Section 2A Flashcards
What is social stratification?
Relatively permanent ranking systems of power, status, and opportunity.
What is one of the earliest known commentaries on the supposed “natural” attributes of the sexes?
Aristotle- Man: Nature gave strength of body and intrepidity of mind
Woman: A weak and delicate constitution, natural softness, and modest timidity, fit for a sedentary life.
What types of things were women excluded from in ancient Greece?
Citizenship and participation in sports.
What did Pierre de Coubertin believe about females in sports? (1935- founder of modern Olympics)
That they should participate on limited terms- primary role to crown the male victors with laurels.
What did Avery Brundage believe about women in sports? (IOC President (1952-1972)
Women’s involvment in sports needed to be channelled in certain directions such as swimming, tennis, figure skating, fencing (appropriate), but not male activities.
What did Dr. Chandler Gillman say about women to a group of students becoming Physicians and Surgeons in the 60s?
Women have inferiority of the locomotive apparatus, smaller brains, abundant supply of soft tissues which create a delicacy of mind, low power, non-resistance, passivity, and under favourable circumstances, a habit of self sacrifice.
Who said “not to have confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in onself?”
Simone de Beauvoir.
What are the 5 basic tenets of feminist theory?
1) Sex vs. Gender
2) Females as exploited, devalued, oppressed
3) Change living conditions of females
4) Destabilize status quo
5) Critical of intellectual traditions.
What is the idea of sex vs. gender according to sociology?
Sociologists are concerned with the social meanings ascribed to sex categories such as male/masculine and female/feminine.
What are the 3 primary approaches that sports researches have adopted overtime to examine gender (and race)
1) Categoric
2) Distributive
3) Relational
What is the catagoric approach?
Tend to focus on biological or essentialist differences in sports performance (ex: men’s larger body mass and musculature).
What is the distributive approach?
Examines the distribution of resources as the basis of inequality. Focus shifts to the fact that there have been fewer coaching opps and less funding (for example) for female athletes. Lead to legislative changes such as Title IX in the USA
What is the relational approach?
Assumption is that sporting practices are historically produced and culturally defined to serve the interests of powerful groups in sport (men).
What kinds of things do feminist sociologists of sport study?
1) Interface of sport-gender (health, sexuality, identity), opportunities, resources, and experiences
2) Gender identities socially constructed through sport
3) Hierarchized (or ranked) masculinities and feminities in sport
4) How sport contributes to the reproduction of sexism, heterosexism, gynephobia
5) How sport enhances the transformation of gender relations
What do radical feminists encourage?
A disengagement from traditional male society- males are absent, if not needed or featured in traditional ways in sport.
