Women's sport, development, and cultural diversity: The South African experience

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

In July 1995, the Rugby World Cup was won by South Africa and Nelson Mandela appropriated the Springbok emblem in an effort to unite the nation. At around the same time, Ali Bacher secured an 8 million rand sponsorship deal for boys' cricket in Soweto, and development programmes for township football were evolving. These events are conspicuous symbols of the massive gender equalities in the sporting structures of the country and the strong association between sport and masculinity. In spite of the restructuring of sport in the new South Africa, there are no equivalent resources or efforts being put into female sports. In large part, this is because gender has tended to be treated as less important than race and ethnicity as a factor that effects equality, and because little attention is paid to the ways in which gender articulates with race and ethnicity. This paper will address the specific difficulties facing the development of women's sports in South Africa: it will look at the hidden history of women's sports during Apartheid; the effects of the legacy of apartheid; and the complexities affecting women will be considered. The particular relationship between gender and race is central to the analysis, but other factors, such as economics, politics, class, and religion interrelate in ways that illustrate that problems of sports participations are very different for different groups of women. Cultural diversity is therefore a key idea. Because very little has been written about women's sports in South Africa, the paper is heavily dependent on original material gathered during a 4-week trip to the country during June/July 1995. Observation methods were used, interviews carried out, and documentary evidence examined. Although most women that were interviewed lack direct power, their energy, enthusiasm, and determination confirms the idea that recognizing human agency is vital in understanding women's sport in South Africa, and that gender relations of power are unequal but shifting.