The Effect of Cohort on Women's Sport Participation: An Intergenerational Study of Collegiate Women Ice Hockey Players

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was 1) to examine the effect of gender expectations on sport participation by considering the impact of cohort on women's choice to play collegiate ice hockey, a masculine and statistically male-dominated sport, and 2) to show how the “enrichment hypothesis,” habitus, and recreational capital can be used as conceptual frameworks to explain this choice. The findings are based on a survey of 85 women who played collegiate ice hockey, a nontraditional sport for women. The respondents reported the importance of significant others; however, cohort effects were evident in the age at which they started playing ice hockey and extent to which friends or family members had influenced them as well as in the degree of participation in team sports and ice hockey, in particular, prior to playing ice hockey in college. The implications of these findings for practitioners as well as suggestions for future researchers are provided.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• cohort
• habitus
• leiure constraints
• ice hockey