ABSTRACT
Gendered discourses espoused by youth coaches have the potential to both reinforce gender essentialism or blind coaches to girls’ needs. This qualitative study utilised a multi-national, online survey to examine youth sport coach discourses about coaching girls. A gender-focused critical discourse analysis was conducted from open-ended survey responses from 148 youth sport coaches. A range of gendered coach discourses emerged including gender essentialist stereotypes of perceived physical, psychological, and social differences between girls and boys, and gender-blind/neutral comments which erased gendered experiences were the most common discourses. Gender-sensitive, gender-responsive, and gender transformative discourses were less common, but have powerful potential to disrupt gendered, masculine-shaped norms in sport. Based on the data, coach discourses often positioned girls as different and deficient or overlooked the salience of gendered structures in sport. A gender transformative approach is necessary to challenge entrenched gender structures, practices and hierarchies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).