Women and Sport

Women and Sport: Continuing a Journey of Liberation and Celebration focuses on women winning access to the playing field as well as the front office in sport. Readers will gain an understanding of how women have been involved in sport and physical activity, how they have struggled for widespread recognition and legitimacy in the eyes of many, and how they continue to carve out their role in shaping sport as we know it today and as it will be in the future.

Edited by renowned expert Ellen J. Staurowsky, widely accepted as an authority on college athlete rights and Title IX and gender equity, Women and Sport facilitates interdisciplinary, research-based discussion by providing a detailed account of contributions from women in sport. The text features a foreword by sport executive Donna Orender and 15 chapters—written by leading authorities in women and gender studies in sport—that are grouped into four parts:

• Women’s Sport in Context: Connecting Past and Present reminds readers of the historical events and influences that shape today’s landscape.

• Strong Girls, Strong Women recognizes gender differences and what it means to create equitable access to sport opportunities.

• Women, Sport, and Social Location explores how various characteristics and qualities may affect sport participation and opportunities.

• Women in the Sport Industry offers a rare and contemporary approach to examining women in sport leadership, management, and media.

Women and Sport was developed with the intent of filling a need by serving as a primary textbook and separates itself from other titles by providing an abundance of instructor ancillary materials that assist in class preparations. Pedagogical aids such as objectives, glossary terms, discussion questions, and learning activities in each chapter facilitate student understanding of the material covered. Sidebars throughout the text enable the contributors to provide thought-provoking content on topics such as media coverage of female athletes, how female athletes are used in marketing campaigns, and whether athletic competitions should continue to be segregated by sex. Readers will discover the impact of these topics in many areas of society, from biomedical to psychosocial and historical.

Through its engaging content, Women and Sport: Continuing a Journey of Liberation and Celebration serves as a launching pad for discussions that will shape society’s ongoing conversation about what it means to be a female athlete or a woman working in sport. It is an ideal textbook for adoption in interdisciplinary courses that focus on women and gender studies in sport.

Ellen J. Staurowsky, EdD, is a professor in the department of sport management at Drexel University. She is renowned as an authority on the business of college athletics, college student-athlete rights, and Title IX and gender equity. Staurowsky has been featured in numerous national media outlets and served as an expert witness in the historic antitrust case O’Bannon v. NCAA. Staurowsky draws from more than 30 years of experience as both a practitioner and scholar, having served as a collegiate athletic director at multiple colleges as well as a coach at the collegiate level of field hockey, women’s lacrosse, and men’s soccer. Before her appointment at Drexel in 2011, she was a professor at Ithaca College, where she worked for nearly two decades. Staurowsky teaches courses in women and sport, gender issues in sport, legal foundations of Title IX, and sociology of sport. She is a member of the College Sport Research Institute advisory board, the Ursinus College Board of Trustees, and various professional organizations, having previously served as president of the National American Society for the Sociology of Sport. She is coauthor of College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA Amateur Myth.