The Inclusion of Women’s Boxing in the Olympic Games: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Gender and Power in Boxing

Abstract

This article utilizes Foucault’s theoretical perspective of modern power and constructivist perspectives of gender to examine relations of power and gender in boxing. The aim of this paper is to explore how and in what ways constructions of gender are linked to relations of power in international amateur boxing. Further, what implications the interplay between gender and power might have for female boxers. In order to identify relations of power between men and women in boxing, a series of online texts depicting the process of including women’s boxing in the Olympic Games (2009-2012) is analyzed and discussed. To investigate what implications these gendered power relations might have for female boxers today, AIBA’s recent provisional suspension of the Norwegian Boxing Federation is examined. A content analysis strategy was chosen as my analytical approach (Titscher et al. 2000), where the data material consisted of 67 online texts of which 23 were analyzed in-depth. The analysis of the material illustrates how an attempt to implement feminine outfits for female boxers in the Olympic Games was used as a gender-marking strategy in international boxing. This is further related to power by arguing that AIBA’s need to distinguish female boxers from male boxers was an attempt to make the women adhere to traditional norms of femininity (Hovden 2000; van Ingen and Kovacs 2012). Furthermore, the analysis of the material indicates that men’s boxing is valued as superior to women’s boxing and that these gendered power relations in boxing manifest themselves through their effects on women’s boxing.