FINDINGS

Challenging Gender Roles

“Girls can play any sport; girls are skilled in sport”

Boys and girls’ focus groups at all programmes agreed that girls should have the opportunity to play sport. With a few exceptions (discussed in the next section), they agreed that girls should be able to play any sport that boys can play.

Across FGDs, interviews, journals and surveys, participants confirmed that everyone should have equal access to sports. In a focus group of four adolescent girls (12-14 years old) in SFL, gender roles in sport were discussed. First, the girls made it clear that they felt it was acceptable and even good for girls to have the opportunity to play any sport they choose. “I think every sport is for girls to play too,” said “Cora.” However, they agreed that many people in Barbados felt differently and the social norm was for boys to play cricket, but not girls. Although SFL was focused on the sport of cricket and was held in the nation’s premier cricket stadium, only one of the girls was very interested in cricket. Cora stated, “I don’t like cricket, but that’s just because I don’t like it,” not because it was a boys’ sport. They all agreed that the primary draw to this programme was not sport at all, and definitely not cricket. These participants were attracted to SFL primarily to access the on-site computer lab. Across all of the programmes girls were less interested in sport, considered it less of a draw to the SDP programmes, or mentioned sport less frequently in their journals than their boy counterparts.

A focus group of boys at SFL agreed (n=5, 12-14 years old), noting that girls should have access to sports just the same as boys. “A girl can play a ‘man’s sport,’ it’s all the same,” one boy stated. Although they still assigned a gender role to some sports (e.g., cricket is a “man’s sport”), they rejected the notion that any sport was off limits for girls. During one SFL session, the women’s national team from England was training at the same cricket grounds in preparation for a match against the Windies. The women bowlers drew the attention of two FGDs with boys and both groups claimed that women could and should play cricket. They also agreed that these women were highly skilled and that they would like to watch them play a match. In a different SFL group, one boy stated, “Whatever the boys are playing the girls can play. If a boy play a girls’ sport then he would get a bad name, but a girl wouldn’t really get a bad name.” In this statement, the social pressures that restrict boys’ access to all sports is clear (discussed below).

Other mixed gender groups had similar attitudes. At the co-ed JV programme in St. Lucia, a boys’ focus group (n=5, 12-14 years old) felt that girls should be able to play football and that some girls were good players while some were not good, just the same as boys. When asked if they liked playing football with the two girls in their programme, they replied positively. One boy noted that “we can teach them new things and they can teach us new things.” He reiterated this concept again later in the discussion. These groups generally felt that sport should be equally accessible to girls and boys. A different focus group at JV later disagreed, as discussed below. Another all-boy group at A Ganar felt the same. Namely, they said that girls could play any sport and some could be good at it. One boy noted that they saw girls playing basketball on TV and that this kind of sport activity for girls was acceptable. At CDP, participants did not explicitly comment on gender roles in sport. These programmes, like the SFL groups, have contradictory statements regarding gender roles for boys in sport that will be discussed below.

“Jackie” was the only female football coach in the study. She explained how she earned “respect” from her male teammates and community over years of football competition. “They used to call me Beckham (after famous English footballer, David Beckham), but now they say I’m better than Beckham. Like him, he’s real creative. That’s how I play. I’m a creator . . . I give them the ball . . . if they can’t do it, then I’ll do it,” she said. Her story shows that she, and her male teammates, took and accepted the non-typical role of a woman as an elite level footballer.

Situating this data in our theoretical context and in Robeyns’ model (see Figure 1), several aspects become clear. First, we see that although gendered social norms in sport influence the capability set, the participants have overwhelmingly rejected those influences and developed positive gender role attitudes about participation of girls and women in sport across all methods (the capability set). Secondly, we see evidence of gendered choice formation, reflecting Sen’s adapted preferences concept. The girls were less interested in sport, particularly the masculinised sport of cricket. We contend that their preferences represent social influences on decision making, which is why they might develop the capability set of positive gender role attitudes, but not demonstrate the achieved functioning (taking and accepting non-stereotypical gender roles; e.g., playing cricket). By contrast, the boys commonly played cricket (and other sports) in their daily lives and overwhelmingly considered sport the primary draw to the SDP programmes. Further demonstrating the power of social norms on adapted preferences, the boy from SFL thought boys would get “a bad name” for playing a “girl’s sport.” This statement, and other comments delineating sports by gender, reflect the hegemonic and heteronormative frame of sport in the West Indies. The boys’ concern about appearing feminine for playing netball limits their capability to develop less restricted attitudes about gender roles.

“Girls playing tough against boys”

Another theme that came through strongly as a challenge to traditional gender role attitudes was girls “playing tough” against boys. Girls and women displaying physical strength and aggression on the pitch against boys is a challenge to machismo gender roles. Many coaches and programme leaders described girls as being “tough” or “aggressive.” Several statements in focus group discussions from both boys and girls, alongside their journal entries describe girls playing sport against boys with aggression and physicality, not shying away from contact. Such statements were coded as “girls playing tough against boys” and grouped under the first order theme of challenging gender roles.

Coach Jackie explained how she spent her childhood and adolescence proving herself to be just as skilled and strong as the boys she played football against. She felt they were trying to intimidate her by being especially tough and trying to “break” her legs. But she endured and believed that she earned their respect, eventually. For Jackie, playing tough was especially important because she felt it was the only way she could fit in and be respected amongst the boys. Some of the adolescent girls in SFL had similar stories, reflecting on how important it was to play aggressively and not shy away from contact. A coach at JV described the only girl that consistently attended as “aggressive,” noting that she was a skilled footballer who seemed to embrace challenging the boys. Boys at SFL, JV and A Ganar all described girls as playing tough or aggressive against boys. However, many of them felt this toughness was actually a display of poor skill.

Overall, there are conflicting aspects within this sub-theme. It seems that playing “tough” is empowering to the girls, demonstrating a rejection of gender roles and achieving the function of taking/accepting non-typical roles. However, the act of challenging these norms seems to reinforce restrictive gender role attitudes amongst some of the boys. Transformational social change is unlikely or limited because of the integrative approach (GID) of these programmes.

Reinforcing Gender Roles

“Boys are better at sport than girls”

Across all programmes, many boys felt that girls were either too aggressive, complained or yelled too much or were too “soft” in their style of play. The common thread among these concerns is that boys did not like playing sport with girls, a view underlined by the belief that the way girls played was inferior. During a focus group of four adult men (18-24 years old) who had just completed the NSDC training certification in St. Lucia and were then serving as football coaches in their communities, the discussion turned to how boys and girls interact during football play. The coaches talked about how the few girls that attend play very “rough” and that the boys react negatively. The boys tended to adjust their play to the girls’ aggressiveness. One coach noted that the boys treated their girl teammates like “sisters.” Another coach stated:

[The boys] do their training with the guys, but when they play, I have them to play with the girls. The guys cry a lot. The guys cry a lot. Coach, coach! Some girls will just look, like if they cannot get the ball they will just slide tackle you. That’s, the girls are aggressive. They are really aggressive. … It’s not like [the boys] don’t know how to handle it. Because they play aggressive as well. They just bear in mind that it’s a girl. So sometimes, some of them get angry. And they say, ‘So they playing, don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll play like that too ya know.’

In this description, some conflicting elements emerge. First, the girls seem to demonstrate a challenge to gender norms by playing aggressively, such as instigating physical contact (slide tackling). In response, the boys “cry,” however the meaning of crying here was explained as complaining, rather than shedding tears. The boys also respond to the masculinised style of play from the girls by also playing aggressively. However, the coach implies that they hold back or temper their play with their “sisters” because they do not want to hurt the girls. This response then reinforces the traditional gender roles of stronger males and weaker, more fragile females.

The boys at JV in St. Lucia had some similar discussions. While they only had one girl, “Iris,” who consistently attended their football programme, they all played together without any outward tensions or disputes. But when a focus group of all boys was asked whether or not they would like more girls to join JV and play, they issued their complaints about girls playing football. “Less… it depends. They can be bossy and tell us what to do. ‘Pass the ball, pass the ball.’ If you have the ball and they want it even before you have the ball they are saying ‘pass it, pass it,’ and they are calling you…. if you don’t . . . oh, it’s a problem! . . . But if she has the ball, she won’t pass it.” The other boys in this group agreed to this description.

Another focus group of adolescent boys at SFL was asked if they liked playing cricket with girls (n-5). They responded with; “No. They’re too soft. And I like a man to do his work and hit the ball hard.” This boy claimed he was afraid to hit the ball hard when the girls were playing. Although he was serious in his response, the group laughed a bit and joked that he maybe he wasn’t able to hit the ball any harder and that he was using the presence of girls as his excuse.

At JV, several boys stated that the girls did not pass or score as well as them. Some argued that the girls were “slower,” but others contended that it depends on which girl. They mostly agreed that girls played “softer.” But one boy countered that some girls were more “aggressive” than the boys. “Because they don’t know how to play it right,” he continued. They collectively agreed that they would prefer for the girls to play separately from the boys and that they would rather have a male coach than a female coach. When asked if they felt it was ok for girls to play football or if they thought girls should play different sports, they responded that girls should play different sports, particularly netball and volleyball.

These stories reflect the rigid gender role divisions present in sport in the West Indies and the boys’ experiences in sport seem to undermine their development of positive gender role attitudes. The girls’ play is incorrect or less skilled in their eyes. The integrative approach leaves girls marginalised, whether they adopt masculine attributes (playing “tough,” being “bossy”) or play in a more feminine way (“too soft”). The boys do not accept their non-traditional gender role, therefore the functioning is not achieved within the HCA model. Again, we argue that the positioning of girls into masculinised sport contexts is an integrative GID approach rather than the transformative GAD approach.

Lack of Female Players, Coaches

The overall lack of female participants and leaders in the SDP programmes also reinforces gender role norms. The common perception that boys are better at sports than girls is often reinforced by a lack of female role models in sport.¹⁵ This notion is caught in a feedback loop – girls have less access to sport and are therefore less present as players, which, in turn, leads to fewer females evolving from players to coaches and serving as role models for future generations. This problem was talked about at length by coaching trainees, coaches, facilitators and other administrators in Barbados and St. Lucia. One coach explained that only three to five girls participate regularly in his group of 65 children. One story, from “Randall” at NSDC illustrates the problem:

Recently, I was training a set of little boys and out of the blue this little girl, skinny as ever, coming on to the field. And she was telling me, sometimes I raise my pants to my waist and when I raise my pants to my waist, they call me Coach Billygoat. So, she’s coming to me and telling me, ‘Coach Billygoat, I want to play.’ So I said, ‘where are your shoes?’ And she says, ‘I don’t have any shoes.’ ‘And you want to play? You think you can handle these guys?’ (he asked her). I asked for them to come look at their shoes and they’ve got these long studs (cleats), but she said, ‘I want to play. I want to play.” So I had to readjust the drills I was doing to accommodate her playing.

In order to incorporate her into the play, he had her serve as the referee. He went on to explain that she called many fouls and the boys were growing frustrated. But Randall used it as a learning point, teaching the boys that it was their role as players to adjust to how a referee calls a game. The fundamental point of this story is that there are so few girls playing, and often with fewer resources, that it may become difficult to incorporate them into normal play.

The same challenge was echoed by many of the programme leaders, coaches, youth sport administrators and educators interviewed. “Melly,” a youth sports leader in Barbados, described her efforts to create more opportunities for girls in sport as “pushing molasses up a hill.” Melly was frustrated with the lack of effort to support sport for girls and women in Barbados. She felt that structural differences in how sport is offered to males and females is likely to be both a reflection of the cultural attitudes regarding sport and gender. A male coach for the JV, CDP and NSDC programmes in St. Lucia noted that he felt a primary school he worked with actively encouraged boys to join JV, but “steered girls towards other programmes,” such as art and music.

The challenge to transform the playing field is made clear by this particular problem. The framework for SDP continues to be masculinised in large part because it is male-dominated. Such a GID framework discourages girls and women from joining, a reflection of their adapted preferences rooted in gender role divisions.

“Boys do not play netball or gendered sport”

By far, the most rigid gender restriction discussed across all programmes was a restriction for boys. Boys do not, or should not, play netball. Netball is a non-contact sport similar to basketball that is common in the British Commonwealth and is traditionally reserved for females.⁴⁶ Several coaches and sport administrators explained that opportunities for boys to play competitive netball do not exist. Adolescent boys in this study felt that playing netball would jeopardize a boy’s masculinity and call his sexuality into question. The systematic exclusion of boys from netball represents the hegemonic, heteronormative framework of sport in the West Indies that remains unchallenged by the SDP movement.

As many adolescent participants described it – basketball is for boys and netball is for girls. This restriction against boys playing netball was widely held, although some girls defended the right of boys to play. When girls from SFL (n=3, 12-14 years old) were asked if netball was ok for everyone to play, they replied, “No, no, no not for boys. Boys can’t play netball. It’s only for girls.” When probed for the rationale behind this restriction, they struggled to articulate why netball was unacceptable for males. Here, and in other groups, they just laughed and said it was a “girls’ sport.”

In the same SFL programme, a focus group of five adolescent boys (12-14 years old) responded to the question, “Why can’t a boy or man play netball?” One boy said, “It’s a girls’ sport. You can’t get no man that can flip (hands) jump and catch the ball and wear a skirt to play. A man can’t jump and catch the ball and do that thing (he motions a flipping of his hand, leaving his fingers dangling).” The group agreed with laughter. In another SFL focus group, this one containing three adolescent boys, they referred to boys and men who play netball as “bullas.” “Bulla” is a slang term in Barbados that most closely translates to “fag,” a slur for homosexual male. These boys noted that a male playing netball would get a “bad reputation” and be considered a “bulla.” At the same time, a girl playing a contact sport like rugby would not be mocked in the same way. In a separate all-boy discussion group, one participant called boys who play netball “she-males.”

A discussion group in A Ganar agreed that boys do not play netball (n=8, ages 12-16 years) boys (n=5) and girls (n=3). The boys agreed that they had never heard of a boy playing netball. They explained that boys play basketball, while girls play netball. When asked why, one boy said that boys will “feel funny” playing netball and girls “feel weird” playing basketball. “It’s (netball) a girls’ sport. You have to wear a skirt. They would say he’s gay,” remarked one boy. The boys in particular, insisted that the movements in netball were not acceptable for boys to do. “The sport itself looks girly, because you’re jumping about,” another boy stated. When asked to demonstrate these “girly” movements, this group of boys refused to do so. I asked them to describe a boy playing netball, they responded with, “gay,” “fishy,” “funny boy,” “not in his right mind,” and “gay” again. The girls in this group contended the boys’ restrictions, noting that everyone should get to play a sport they like and claiming that netball is not that different from basketball.

The intense and sometimes homophobic reaction to netball exposes the heteronormative frame by which sport is experienced and perceived. The sport of netball is integrated into this frame, making it an unlikely platform for transforming or challenging these restrictive gender role attitudes. Within Robeyns’ model, the capability set is undermined by these social influences and the boys’ preferences to avoid playing netball is rooted in a heteronormative masculinity. Boys and most girls are unwilling to accept or take on a gender role that violates this rigid social norm.

“Girls playing sport are too masculine”

Another code present under the theme of reinforcing gender roles was the notion that girls playing sport are too masculine. Both boy and girl participants indicated this concern. At the mixed gender A Ganar focus group, one girl described girls playing football as “mannish” and “tomboy.” A boy responded by saying that if she were good at playing, then it would be fine for her to play. Boys in several FGDs at SFL felt similarly. They said a girl who played football well would seem more like a boy, but if she was “really good,” then that would be “ok.” This notion aligns with Jackie’s experience as an elite footballer. Another boy noted that girls who play contact sports are often girls that “strut,” implying they behave in an overly masculine way. They also noted that girls should not play sports like rugby because they are “too rough.”

All coaches and administrators agreed that it was beneficial for girls to play sport. However, some believed that when females started playing at higher levels, they were considered increasingly masculine. A male administrator from the Barbados Sports Council explained that girls get stigmatised as manly or even homosexual as they compete at higher levels. As she gets better, others will have “the perception that she is like a boy.” He added that “some of these girls are dressing in football in a “manly” style. Some of the girls may not be that way. Some may.” Being “that way” was a reference to these girls potentially being homosexual. Another coach described a high level female footballer, who was coaching youth programmes, as too “manly.” He explained how she had recently adopted a more “feminine” style to her hair, dress and how she “carried” herself (citing a less “aggressive” communication style). He was pleased with her changes and felt she could be a better role model for girls this way.

Each of these accounts, from youth participants and coaches, describes how girls and women in sport are trapped within a heteronormative, masculinised framework for SDP. These restrictive social influences mediate both the development of positive gender role attitudes and the choices girls and women make. With a lack of women role models in sport, the crux of the problem described here is how to develop the talent of girls and women in sport within the confines of this integrative, GID model?