Health-related gender boundary crossing in youth elite sport

Abstract

Gender has been found to play an important role in moderating health outcomes and behaviours. However, strong similarities in male and female athletes’ handling of pain and injury have been noted. The dominance of health practices associated with ‘orthodox masculinity’ references elite sport’s risky body culture. Drawing on the concept of ‘gender boundary crossing’, we question how athletes negotiate orthodox masculine health practices and body–self relationships in the process of socialization. Our analysis draws on qualitative interviews with male and female athletes aged 14–19 performing at the national level in German youth elite sport. Our findings indicate that while practices of pain ignorance and instrumental body relations dominate among female and male adolescent athletes, some develop less orthodox practices such as caring for the body and avoiding health risks. Critical events and alternative social networks were found to promote this health-related gender boundary crossing in elite sport.

Acknowledgements

We particularly thank the participants in this study for sharing their experiences with us. We acknowledge Elizabeth Dickie for her translation and proofreading work. We also thank our colleagues from the GOAL Study Group (Jochen Mayer, Alexia Schnell, Sven Schneider, Katharina Diehl, Stephan Zipfel, Katrin Giel and Anne Werner).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Anderson and McGuire (2010) draw on Pronger (1990) to characterize ‘orthodox masculinity’ as ‘a form of masculinity that is predicated on homophobia, misogyny, physicality, and bravado’ (250). We will use the term ‘orthodox’ to characterize an archetypical from of masculinity (or femininity) and the behaviours and mindsets related to it. We do this with a focus on health-related body management.

2. The concept of physical culture draws together a broad variety of activities (Hargreaves and Vertinsky 2007). Based on a sociocultural understanding of movement forms, physical culture is first and foremost seen as an arena of individual and / or collective physical identity construction and embodiment.

3. The HBSC study is a large-scale survey that began in 1983. The aim is to monitor health outcomes and behaviours in 11–15-year olds in Europe and North America. Despite alignments, the latest studies still state gender differences (Currie et al. 2012).

4. The terminology with regard to different forms of masculinity and femininity is somewhat unclear. In an attempt to summarize Robert Connell’s theory, Howson (2006) distinguishes in ‘the masculinities schema’ (59) between ‘hegemonic masculinity’, ‘subordinate masculinities’ and ‘marginalised masculinities’ as well as ‘emphasised femininity’, ‘ambivalent femininities’ and ‘protest femininities’. Focusing on masculinity alone, Anderson and McGuire (2013) differentiate between ‘inclusive masculinity’ and ‘orthodox masculinity’.

5. The German Young Olympic Athletes’ Lifestyle and Health Management Study contained several sub-studies. Herein, we only refer to the qualitative study. All interviews were conducted by the first author with the help of a student for the discipline wrestling.

6. All names given are pseudonyms.

7. Mononucleosis is a virus infection caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Symptoms, may differ individually, are easily misdiagnosed as a heavy flu (fever, muscle aches and drowsiness) and can last for weeks. Contact sport and vigorous activities should be avoided in order to recover without harm (Ebell 2004).

8. As a response to the swine flu epidemic and the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the German skiing federation increased efforts to educate winter sport athletes about the risks of infectious diseases and methods of prevention.