Speakers
Description
Researchers and advocates have long been aware of the under-representation of women in coaching, particularly in highly competitive levels of sport. Although attention has been paid to a range of issues influencing women’s lack of advancement into high-level sport coaching, little critical attention has been paid to the nature of sport coaching as work, and even less attention has been paid to women’s experiences of sport coaching as work. This presentation will share data from a two-year study that explored sport coaching as a form of precarious labour for women. Drawing on Feminist Political Economy (FPE), this study focused on the sport-work-gender nexus, with particular attention paid to the demands placed on and taken up by female sport coaches to perform socially reproductive and emotional labour. Through the sharing of the participants’ stories of their sport coaching work, this presentation will attempt to both make visible the invisible labour of female sport coaches, and to highlight the problematic ways in which participants internalized and rationalized the demands on their time and efforts as normal; the consequences of which resulted in a near-constant effort by our study participants to be ‘on the job’ regardless of other work-life commitments.
