. (2008). Standards and separatism: the discursive construction of gender in English soccer coach education. Sex Roles, 58 (1-2), 24-39. Copyright and re-use policy Standards and Separatism in English Football 2 AbstractAffirmative action is a problematic, but common, organizational approach to redressing gender discrimination as it fails to address discourses underlying organizational definitions and practices in highly masculinized sites like English football. Unstructured interviews with 27 key personnel and participants in coach education in the north of England within a regional "division" of the organization regulating English football ("The FA") were conducted to explore the gendered construction and enactment of football and coaching, and the framing of women-only (separatist) coaching courses. Critical discourse analysis identified the deployment of discourses concerning the undermining of standards and the privileging of women as strategies used to neutralize the significance of gender and previous gender discrimination, while re/producing the centrality of masculinity for key definitions and identities.

This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published versionFIELDING LLOYD, Beth and MEÂN, Lindsey (2011). 'I don't think I can catch it': -women, confidence and responsibility in football coach education. Soccer and Society, 12 (3), 345-364. Copyright and re-use policySee http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archivehttp://shura.shu.ac.uk "I don't think I can catch it": Women, confidence and responsibility in football coach education.Whilst women's participation in sport continues to increase, their presence remains ideologically challenging given the significance of sport for the construction of gendered identities. As a hegmonically masculine institution, leadership roles across sport remain male-dominated and the entry of women into positions of authority (such as coaching)routinely contested. But in powerful male-typed sports, like football, women's participation remains particularly challenging, Consequently, constructions of gender inequity in coaching were explored at a regional division of the English Football Association through unstructured interviews and coaching course observation. Using critical discourse analysis we identified the consistent re/production of women as unconfident in their own skills and abilities, and the framing of women themselves as responsible for the gendered inequities in football coaching.Women were thereby strategically positioned as deservedly on the periphery of the football category, whilst the organization was positioned as progressive and liberal. IntroductionDue to its worldwide popularity, football has long had to make sense of its (lack of) diversity. 1 Nevertheless, football in the UK still places great value on masculinity, toughness and aggression and there is little evidence of any real will for this to change. Sugden and Tomlinson identified football's worldwide appeal as arising from its'physiologically democratic' nature claiming: 'You do not have to be a particular shape, size or physique in order to excel…' 2 . Yet physical and ethnic constraints are apparent in many world regions, and one of the most widespread constrictions is that football remains a man's game. Indeed in the UK women's football still faces much hostility, 3 remnants of the historical hostility that permeated the official organizations that regulate, and effectively 'are', football. Context and analytical frameworkThe common gap between policies of gender equity in sport organizations and everyday gendered discursive practice is centred on two contradictory themes: the denial of gender inequalities and the rationalization of gender inequalities. Whilst these strategies are intricately related they can be usefully explored separately. As such, we have discussed the denial strategy in football coaching discourses elsewhere 24 and now focus on the contradictory strategy of rationalizing gender inequality, a significant practice in discounting organizational (causal) res...

Despite their success, the discursive positioning of the women's team as 'outsiders', 3 served to (re)establish men's football as superior, culturally salient and 'better' than the women's team/game. Accordingly, we contend that attempts to build and, in many instances, rediscover the history of women's football, can be used to challenge established cultural representations that draw exclusively from the history of the men's game. In such instances, the 2015 Women's World Cup provides a historical moment from which the women's game can be relocated in a context of popular culture.

This article explores the structure and culture of the Football Association (FA) in relation to the development of England's first semi-professional female soccer league -Women's Super League (WSL). Through observations at games and interviews with stakeholders, we examined the planning and operationalisation of the WSL. Drawing on critical feminist literature and theories of organisational change, we clearly demonstrate that the FA has shifted from initial tolerance of the women's game, through opposition, to defining and controlling elite female club football as a new product shaped by traditional conceptualisations of gender. It reveals how the archaic, labyrinthine structures of the FA abetted the exclusion of stakeholders involved in the pre-WSL era. This allowed the FA to fashion a League imagined as both qualitatively different to elite men's football in terms of style of play and appeal to a different group of fans, yet inextricably bound to men's clubs for support. The article concludes by providing recommendations for how organisational change might offer correctives to the current FA approach to developing the WSL.

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