This article examines a Swedish Sport for All Programme (SAP) in school. We use a case study to discuss girls' debut in alternative sports programme organized in collaboration between school and the sports movement. The empirical data are derived from repeated focus group interviews with one group of seven 10year-old girls participating in one SAP. The analyses focus on their subjective experiences and how broader gender structures influence these experiences. Drawing on the results of this study, we argue that certain sports can be interpreted as oppressive activities that produce asymmetric power relationships between different groups of children. Simultaneously, the girls see the idea of sports as joyful activities, without male abuse and oppression or hierarchical gender relationships. Based on the girls' accounts, we claim that both the leaders and the children actively reproduce gender stereotypes in the SAP.

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This study investigated how gender and sports capital are expressed in sports leaders’ talk about sports for young people with a refugee background. Empirical data were derived from four focus group interviews representing 21 sports club leaders in Sweden. The leaders defined boys and girls as distinct groups but also as groups within which there are differences. Compared with the boys, the girls were presented with lesser possibilities to participate in sports. According to the leaders, the differences in the group of girls rested on that the sports culture in the girls’ country of origin, which may be more or less permissive for girls to be engaged in sports, whereas differences within the group of boys were understood in terms of bodies and mentalities.

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