Sporting females: Power, diversity and the body

Abstract

Jennifer Hargreaves’ scholarship has been central to understanding, from a socio-historical and socio-cultural perspective, women’s involvement in sport, leisure and physical education (PE) as well as developing intersectional analysis of women’s active bodies. Our review seeks to capture, and foreground, the fact that her research is fundamentally for women by linking theory to praxis. We do this through our attention, first, to the role of critical sociology and the emergence of cultural studies that enables Hargreaves to make women visible in sport histories, spaces and cultures. Second, we explore Hargreaves’ analysis of gender relations as power relations, and finally we offer our examination of how diverse bodies are theorized and accounted for in her work. Our chapter concludes with reflections on her legacy for feminist scholarship.