Speaker
Description
Gender equality is a cornerstone of liberal democracy and a frequent subject to research in the social sciences. While research shows progress in many Western societies over the past decades, it shows notable segregation by gender in several life domains. A prominent example of continuing segregation by gender is sports participation. Already in the 1980’s, Messner argued that sports participation in males preserves and reinforces beliefs of a “natural superiority” over females. Furthermore, it also provides a separated cultural sphere that retreats from the growing gender equality in society which could cultivate misogynous gender ideologies.
Despite an extensive scholarly and public discourse on the link between sports participation and gender ideologies, empirical research remains surprisingly scarce. The proposed research aims at identifying the effects of sports participation on gender ideologies in males. The research draws on cross-national survey data from the World Value Survey and the European Values Study of the years 2006 to 2018 including males from 78 countries, offering the advantage that the male respondents studied are socialized in different societies that differ in terms of gender equality, religiosity, or economic development. Furthermore, both data sets provide comprehensive measurements on gender ideologies.
Multilevel models that have been calculated using random intercepts and robust standard errors based on these observations show that sports participation in males indeed slightly fosters gender ideologies in males. Further analyses will investigate whether the degree of gender equality in a society moderates the relationship between sports participation and gender ideologies.
