Action Sports, the Olympic Games, and the Opportunities and Challenges for Gender Equity: The Cases of Surfing and Skateboarding

Abstract

Commentators have suggested that action sports have provided space for more progressive gendered power relations than many more traditional, institutionalized sex-segregated sports. However, as action sports become institutionalized via Olympic inclusion, what are the potential opportunities and challenges for girls and women as both athletes and industry leaders? Drawing on interviews with male and female leaders in surfing and skateboarding industries, media and cultures, and an analysis of niche media, we assess the opportunities for women as the sports prepare for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The two case studies reveal the different struggles and strategies of women in these two sporting cultures, as well as the roles played by men in supporting cultural change. This article contributes to the critical literature assessing the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) claims to provide opportunities for diverse groups of women and, more widely, the challenges in establishing effective policies to "empower" girls and women in and through sport.

Maintaining Masculinities in Japan’s Transnational Surfscapes: Space, Place, and Gender

“…This is respect. Hawaiian surfing is about respect for the ocean, helping others, kindness, patience.” This contrasts with other surf sites in Japan where the feminization of beach culture has seen global brands like Quicksilver/Roxy reshaping Japan’s coastlines (Doering, 2018a), and the International Olympic Committee’s efforts to encourage gender equality in competitive surfing during the Tokyo Olympics (Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018). Wakayama’s transnational surfscape manifests through an articulation powerfully informed by Indigenous Hawaiian cultural representations and ideologies.…”

“…One apprehension we have is that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, backed by the global surf cultural industry dominated by white western interests, will detract attention away from the emerging importance of these non-Western social networks. It has been argued that the incorporation of surfing into the Olympics may be a vehicle to open up the conservative male dominated networks to difference, such as more and better access for women (Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018). That is certainly one possibility.…”

“Parents, Me & X-Sports”: Mapping the BMX Culture in Contemporary China

“…Further evidence of a desire for family valorization came with the inclusion in the Tokyo Olympics. There have been dissenting voices in X-sport communities in the West about such inclusion due to a variety of reasons (e.g., debates over authenticity; Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018). However, the majority of the Chinese riders expressed their approval and happiness about inclusion.…”

Lifestyle Sports in East Asia

“…Even so, critical lifestyle sport scholarship is not exactly common there either. Perhaps the recent inclusion of surfing, skateboarding, and sport climbing in the Tokyo Olympics 2020 will lead to increased interest, participation, and investment in lifestyle sports (Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018). 2 Consequently, scholarship may be made more possible as governments, funding bodies, and sporting organizations recognize the value of scholarship about how the respective communities' participation is connected to health, well-being, environmental politics, labor, identity, urban planning, and much more.…”

“…That said, there is resistance to institutionalization in China as lifestyle sports participants worry about a "loss" of the smaller grassroots culture they have built to date (Evers, 2017;Six Stair, 2019). Like in other parts of the world, the strength of a "counter-culture" discourse has resulted in heated debate in respective lifestyle sport subcultures about the politics of institutionalization and popularization that occurs because of inclusion in the Olympics (Honea, 2013;Thorpe & Wheaton, 2011;Wheaton & Thorpe, 2018.…”