Women, sport and development by Martha Saavedra, University of California, Berkeley Is it curious that there should be a particular document addressing the issue of “women, sport, and development”? Why not one focused on men? I pose these questions to get at the heart of a dilemma – Why, if women and girls do engage in sport, are they still marginalized or at best a “special case” in the dominant practices, ideologies and organizations concerned with sport? Certainly in the beginning of the 21st century, it is not unusual for girls and women all over the world to participate in sport in some way or another. As well, over the last three decades, there has been considerable organized, focused attention on women’s role in development. Over the last 15 years an organized international women in sports movement also has gained momentum. Nevertheless, female participation in sport still raises a series of reactions, issues and questions that are theoretically challenging, culturally revealing and programmatically pressing. This emulates earlier discussions surrounding women and development. Furthermore, much work still needs to be done to systematically work through the relationships between women, sport and development – something that has just begun. Questions posed should include not only what are barriers to and opportunities for women’s and girls’ involvement in sport, but also what are the presumed benefits and costs, the variations over time and place, and the impact on women and girls of existing sporting ventures. Finally, a consideration of women in sport and development should sensitize us to the gendered implications of any and all work related to sport and development, not just to that focused on females. This article will examine the dilemma, recount a bit of the history of activism, and suggest some specific programmatic issues researchers and practitioners should bear in mind. Unpacking the “dilemma” At essence, sport involves disciplined body practices, which are rooted in systems of beliefs about physical possibilities, including those of sexual difference. If sexual difference is translated into gender distinctions and unequal power relations through socially infused body practices, these distinctions and inequalities will be magnified in sporting practice and ideology as they are reproduced or transgressed. Emerging from a particular historical trajectory beginning in the West, the dominant modern practice of sport has largely been a hegemonic masculine enterprise. It is not that women and girls are unfamiliar with physical labor, nor that women and girls have not participated in what constitutes sport, leisure and play in their particular communities, especially in the “modern” era. Yet, for many, sport still exemplifies and upholds essential masculine traits, and becomes a code for heterosexual male superiority and domination over the feminine. Female participants in the world of sport put their “femininity” at risk and threaten the social order. Hence, female involvement in sport is often a transgression that needs to be explained, encouraged, prevented, or managed, but somehow is not ‘natural.” 1 2 Despite this and actually because of this, many view female involvement in sport as a potential radical and transformative process for women and girls, and possibly for the world of sport and society in general. Sport as an embodied practice may liberate girls and women from constraining hegemonic feminine ideals, empower them within their communities, provide positive health and welfare outcomes, and ultimately transform gendered notion leading to a more egalitarian world and unleashing the productive, intellectual and social power of women. This then would contribute to overall development – economic, social and political. 3