Transcending gender hierarchies? Young people and floorball in Swedish school sport

Abstract

This research insight discusses young people’s construction and display of gender in a mixed-sex floorball group in a Swedish sport school and explores in what ways gendered power relations were exercised. Observations of floorball lessons with 21 students aged 12–16 and interviews with 7 students were analysed through Lorber’s concept of gender as a social institution. Findings suggested that training in a mixed-sex group seemed to actualize a need to dichotomize and construct distinct groups of boys and girls, and a ‘boys are better than girls’ discourse prevailed. This was explained as being a result of their experiences of playing separately in floorball clubs during leisure time. All contributed to the construction of a discourse where boys were superior and girls inferior, although they were striving towards a uniform way to play. Their attitudes and actions indicated that while gender hierarchies were not transcended, they were, to some extent, negotiated.

Notes

1. Boys and girls formed separated soccer groups, as most students were admitted in soccer. Other sports were tennis, swimming, gymnastics, floorball, ice hockey, badminton, basketball, figure skating and athletics.