Abstract
ObjectivesTo examine how gender functions in the narrative construction of dual career styles, and how these styles impact the (dis)continuation of a dual career pathway. DesignLongitudinal qualitative study. MethodLife story interviews with 18 talented Finnish athletes (10 cis women, 8 cis men) at four points in time – when they averaged 16, 17, 19, and 20 years of age – followed by an integrative narrative-discursive analysis. Results(a) contrapuntal style was gender-typically female; (b) monophonic style was gender-typically male; and (c) dissonant style was an important pathway to dual career discontinuation through which gender ideologies impacted the emergent adults with differential outcomes. Although all adolescent athletes aspired to construct a dual career pathway into adulthood, less than half (7 of 18) sustained dual career on and after graduation from upper secondary school. The life course and performance master narratives provided gender-specific scripts for life story and identity development. ConclusionsOur findings signpost that dual career discourse practices are organised along the gender binary, which may be fortifying the assumed normalcy of gendered life choices instead of opening up the field of possibilities. To facilitate cultural change in dual career development environments, we urge for the critical examination of socio-cultural constraints on adolescent athletes' choices.
Highlights
At Time 4, less than 50% (7 of 18) participants were sustaining a dual career. These findings are similar to previous research with high-performing adolescent athletes, which found the dual career to be a demanding developmental task with high individual costs (Christensen & Sørensen, 2009; Gledhill & Harwood, 2015; O’Neill et al, 2013; Rothwell et al, 2020; Skrubbeltrang et al, 2016)
Five women and two men withdrew from the elite sport pathway, while three men and one woman ceased education entirely
We focus on the final inter pretive stage of our analyses, which revealed how the life stories of participants accounted for past experiences, and positioned them within networks of gender norms
Summary
Identity development is regarded as the major psychosocial task of adolescence. In order to create and develop an identity, an individual is required to both explore potentialities and imagine a future (Erikson, 1968; Nurmi, 1991). Douglas and Carless (2009) identified three cultural narratives circulating within sport – the performance, discovery, and relational narratives As narrative scripts these stories provide a plot and template that shape elite athletes’ life stories and have different implications for their identities, life choices and psychological health. Bamberg and Georgakopoulou (2008) contend that adolescents may have limited narrative resources nor enough practice for this task Their stories are often small in teractions about mundane events, they are important sites for testing out their identities (Bamberg, 2011). Through a life history where individuals share stories across different time frames, there is potential for young athletes to develop and extent their narrative resources as well as ‘practice’ using them from a particular identity position. Our aim was to investigate how gender functions in the narrative construction of dual career styles, and how these styles impact the (dis)continuation of a dual career pathway
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