Female top leaders – prisoners of gender? The gendering of leadership discourses in Norwegian sports organizations

Abstract

Female leadership is scarce in sport as well as in most other male dominated institutions. The research body on leadership indicates general leadership skills often associated with ‘heroic’ masculine traits, but are seen and treated as gender neutral. This article highlights dominant leadership discourses in sport organizations and focuses, in particular, on the conceptualization of female leadership, and the ways in which these construct female leadership and gender as a difference and power relation. The analyses are empirically grounded in a study, which focus on the gendering of sport leadership. The data material consists of qualitative interviews of executive board members in Norwegian sports federations. The theoretical framework includes approaches employed in feminist leadership research, in neo-liberal leadership research as well as in the body of gender equality research. The analyses conclude that certain forms of masculinity and stereotyped notions of gender are an integral part of the dominant leadership discourses in sport organizations. Because dominant leadership discourses are rooted in conceptualizations of female gender as making the gender difference, gender as a power relation is hidden or blurred, with the consequence that dominant leadership discourses make women ‘prisoners’ of gender.