‘No-one wants to be a Kardashian anymore’: female participation in recreational combat sport

Abstract

This research study utilised ethnographic methods to explore the lived experiences of women participating in recreational boxing in a gym in inner-suburban Melbourne, Australia. Women were caught between two narratives; on the one hand women were welcomed into the gym and there was a sense of growing female participation. On the other hand, the gym remained a masculine space in which women existed on the periphery and were required to prove their skills through the lens of male norms and from a position of assumed incompetence. In spite of this, female boxers increased their strength, skills and self-confidence, and perhaps due to their experience overcoming gendered expectations, some women increased their sense of power in relation to men. This study demonstrates the rewarding but precarious nature of female participation in boxing and begins to explore the way gender plays out in this space.