In recent decades Africa has emerged as a sporting giant. The African sporting phenomenon has been addressed in the popular press and it has also attracted scholarly interest; however, this interest is almost entirely focussed on men. Yet women’s participation in recreational and elite sport is worthy of exploration and research.
This path-breaking collection of essays provides an introduction to a variety of dimensions of women’s participation in African sports. Several key concepts are addressed in the book: women and media, women and sport-migration, sport and empowerment, sporting and social development, women’s sport and postcolonial Africa, and professional sport and economic development. This collection, authored by established scholars, will attract readership from students from Sports Studies to African Studies and from undergraduate students to university teachers.
This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
1. Introduction: women’s sport and gender in sub-Saharan Africa 2. ‘Mother of the nation’: rugby, nationalism and the role of women in South Africa’s Afrikaner society 3. Experiences of moving: a history of women and sport in Tanzania 4. Towards an understanding of netball in Malawi, international sport development and identification: theoretical and methodological sensitizing issues 5. Women’s running as freedom: development and choice 6. The way out? African players’ migration to Scandinavian women’s football 7. Perceptions of the African Women’s Championships: female footballers as anomalies 8. Namibia’s Brave Gladiators: gendering the sport and development nexus from the 1998 2nd World Women and Sport Conference to the 2011 Women’s World Cup 9. African women and sport: the state of play
Biography
Michelle Sikes is a DPhil Candidate in Economic and Social History at Oxford University, Oxford, UK.
John Bale is Emeritus Professor John Bale, Department of Education, Keele University, Keele, UK.
"A very interesting anthology from different sports research perspective. It also shows that research on women's sport in Africa is on the rise."— Anders Östnäs, Lund University, www.idrottsforum.org
