes and self-respect: a comparison of two
cases of established-outsider relations’, Theory, Culture and Society 4 (4): 477–88.
Wouters, C. 2004 Sex and Manners: Female Emancipation in the West 1890–2000. London:
Sage.
Keywords
- established-outsiders
- sport
- gender
- Ireland
