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Standards and Separatism: The Discursive Construction of Gender in English Soccer Coach Education

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Abstract

Affirmative action is a problematic, but common, organizational approach to redressing gender discrimination as it fails to address discourses underlying organizational definitions and practices in highly masculinized sites like English football. Unstructured interviews with 27 key personnel and participants in coach education in the north of England within a regional “division” of the organization regulating English football (“The FA”) were conducted to explore the gendered construction and enactment of football and coaching, and the framing of women-only (separatist) coaching courses. Critical discourse analysis identified the deployment of discourses concerning the undermining of standards and the privileging of women as strategies used to neutralize the significance of gender and previous gender discrimination, while re/producing the centrality of masculinity for key definitions and identities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sport Management and Culture, Sheffield Hallam University, Collegiate Crescent, Sheffield, S10 2BP, UK

    Beth Fielding-Lloyd

  2. Department of Communication Studies, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 37100, Phoenix, AZ, 85069-7100, USA

    Lindsey J. Meân

Authors
  1. Beth Fielding-Lloyd
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  2. Lindsey J. Meân
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Correspondence to Beth Fielding-Lloyd.

Additional information

This paper is based on Beth Fielding-Lloyd’s Ph.D. dissertation undertaken at the Centre for Human Communication, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK under the supervision of Dr. Lindsey Meân. Authors are listed alphabetically.

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Fielding-Lloyd, B., Meân, L.J. Standards and Separatism: The Discursive Construction of Gender in English Soccer Coach Education. Sex Roles 58, 24–39 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9334-x

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