The gendered social representation of physical education and sport science higher education in Spain

ABSTRACT

Background: In recent decades, Spain has seen a decline in girls’ interest in pursuing the Physical Activity and Sport Science (PASS) degree. For example, in Catalonia (Spain), the number of women enrolled has decreased from 39.3% in the 2000–2001 academic year to 17.3% in the 2014–2015 academic year (Serra, Soler, Vilanova et al. 2019), which is in line with technological and scientific degrees. This fact is striking because more women than men are enrolling in university studies in Spain overall.

Purpose: Drawing on Bourdieu's theoretical tools and the concept of social representation, the purpose of this study is to analyse how young people perceive the PASS degree, in order to understand why fewer women than men choose this degree.

Method: A total of 4146 students (50.2% girls; mean age = 16.82 years; SD = 0.837) from 39 school centres were purposefully selected in three regions of Spain. Students were enrolled in the final course of Compulsory Secondary Education (4th ESO, 16 years old) and the first of 2 years of the pre-university course (1st year of Bachillerato, 16–17 years old). An ad hoc instrument was designed to measure the Social Representation (SR) of the degree habitus and students’ interest in studying for the PASS degree. Statistical analyses were carried out using SPSS Statistics (v.23). Data were tested for normality. The statistical tests used were: Chi-square (X²) and Mann–Whitney U analysis.

Findings: The results show that the SR of the degree habitus has a masculine characterization, which favours the number of men who study this degree. This SR could explain why the number of women in this field has been very low (around 18%) in Spain in recent years. Likewise, this SR would be a form of symbolic violence on girls who may wish to pursue these studies, but do not feel entitled to do so because it is considered a masculine field. The students are not able to identify this social construction, which eventually naturalizes the difference and makes the prevalence of men in these studies more socially acceptable.

Conclusion: The SR of the degree habitus could be exercising a symbolic violence that would contribute to the discrepancy in the number of men and women who choose a PASS degree. To change the SR of the degree, it is necessary to substantially modify how it is constructed. Some of the options would involve a profound change in curriculum, built around a conception of body culture that is based on feminist political, philosophical, and ontological assumptions. This new construction would invoke a configuration of body culture not centred on the modern sport phenomenon and post-modern physical activity. The information that students receive to construct this masculine and instrumentalized SR of the degree should also be intentionally modified.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical education
• gender
• habitus
• higher education
• career choice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 An exam called "Selectividad" is required to enrol in a university in Spain. Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been necessary to obtain a passing mark in physical examinations and obtain the Selectividad mark required for each university in order to enrol in a PASS degree programme (Garay et al. 2017). There is a larger number of students who hope to undertake the studies than there are spaces offered, meaning that the cut-off mark to enrol in the most prestigious universities is very high. For example, in 2020, the cut-off mark to enrol in a PASS degree at the University of Barcelona was one of the highest in the university system (Departament d’Universitats de la Generalitat de Catalunya 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [grant number DEP2012-31275]; and Institut Nacional d’Educació Física de Catalunya (INEFC) [grant number PINEFC-2012].