Established-outsider Relations between Males and Females in the Field of Sports in Ireland

Abstract

This paper will introduce readers to the field of sports in the Republic of Ireland with specific reference to changing power relations between the sexes. It will situate a present-day social phenomenon, that is, Irish females‘ increasing involvement in what are seen traditionally as male-associated sports such as Gaelic football, rugby and soccer, within the context of social processes in which more or less independent groups of people (that is, male and female sportspeople) are becoming more interdependent. Qualitative data including 12 in-depth interviews with high performance (elite) female athletes (conducted between 1999 and 2002), three in-depth interviews with leading Irish sports officials (1999–2003) and participant observation notes (from the author's involvement in the field of sports since the early 1990s) will be used to examine aspects of the sport-gender nexus in Ireland. These will be situated within a sociological analysis of the emergence and development of sports for women since the 1970s, and they will be used to argue that the relatively slight shift in the balance of power in favour of females since the 1970s has led to feelings of emancipation amongst females and resistance amongst some males, though this resistance is gradually becoming weaker. Elias's theory of ‘established–outsider’ relations will be applied to suggest that females who participate in sports such as rugby, soccer and Gaelic football to a lesser extent, can be described as an ‘outsider’ group – that is, as one that has lacked the organisational resources and networks of mutual assistance to shift significantly the uneven balance of power between the sexes. Moreover, typical of outsiders in their relations with the established, dominant stereotypical views of females remain embedded in the personality structures of ‘outsiders’.