Abstract

Ice hockey has traditionally been a male-dominated culture that has both promoted and legitimised masculine dominance and gender inequality. The question is, how might ice hockey games, or other male-dominated sports, be organised differently and thus become more gender equal? Our ambition in this article is to initiate a discussion about how the construction of gender in ice hockey events operationalises or opposes the dominance of men and the marginalisation of women. The specific purpose is to identify techniques that configure men/masculinities as dominant in the ice hockey culture. Taking critical studies of men and masculinities as the point of departure, with a specific focus on the situational aspects of gender construction, this case study makes use of participatory observations of eight qualification games in Swedish semi-professional ice hockey. Our results show that men and certain types of masculinity dominate in the events framing the game and how this links the ice hockey players and the club with the local body-worker culture and its industrial, economic and historical context. Identification with these men is ideally created amongst male spectators, given that children and women do not have the same obvious place in the event’s narrative. Some clubs seek to include women and children in their matches, which affects both the atmosphere and the situation. By focusing on the events’ introductions and general narratives, and how they make use of a (masculine) version of the place’s past in the present, we discuss how the ice hockey culture contributes to the current hegemony of men and masculinities.

Highlights

  • Ice rinks are not the stage upon which class or gender inequalities play out, rather they help to structure them

  • A member of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s (IIHF) organising committee asked how the world championships in ice hockey could become more inclusive as an event

  • The committee member’s question inspired us to initiate this case study guided by the broad question of how ice hockey or other male-dominated sports could change cultural ideals and eventually become more gender equal

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Summary

Introduction

Ice rinks are not the stage upon which class or gender inequalities play out, rather they help to structure them. A member of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s (IIHF) organising committee asked how the (male) world championships in ice hockey could become more inclusive as an event. This question sowed a seed and pointed us to what we had thought of as a sometimes tacit or unreflective legitimisation of gender inequality at ice hockey games. Ice hockey is a male-dominated culture (Allain, 2008; Gruneau and Whitson, 1993; Robidoux, 2001) that is both produced and promoted by men and masculinities. The empirical research questions are: 1. How are men/masculinities, in relation to other genders, manifested during ice hockey events?

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