THE CHANGING GENDER ORDER IN SPORT?

Abstract

New sports such as windsurfing have been perceived as the product of a postmodern society and culture in which sporting and physical activity offer a basis for the generation of new and multiple identities. Drawing on ethnographic work within England and across global subcultural networks, this article documents the persisting gendered basis of the subculture of windsurfing. It identifies the core principles of windsurfing's culture of commitment, the gender identities most prevalent within it, and the tension between dominant masculinity and the potentially empowering dimensions of the activity for women. The study also reiterates the importance of social class as a basis for the availability of life choices in sport and leisure, and of the centrality of ethnography and in-depth qualitative research in understanding how subcultures and their members live out gendered dynamics of power in the process of negotiating, renegotiating, and sometimes subverting the contemporary gender order.