Abstracts

… (wird nachgereicht)

This paper focuses on the practices of LGBT+ sports clubs, particularly the relationships of normalization, opposition, or circumvention that these associations maintain with the culture and rules of mainstream sports. Through a mixed-method study of clubs in the French LGBT+ Sports Federation (ethnography, semi-structured interviews, and quantitative analysis of an internal FSLGBT+ survey) and a cross-reading of queer and materialist studies, the aim is to understand how LGBT+ clubs oscillate between normalization visà-vis the mainstream sports space and mistrust of its culture, practices, and rules. LGBT+ clubs provide reassuring access to sports in a space marked by LGBTphobic violence and the binary categorization of disciplines. Thus, LGBT+ clubs try to limit this violence and remain wary of ordinary sports actors, notably by circumventing them in order to practice. For some clubs, this mistrust is expressed by questioning certain sports practices, particularly competitive sports and the separation of women and men. By promoting recreational sports and/or organizing competitions focused on self-determination (level and gender) or even mixed participation (level and gender), LGBT+ clubs are creating new practices. These workarounds and oppositions often remain limited or even cause conflict for clubs, revealing different political views on what sporting activities represent from an LGBT+ perspective. Some clubs accommodate the mainstream sporting world rather than opposing it, for example by maintaining strong relationships with traditional federations and/or giving little thought to internal social relations within LGBT+ communities and their clubs.

The official history of women's football in Brazil is recent. The legacy of prohibitions and withdrawals associated with premises such as 'womanhood' and the so-called 'feminine nature' has a significant influence on the challenges faced by the sport to this day. It is impossible to overlook the growth of women's football in Brazil, whether in terms of the number of teams and professional athletes or in the social discourse surrounding women in sport. It is important to acknowledge that this process was neither natural nor devoid of struggle, persistence, and the involvement of athletes and women in various facets of football culture. Therefore, this research explores the construction of women's football media coverage in Brazil, focusing on the FIFA Women's World Cups. Building on previous studies by the research group Obmídia/UFPE, the primary focus of our research is to examine the evolution of themes, approaches, and narratives within Brazilian media coverage across the 2015, 2019, and 2023 World Cups.

In this way, the research findings from each edition are subjected to a comparative analysis to identify points of convergence and divergence between the results. The objective is to examine media visibility, thematic axes, and the representations of female athletes within Brazilian sports media coverage, grounded in the intersection of gender studies and football as the theoretical framework. The proposed methodology includes thematic analysis and comparative analysis. The initial results reveal some advancements in representations, characters, and discourses across the three editions, as well as continuities under new guises and narratives.

Research on gender and sport has examined exclusion and backlash in contemporary football, yet the historical role of colonial governance in shaping these dynamics remains insufficiently explored. The proposed paper will discuss how gendered restrictions travelled alongside imperial power structures rather than emerging organically within colonised societies. Practices resembling football existed in many regions prior to colonisation. Colonial rule did not introduce ball games as such, but it did institutionalise association football through administrative frameworks, while in parallel imposing European gender norms. Within this context, women's participation in football-like games became subject to increasing regulation. Ideas about appropriate femininity, bodily discipline, and gender segregation, were shaped in metropolitan Europe and were embedded into colonial sport governance. Drawing on comparative newspaper material and scientific literature from about multiple former colonies, the paper traces how discourses questioning the legitimacy of women's football appeared transnationally, even where no formal bans can be documented. Nigeria serves as the most explicit example: in 1950, colonial authorities intervened directly to enforce a prohibition on women's football, illustrating the active export of metropolitan gender anxieties into colonial settings. By situating the Nigerian case within a broader pattern, the paper argues that colonial administrations played a decisive role not only in structuring organised football but also in normalising gendered exclusions. This historical perspective contributes to debates on progress and backlash in gender and sport by showing how contemporary inequalities are rooted in longstanding colonial power relations rather than solely in local or national traditions.

My communication examines the experiences of trans individuals in outdoor and adventure recreation, exploring how these activities shape their embodiment, empowerment, and gender transition processes. While outdoor spaces are often steeped in cisheteronormativity, participants described these environments as offering unique opportunities for self-reflection, selfconfidence, and freedom from societal gendered constraints. Drawing on queer and feminist poststructuralist theories, the study interrogates how gender is constructed and performed in outdoor settings, highlighting how participants negotiate their identities in these spaces. Using a multisited ethnographic approach-including online ethnography of Instagram, on-the-move interviews, on-the-move diaries, and autoethnography-the research reveals the transformative potential of outdoor and adventure activities for fostering personal growth, gender euphoria, and resilience. Participants emphasized how outdoor activities provided a reprieve from gender surveillance, allowing them to exist outside of societal expectations and construct alternative subjectivities. The study also explores how outdoor spaces facilitate moments of connection, joy, and self-discovery, particularly during gender transitions, with activities like hiking and cycling serving as affirming practices. Despite existing barriers to access these spaces and activities, participants highlighted the therapeutic and empowering potential of the outdoors. The findings underscore the need for inclusive practices to reimagine outdoor spaces as sites of liberation and trans flourishing, advocating for a critical shift in outdoor recreation to center diverse experiences and identities. By framing outdoor environments as spaces of personal and collective transformation, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on fostering inclusivity and dismantling gendered normativities in outdoor recreation.

This conceptual working paper examines the Hockey Canada sexual assault case as a critical moment in the gender politics of elite men's hockey. Rather than treating the case solely as a question of individual criminal liability or evidentiary standards, we analyse it as a cultural and institutional event that illuminates how sexual violence, consent, and masculine authority are negotiated within hockey post/against #metoo. We situate the case within broader scholarship on violence and masculinity in professional hockey, including research on masculity norms in the National Hockey League (NHL), where aggression has historically functioned as communicative practice, informal governance, and identity performance. This broader context allows us to understand the Hockey Canada case not as an anomaly, but as emerging from a culture structured by loyalty codes, internal regulation, and hierarchies of masculine value.

Using backlash theory after #MeToo as a conceptual framework, we argue that the case represents not only a moment of feminist disruption but also a redistribution of harm. Legal acquittal and institutional reinstatement function as cultural signals that re-stabilise masculine authority within hockey, narrowing public debate to technical questions of consent while sidelining structural power relations. We suggest that hockey culture, long organised through codes of entitlement, protection, and internal accountability, provides fertile ground for both the normalisation of aggression and the minimisation of sexual violence.

By linking on-ice violence, masculine socialisation, and institutional closure, this paper demonstrates how elite hockey operates as a pedagogical site where boys and young men learn contested lessons about consent, accountability, and power in the post-#MeToo era.

References:

• Ahmed, S. (2017). Living a feminist life . Duke University Press.
• Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). University of California Press.
• Côté, I. (2017). A culture of entitlement, silence and protection. Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, 32 (1-2), 99-110.
• Fogel, C., & Quinlan, A. (2020). Sexual assault in the locker room: Sexually violent hazing in Canadian sport. Journal of Sexual Aggression, 27 (3), 353-372.
• Fowler, T. A., Moore, S. D. M., & Skuce, T. (2023). The penalty that's never called: Sexism in men's hockey culture. Sociology of Sport Journal, 40 (4), 452-462.
• MacDonald, C. A. (2014). Masculinity and sport revisited: A review of literature on hegemonic masculinity and men's ice hockey in Canada. Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology, 3 (1), 95-110.
• Schwets, M. (2025). The hidden presence of rape culture in Canadian hockey. Journal of Undergraduate Studies, 9 .
• Tjønndal, A. (2016). NHL heavyweights: Narratives of violence and masculinity in ice hockey. Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research, 70 (1), 55-68.
• Tuerkheimer, D. (2019). Beyond #MeToo. New York University Law Review, 94 (4), 1146-1207.
• Williams, J. C. (2018, October). The #MeToo backlash. Harvard Business Review .

Despite efforts to promote equal participation in sports, previous studies have highlighted the underrepresentation of women in coaching. Studies have documented individual, social, and cultural barriers that prevent women from taking responsibility in coaching, especially in male-dominated sports. Moreover, scholars have suggested that masculine sport cultures hinder women's access to networks and coaching positions. A limited number of studies have examined how women perform masculinity in coaching or addressed masculinity as a resource for women. Following a feminist poststructuralist understanding of gender as a category, shaped by repeated gendered performances, acts, habits, and doings, I examine how women coaches perform gender in combat sports. Drawing data from focus group discussions with 11 women coaches from judo, boxing, and wrestling, I explore the gendered field of coaching. Using reflective thematic analysis, I investigate how doing gender and acting as a coach intertwine at the community, volunteer-based sport club level. Themes developed from the data indicate that women are interested in adopting masculine coaching styles. They address masculine manners, such as authority, leadership, roughness, and stoicism. Subsequently, the themes reveal tension on how gender and gendered performances are evaluated and respected in combat sports cultures. These include traditional understandings of coaching as a male-dominated field and binary ideas of gendered differences. The findings shed light on how women feel empowered in coaching and, simultaneously, face barriers, as women performing masculinity does not align with traditional ideas of engaging men and masculinity in coaching.

Sociological insights into sporting performance differences remain underrepresented in coaching curricula, where biological and psychological perspectives have traditionally received greater attention. Drawing on phenomenological sociology and critical pedagogy, this article examines how socially informed embodied knowledge can be taught within coaching education. It draws on a sociological experiment conducted with two cohorts of Swiss Youth and Sport coaches, in which participants were invited to throw a ball and reflect collectively on their embodied experience. Mobilising the trope of "throwing like a girl" as a pedagogical entry point, the article shows how coaches navigated tension between lived experience, common sense, physiology and sociology knowledge, oscillating between adherence and forms of resistance. Findings reveal a persistent asymmetry between biological and sociological knowledge as epistemic resources, and highlight the pedagogical value of interdisciplinary and cross-sport dialogue in producing collaboratively constructed situated knowledge. The article also extends this analysis through an intersectional lens. It argues for a pedagogy of embodiment that takes coaches' lived experience seriously while unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about bodies and movement, and reflects on the conditions under which such critical pedagogy can be meaningfully integrated into coaching education and sports settings in general.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly entering sports academies through performance analytics, athlete monitoring, biometric identification, recruitment, and safeguarding systems. Yet technological innovation is not automatically gender-equitable: data may reflect historical exclusion, models may reproduce binary assumptions, and unequal access to technology can deepen existing disparities. This conceptual and practice-oriented paper examines how sports academies can design AI-enabled athlete-development systems that advance gender equity rather than reinforce gendered backlashes. Drawing on sports-management practice in India and doctoral research in artificial intelligence, the paper proposes a gender-responsive governance framework built around five principles: inclusive data design; bias and impact assessment; privacy, consent, and biometric accountability; equitable access to sports-science resources; and participatory oversight involving athletes, coaches, administrators, and safeguarding specialists. It connects these principles to practical domains including talent identification, training-load monitoring, injury prevention, facility use, coach decision-making, and institutional policy. The paper argues that gender equity must be treated as a performance, welfare, and governance objective-not as an optional ethical add-on. It also highlights the need to move beyond narrow male/female comparisons by recognising intersectional differences involving race, class, disability, sexuality, age, and sporting context. Finally, it identifies implementation priorities for universities and academies: transparent procurement, representative datasets, regular audits, staff education, accessible reporting mechanisms, and athlete participation in technology governance. By linking AI innovation with institutional accountability, the paper contributes a Global South perspective to debates on gender, technology, elite sport, and youth athlete development. It invites discussion on how sports organisations can convert technological progress into inclusive and sustainable change.

This paper offers a theoretically informed historical analysis of early Olympism as a gendered project of modernity, conceptualizing the Olympic movement around 1900 as a technology for the re-stabilization of hegemonic masculinity. Drawing on R. W. Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity and Foucault's insights into bodily discipline and moral regulation, the study interprets Olympism as a response to widely articulated fin-de-siècle anxieties about degeneration, effeminacy, and the perceived erosion of male authority amid industrialization, urbanization, and democratization. Based on an analysis of Revue Olympique and transnational reform discourses, the paper situates Olympism within a broader field of masculine crisis management, alongside Muscular Christianity, militarist and paramilitary movements, and life-reform initiatives. Rather than treating these currents as merely contextual, the paper argues that Olympism actively translated its normative assumptions into a durable institutional framework, producing what can be described as an Olympic gender regime. This regime normalized bodily self-discipline, competitive virility, and national representation, while systematically excluding women from participation as a means of securing male homosocial authority. Following recent scholarship on gender backlash, the paper emphasizes the nonlinear character of 'progress' in gender relations. The Olympic movement's pacifist rhetoric is read as a semantic reconfiguration of militarized masculinity, not its negation: martial values were symbolically recoded into athletic competition and framed as instruments of peace and civilization. In this sense, Olympism functioned less as an egalitarian project than as a civilizing compromise that reconciled aggression and discipline, nationalism and internationalism. By foregrounding these tensions, the paper contributes to contemporary debates on gender and sport by historicizing the structural conditions under which modern sport became a privileged site for the reproduction - and containment - of masculine power.

This research examines the historical development of women's cycling in Graz, Austria, during the 1890s, focusing on the tension between female physical agency and structural invisibility. Women who took up cycling were criticized and accused of seeking emancipation, as the sport was seen as unfeminine and socially inappropriate for them (Pfister 2017). Although Graz is celebrated today as a cycling-friendly city, its historical significance as a site of gendered resistance has received little scholarly attention yet. In 1893, Graz became home to Austria's first women's cycling club, the 'Grazer Damen-Bicycle-Club', the second to be founded in the German-speaking countries (Wieser 2003). This marked a pivotal moment in the negotiation of gender norms within early modern sport. Drawing on archival records from 1885 to 1900 and contemporary cultural and gender-political discourses, this study investigates how cycling in the context of the 'Damen-Bicycle-Club' Graz was used as an emancipatory practice while simultaneously colliding with capitalist market logics (Petty 1995), heteronormative gender regimes, and medicalization and pathologizing of athletic non-male bodies (Thorpe 2017, Ryder 2022) This can be exemplified by the 1888 Graz cycling gala, where Moritz Löhner performed as 'Miss Leona,' a circus princess (Harrer 1996). Specific cases such as founding an exclusive club by Elisa(beth) Steininger, Louise Sorg, Vinci Wenderich, Mitzi Albl and Louise Albl or the (back then called) parodic performances at the cycling gala show how early women and gender non-conforming cyclists navigated, appropriated, or disrupted binary gender structures, such performative acts appear as simultaneously challenging and reinforcing gendered boundaries between 'doing' and 'undoing' gender.

References:

• Harrer, H. (1996). Eine radsportliche Festveranstaltung in Graz anno 1888. Blätter für Heimatkunde, 70, 65-81.
• Petty, R. D. (1995). Peddling the Bicycle in the 1890s: Mass Marketing Shifts into High Gear. Journal of Macromarketing, 15(1), 32-46.
• Pfister, G. (2017). 100 Jahre Frauen im Sport. Anfänge, Entwicklungen, Perspektiven. In G. Sobiech & S. Günter (Hrsg.:innen), Sport & Gender (inter)nationale sportsoziologische Geschlechterforschung. Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. 59 (23-34). Springer Nature.
• Ryder, S. (2022). Professional Women's Road Cycling. In D. Van Reeth (Hrsg.) The Economics of Professional Road Cycling. Sports Economics, Management and Policy, vol 19 (311-336). Springer.
• Simpson, C. S. (2007). Capitalising on Curiosity: Women's Professional Cycle Racing in the Late-Nineteenth Century. In D. Horton, P. Rosen, & P. Cox (Hrsg.), Cycling and Society (47-65). Routledge.
• Thorpe, J. R. (2017). The Feminist History Of Bicycles.
• Wieser, I. (2003). Der Damen-Bicycle-Club in Graz: Pionierinnen für den Frauensport. Verein Frauenservice Graz.

Over the past two decades, research on gender and sport has become increasingly prominent, particularly in relation to issues of inclusion, diversity, and the participation of transgender athletes. At the same time, this field has become embedded in broader cultural and political polarization, which also affects the scientific community. This paper examines how cognitive biases and collective epistemic dynamics shape the interpretation of scientific evidence in morally sensitive areas of sport policy. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of science, the paper distinguishes between the descriptive, explanatory, and normative dimensions of scientific knowledge. It argues that conflating these dimensions generates specific epistemic risks, shifting interpretation from a commitment to objectivity toward the defense of moral constructions. Using the example of a study on the participation of transgender women in elite sport, the paper illustrates how research may be descriptively adequate yet explanatorily limited, while still being normatively overextended-not because of the statistical strength of its findings, but due to the moral framework in which it is embedded. Dominant moral paradigms within scientific communities can amplify cognitive biases and deepen polarization among research groups, thereby constraining open and respectful dialogue between differing approaches. Rather than advocating specific regulatory outcomes, this study clarifies the epistemic conditions under which scientific findings may legitimately inform sport governance. It proposes a conception of objectivity grounded in the management of epistemic risks, requiring methodological transparency, symmetrical critical scrutiny, and a clear separation between empirical findings and their normative implications.

Although a great deal of research has been conducted into gender-based or sexual harm in sports such as gymnastics, swimming and ice skating, such work has yet to be carried out in high-level competitive DanceSport. This paper introduces a broader research project exploring how female and queer athletes in competitive Latin DanceSport are affected by, and respond to, the heteronormative gender binary. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines grounded theory, qualitative interviews, autoethnography and discourse analysis, the project addresses the following questions: How do systems and structures in competitive DanceSport enable or hinder oppression and gender-based or sexual violence? And how do female and/or queer dancers respond to it? This work considers the instances in which specific actors enact oppression, such as in partnerships, teaching situations and corruption within sports federations. It attempts to track the stages of development that a member of an oppressed group goes through when evolving within a highly oppressive environment. The project aims to provide new insights into the lived experiences of members of oppressed groups and the institutional challenges they face. This will contribute to a better understanding of the needs of female and/or queer athletes. The next step is to propose radical shifts that could improve their situation through new policies, discourses, and practices that tackle all forms of gender-based or sexual oppression. This stage will focus on abolitionist ethics for radical transformative justice.

Twenty years of gender and sport scholarship have produced meaningful visibility and unexamined limitations. When designed within systems which centre dominant culture and normalising standards, gender equality initiatives disproportionately serve those whose bodies and identities most closely approximate them, while leaving intact the structural inequities which shape the experiences of those at their intersections. While the presence of some is taken for granted in sport, whose bodies, identities, and ways of being remain subject to heightened scrutiny, contested legitimacy, and conditional belonging? Deeming women in sport an uncontested category is myopic. For, performing gender is neither experienced nor negotiated universally. While gender equality serves those for whom womanhood requires no defence, Black and otherwise marginalised (e.g., disabled, large, neurodiverse, trans, vulnerable) athletes continue to bear the persistent burden of both advocating for and proving their legitimacy whilst yearning to belong. Drawing on Black feminist scholarship (hooks, 2015; Hill Collins, 2026), intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991; Crenshaw et al., 2019), cultural sport psychology (Schinke & Hanrahan, 2009), and third-wave positive psychology (Arslan, 2025), this contribution argues that gender equity in sport requires examining whether the preconditions for authentic belonging are equitably distributed. Black gendered bodies occupy a distinct intersection: racialised, policed, and compelled to negotiate femininity and legitimacy differentially. Gender equality can indeed secure presence. It cannot, however, ensure authentic belonging or wellbeing-infrastructure key to decolonial research and practice, the future of our field. For marginalised gendered bodies, the glaring omission to redress is the difference between being seen and being centred.

Key words: Belonging, Black feminist scholarship, gender equity, intersectionality, wellbeing

References

• Arslan, G. (2025). Beyond happiness: The three waves of positive psychology and the future of wellbeing. Journal of Happiness and Health, 5 (2), 42-47.
• Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6), 1241-99.
• Crenshaw, K. W., Harris, L. C., HoSang, D. M., & Lipsitz, G. (Eds.). (2019). Seeing race again: Countering colorblindness across the disciplines . University of California Press.
• Hill Collins, P. (2026). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge Classics.
• hooks, b. (2015). Ain't I a Woman: Black women and feminism (2nd ed.). Routledge.
• Schinke, R. J., & Hanrahan, S. J. (Eds.). (2009). Cultural sport psychology . Human Kinetics.

Purpose: While gender stereotypes are prevalent in sports (Guo and Huang, 2025), the link between institutional prevention and individual attitudes remains under-researched. This study examined the manifestation of gender stereotypes while also analyzing their correlation on knowledge of prevention concepts (PC) in sports clubs.

Methods: An online survey was conducted with 617 participants (245 females, 372 males; ages 14-81). While drawn from a larger dataset, this paper focuses exclusively on gender stereotypes (scores ranging from pro-feminine (-8.00) to pro-masculine (8.00)) (Boiché et al., 2014) and knowledge of seven specific PCitems (SWOST, 2023). Chi-Square-Tests with Bonferroni-Correction and WelchANOVAs with Games-Howell-Correction were applied.

Results: Overall, 60.9% of the sample showed an absence of gender stereotypes ( M = 0.74 ± 1.60). However, male participants exhibited significantly greater promasculine stereotypes ( M = 1.18 ± 1.83) compared to females ( M = 0.06 ± 0.78; p < .001, r = - 0.36). Regarding the seven prevention concepts, a consistent pattern emerged: Athletes aware of existing PC displayed significantly lower levels of pro-masculine stereotypes (all PC: p < .05) in contrast to those who lacked such knowledge.

Conclusion: Findings indicate that gender stereotypes are lower when institutional knowledge exists. Results reveal a negative correlation between pro-masculine stereotypes and awareness of PC. The fact that athletes aware of PC reported significantly lower levels of bias implies that education and policy awareness can be tools to reduce gender stereotypes within institutions. Consequently, sport organizations should prioritize dissemination of prevention concepts to foster environments of inclusivity and equity.

Despite numerous studies on resilience and personality in the context of sport, there has been a lack of empirical research that takes into account the specific conditions of women in organised competitive sport, particularly in football. Experiences of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, or skin colour continue to be taboo or downplayed in many sports, especially among young female athletes who experience multiple forms of discrimination. This pilot study examines correlations between personality traits (Big Five), protective factors (resilience, self-efficacy), and the subjective experience of discrimination in women's football. In a quantitative exploratory cross-sectional study, active female football players (N = 46; 17 years) in organised club football in ≥ Germany were surveyed using a standardised online questionnaire. In addition to reliability analyses, exploratory factor analyses and multiple linear regression analyses were performed. Overall, the analyses revealed few significant findings. One consistent result was that the personality dimension of conscientiousness was significantly and positively correlated with perceived discrimination. Players with higher conscientiousness scores reported discriminatory experiences more frequently. Other personality traits, resilience, and self-efficacy showed no significant correlations with discrimination, nor was there a relationship between conscientiousness and resilience, although such a correlation has been demonstrated in male athletes. It is possible that the more homogeneous collective in women's football offers greater protection, or that the low incidence of reported discrimination masked expected effects. A comparative study with larger samples is therefore planned.

In 2021, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued guidance on the regulation of transgender athletes and athletes with intersex variations that was informed by human rights principles. At the time of writing, and under the leadership of its first woman president, the IOC is poised to release a new policy, abandoning its commitment to human rights and supporting the return of mandatory chromosome screening for all women competitors.

How did the IOC's position evolve so drastically over the past five years? From 2022 to 2025, I was employed by the IOC to support the rollout of the IOC Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations . As a feminist sociologist, this represented an unprecedented opportunity to learn how the organization functions from the inside, what levers make it shift, and where the ideological, political, and practical barriers lie for advancing a fair and inclusive women's competition category. In this presentation, I present insights from my years working with the IOC. I focus on:

• (a) The internal structures of the IOC and the factors that motivate individuals in positions of decision-making power;
• (b) The political nature of so-called scientific evidence and how its use in the regulation of gender eligibility is shaped by the IOC; and
• (c) The role of external actors and lobby groups, particularly those that could be described as feminist, in legitimizing the use of exclusionary policies in women's sport.

I conclude with recommendations for action by feminist scholars and activists.

Women runners have been found to encounter various forms of harassment when running in public spaces, including unwanted attention and verbal abuse. Such experiences shape not only women's physical practices but also their emotional geographies of space: how comfort, fear, and belonging are felt and managed through movement. At the same time, women articulate meanings of strength, freedom, and resistance in and through running, revealing the complex emotional terrain of running in public. This project is the Norwegian contribution to the international SHE RUNS research network, which investigates women's running, safety, and access to public space across global contexts in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Africa. The aim of the Norwegian study is to explore how women negotiate safety, emotion, and mobility while running in public spaces, and how these practices reflect or challenge ideals of gender equality within a Nordic welfare context. Specifically, we aim to explore: 1) how women runners experience and interpret safety, emotion, and belonging in everyday running practices, 2) what forms of safety work women perform to navigate or manage risk while maintaining mobility in public space, and 3) how embodied practices relate to broader ideals of equality, accessibility, and wellbeing in Norwegian urban life. We draw on feminist theories of space, embodiment, and affect to aid our critical analysis of the findings and aim to advance feminist understandings of safety and mobility while informing urban design, sport participation, and equality policy.

Following a brief historical overview of the discussion of menstruation in sport, this paper will present the current discourse on the subject and highlight its ambivalences. Based on discourse analysis, I will show which concepts of gender and the female body are constructed here. The focus is on the aspect of problematising menstruality as performance-limiting and the discourse on the health risks to women posed by too much/incorrect exercise, discussing its relationship to historical exclusions and restrictions of women in sport with regard to their reproductive health.

It is evident that the current discussion of menstruality in sport is ambivalent. Although it overcomes traditional androcentrism in sports medicine and training sciences, it simultaneously perpetuates a simplified image of binary gender and outdated stereotypes of women as the 'weaker' sex.

Furthermore, current advice on cycle-based training advocates intensive tracking of menstrual bleeding and other aspects, thus promoting a trend towards increasing quantification and commodification of the body, even in recreational sports. This raises questions about changes in body image through self-tracking practices, as well as data security.

In the 19th century, male French doctors framed menopause as a pathological state requiring medical treatment (Downham Moore, 2022, p.2). This definition of menopause was reframed throughout the 20th century, with the discovery of hormones and the widespread use of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) from the 1960s onwards. Consequently, menopause was often reduced to a biological issue. However, research shows, that menopause is a socio-cultural as well as biological process, varying around the globe and throughout time (Melby et al., 2005). Ageing feminised bodies have become increasingly visible in Western media in general and fitness and women's magazines specifically, where menopause is frequently reframed as a phase of productivity, and (medical) self-management. In this paper I analyse the changing discourses about menopause and the menopausal bodies in international fitness and women's magazines as transformations in the cultural meanings of ageing feminised bodies. I analyse the shifting media discourse about menopause and the menopausal body from a critical feminist sex/gender and body historical perspective, conceptualise menopause as a historically contingent category and explore its connections to intersectional hierarchies in late modernity.

Pashtuns are Pakistan's second-largest ethnic group, concentrated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and parts of Balochistan, and are often characterized by strong codes of honour, gender segregation, and tightly policed female mobility and visibility. Against this backdrop, organised sport for women remains highly contested, even as education, urbanisation, and digital media have slowly expanded what is imaginable and possible. This article examines how young Pashtun women in Peshawar negotiate femininity and participation in community sports under these conditions. Addressing a gap in research that often treats 'Muslim women in sport' as a homogeneous category, it focuses specifically on a Pashtun, conflict-affected urban context. Drawing on qualitative interviews with female players, complemented by field observations, the study analyses how participants manage public visibility, construct womenonly sporting spaces, and mobilise peer networks and social media to sustain participation. Empirically, it shows that women tactically align dress, behaviour, and spatial practices with local respectability norms while quietly stretching what those norms allow; that women-only clubs and closed training environments function as crucial incubators of skill and confidence; and that digital platforms provide alternative arenas for recognition but also expose athletes to moral policing and harassment. Conceptually, the paper advances debates on gender, sport, and social change by offering a regionally grounded, intersectional account of how ethnicity, class, religiosity, and locality intersect in Pashtun women's sporting lives, and by reframing sport not as a linear pathway to empowerment but as a fragile, negotiated space of conditional possibility.

Keywords: Pashtun women; gender norms; community sport; femininity; participation; social change; backlash

Collegiate athletics functions as a powerful site of identity development, institutional socialization, and cultural meaning-making. At the same time, it continues to reproduce gendered and sexual norms that privilege heteronormativity and align with what Connell describes as hegemonic masculinity within sport institutions. Drawing on findings from my doctoral dissertation examining the experiences of LGBTQIA+ Division I student-athlete alumnx in the United States, this presentation applies the heterodominance framework (Harper & Baxter, 2020) to analyze how athletic environments regulate identity and belonging.

The heterodominance framework conceptualizes how sport institutions normalize heterosexuality and gender conformity not only through policy but through everyday practices embedded within team culture, rivalry narratives, recruitment processes, and leadership expectations. Situated within broader insights from queer theory and institutional power, this framework illuminates how conformity becomes an implicit condition for legitimacy, participation, and advancement within competitive sport settings.

Using qualitative insights from interviews with LGBTQIA+ student-athlete alumnx alongside practitioner experience in student-athlete development, this research explores what I conceptualize as the 'cost of conformity'-the psychological, relational, and professional consequences individuals experience when navigating identity within highly regulated athletic spaces. Findings highlight how identity suppression, strategic disclosure, and cultural silence operate as coping strategies, while also illustrating forms of resistance through mentorship, advocacy, and identity-conscious leadership. By bringing together heterodominance theory, queer scholarship, and empirical insights from Division I athletics, this presentation contributes to transnational conversations about gender, sexuality, and institutional power in sport. It also offers conceptual and practical implications for advancing more equitable and identity-conscious sport environments.

The inclusion of non-binary, trans, and intersex athletes challenges a system built upon the assumption of gender as a binary, biologically defined category. However, sport does not simply reflect social understandings of gender. It is one of the key arenas in which these very understandings are generated. Mainstream debates rarely move beyond the binary framework. They ask how boundaries of masculinity and femininity can be redrawn, rather than how sport itself produces and stabilizes gendered bodies. This paper approaches this question through a gender-historical study of equestrianism, a discipline where physical characteristics such as height, muscle mass, or build have little impact on performance. Despite this, medicine and popular discourse propagated distinct gender differences well into the 20th century. Drawing from this case, the author developed a theoretical model illustrating how sport produces gender differences that have no biological basis. The proposed paper aims to present this model, conceptualizing gender production as a perpetuum mobile - a self-reinforcing system in which social power relations are continuously enacted. The strength of this model lies in its capacity to explain not only how minor gender differences are amplified, but also how entirely new distinctions are constructed through sporting practices. This framework will be applied to contemporary examples in sports, highlighting cases where mechanisms similar to those observed in historical equestrian practice continue to operate. Ultimately, the paper seeks to demonstrate that, despite a broader opening of the discourse as described in the conference program, the dynamics of gender production in sport remain both persistent and subtle.

Both Sport Studies and National Socialist historiography show a significant gap in research on women's agency and lived experiences. This presentation adresses these gaps through a biographical case study of Vera von Pirscher, a physical education teacher and glider pilot who taught at several higher eduction institutions during the National Socialist period in Germany. The presentation focuses on her time at the then so-called 'Sports University of Marburg', which functioned as the central training site for all prospective female physical education teachers in the Reich. Drawing on archival marterial, the study reconstructs von Pirscher's life and professional trajectory from the early twentieth century through the Nazi period and into the post-war years. The analysis examines sport and physical education under National Socialism as gendered spaces of action shaped by ideological, racial and political imperatives. Sport functioned both as a mechanism of exclusion and as an instrument for shaping the 'Volkskörper' (,national body'). Particular attention is paid to women's gliding, which appeard to open up modern and unconventional spaces of action for women, while simultaneously serving as a propaganda tool and facilitating women's integration into civilian and military aviation structures. By tracing von Pirscher's life, the presentation reveals the ambivalence of gendered spaces of action under National Socialism and demonstrates how individual agency, professional opportunity, and political complicity were intertwined within sport-related institutions. It thus highlights the value of historical biographical case studies for critically assessing narratives of participation, gendered agency, and the political instrumentalisation of sport.

Debates about including non-binary athletes, often treated as transgender athletes, have intensified in sport-policy discussions. Accounts contend that current policies are sufficient (Griffin et al. 2019); inclusion threatens women's protections (Lawford-Smith 2026); re-conceptualizing inclusion is too complex (Martínková et al. 2023); or the sex-gender conflation resolves exclusion concerns (Stock 2022). Approaches include sociological (Larsson 2024), policyoriented (Coggon et al. 2008), fairness-based (Loland 2021, Sailors 2020), administrative (Pike 2020), biological essentialist (Griffin et al. 2019), or normative (Smith forthcoming). Importantly, these often share metaphysical assumptions: one can apply methods used to address women's oppression-byexclusion (of mere participation) - i.e., determining and resolving what constitutes the oppression (Pavlenko 2024)-to non-binary athletes. For example, women's saber fencing was created to resolve exclusion sustained by interlocking institutional rules and cultural narratives (Frye 2000; Young 1979/2009). Applied to non-binary athletes, this model motivates creating a third gender event or all-gender events (Smith 2025; Harper et al. 2018; Newbould 2015; Reynolds et al. 2021). In this paper, I argue that the aforementioned accounts and approaches are misguided because they misunderstand relevant metaphysical implications. Drawing on Dembroff (2018), Bechter (2014), Jenkins (2016), and MacKinnon (1984), I contend that, because women are subordinated within a recognized social category, whereas non-binary athletes are oppressed through categorical non-recognition, resolving non-binary exclusion in sport requires merging two metaphysically distinct systems, possible only by (1) imagining a third system, or (2) alterating one to comply with the other- an approach resulting in (1) and carrying unpalatable consequences (Anderson et al. 2019; Hirji 2021; Ritchie 2010).