Sport management, gender and the ‘bigger picture’

Abstract

This paper focuses mainly on a the author's current experience of Higher Education and of a module concerned with gender, difference, sport and leisure made available to students studying for sport and leisure management degrees. It reviews the changed nature of the curriculum in the shifting socio-economic climate, suggesting that the neo-liberal¹ turn influencing Higher Education in UK is reinforcing an organisational (university) culture which is counter productive to fostering critical gender and race awareness in both staff and students within restructured sport management programs. The approach I adopt in writing this paper is partly auto/ethnographic and as such, on occasion, it looks at the previous research and current experiences through the eyes and emotions of a senior woman academic located within a changing ‘new’ university culture. Auto/ethnography as research approach and autobiography as learning medium are considered. Like this abstract, I move in and out of centring myself in the text whilst interweaving writing in a more neutral ‘academic’ form.

Keywords:

• Higher Education
• Gender
• Neo-liberalism
• Auto-ethnography

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this paper and the editors of this special issue for their generosity and valuable insights and comments on this paper. Any errors are my own.

Notes

1 I refer here to neo-liberalism as, ‘associated with the extension and enhancement of the market economy during the late 1990s and early twenty-first century’ (David, 2005: 113 [David, M. (2005). Feminist values and feminist sociology as contributions to higher education pedagogies and practices. In S. Robinson & C. Katulushi (Eds.), Values in higher education (pp. 107–116). Shropshire: Aureus Publishing Ltd]). The main aspects of neo-liberal ideology might be identified as the rule of the market, cutting public expenditure for social services, deregulation, privatisation and so forth. Chiapello and Fairclough [Chiapello, E., & Fairclough, N. (2002). Understanding the new management ideology. A transdisciplinary contribution from critical discourse analysis and new sociology of capitalism. Discourse and Society, 13(2), 185–208] critically analyse Neo-liberal Discourse and its hegemonic practices in management, providing a theoretical framework for the ‘new spirit of capitalism’. Capitalism is slippery, ‘it constantly transforms itself’.

2 Some auto/ethnographers express their feelings and emotions through poetry (see for example Spry, 2001). I have not used this or other writing tools frequently used by many auto/ethnographers such as writing narrative dialogue or ‘vignettes of experience’ for largely ethical reasons. Nevertheless, I do however express my own feelings and emotions concerning my engagement with the current culture, as an actor in that culture, in a more traditional writing style.

3 Zoe was a mature student who was studying for a degree in sport management and psychology and was particularly committed to learning. She eventually achieved the most successful student award. All the names of students in the text are pseudonyms.

4 Football here is the European game which is referred to as soccer in North America.

5 See Bauman (2005), who asserts a culture clash between the values of education and those of this ‘liquid-modern’ epoch which is turning education into a commodity, having little need for deliberation and contestable dialogue. The effects of neo-liberalism on Higher Education institutions are commented upon in Bourdieu (1999), Giroux (2004) and Hill (2004).

6 Sparkes (2007) tells the evocative tale of an academic trying to live and survive in the UK as Higher Education becomes more embroiled in the projects of neo-liberalism, in this case the Research Activity Exercise (RAE) audit. Sparkes represents his research fictionally and the writing resonates strongly with readers. It has no theoretical discussion and is ‘offered for consideration’ (p.540). I choose not to adopt this approach of writing fact and fiction here. Not because I do not think it is a worthy and valuable devise for understanding and sharing research and experiences, as it tells the tale of feelings and emotions much better than other representations, rather it requires the skills of a fictional writer. Richardson (1998) uses such narrative devices also to describe the fragility of her place within North American University culture.

7 My colleague Ali Bakir passed me this paper a year ago at the time of the RAE writing, when I had no space to read it. Emily Coates, my new PhD student, who in her literature searches just now, came across the paper, found it funny and more, thought I should read it. I did this time, thanks to both.