Abstract
Using qualitative data, this article investigates women’s experiences in fantasy sports, a context that offers the potential for transformations in the gendered order of traditionally masculinized athletic environments by blurring the distinctions between real and virtual, combining active production and passive consumption, and allowing men and women to play side-by-side. We find, however, women often describe fantasy sports as a male/masculine space in which they are highly visible and have their ability to compete like men questioned, largely because of gendered assumptions regarding sports knowledge. Women’s attitudes and behaviors frequently reproduce traditional gender dynamics, although women also engage in behaviors and assert definitions of themselves that are potentially transformative—implicitly and explicitly pushing the boundaries of what females are expected to be and accomplish in sport. Often, however, they simultaneously reproduce and resist men’s dominance and women’s marginalization, exercising (1) “mediated agency” by using men to improve their fantasy sports experience and play or (2) “conflicted agency” by reinforcing or accepting gender stereotypes about women while using those stereotypes to their advantage or positioning themselves as atypical women to whom the stereotypes do not apply.
Despite women’s increased participation over the last four decades, sports remain a deeply gendered institution. Women athletes and sports continue to receive unequal treatment in the media (Cooky, Messner, and Musto 2015), women competitors still face questions about their sex, gender, and sexuality (Blinde and Taub 1992; Cooky, Dycus, and Dworkin 2013), and women sports fans confront a world in which their motives, skills, and knowledge are suspect (Esmonde, Cooky, Andrews 2015). Moreover, with their emphasis on competition, dominance, and aggression, sports are intricately connected to the social construction of masculinity in contemporary American society (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008).
In this article, we focus on a more recent development—fantasy sports—which are played by 33.5 million people in America alone (FSTA 2013) and which, perhaps, have the potential to both affirm and challenge the gendered power dynamics of traditional sports. On one hand, fantasy sports are heavily male-dominated—males have constituted the vast majority (80 percent) of participants and have been more invested than females (e.g., males participate longer, in more leagues, and for more hours per week) (FSTA 2013; Ruihley and Billings 2013). Additionally, most participants compete in leagues focused on sports occupying the “institutional center” (i.e., football, baseball, and basketball), which scholars argue are especially important for the perpetuation of hegemonic masculinity (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008; Messner 2009). On the other hand, fantasy sports occupy a unique space, one with the potential to transform gendered arrangements. First, they do not involve actual physical athletic participation of competitors. Instead, individuals build a virtual sports team composed of real athletes who accumulate points for the competing individual (referred to as the manager) based on their performance in actual games. 1 Second, male and female participants frequently compete side-by-side in fantasy sports. As such, fantasy sports present an interesting case for scholars interested in females’ experiences in sports—a potentially neutral context in which the presumed physical differences used to justify sex-segregated competition are effectively irrelevant and the distinctions between athletic participation and sports consumption are blurred. Here, we explore this topic through analyses of qualitative data from female fantasy sports players, focusing on how they experience being a woman in this space, how men reportedly perceive them, and how they reinforce and resist, sometimes simultaneously, the masculinized culture of sports they confront.
Sports, Gender, and Power
Sport is a main site where “gender becomes ‘real’” and sex category still is a “central organizing mechanism,” wherein boys learn and police masculinity and bolster notions that male equals masculinity (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008, 57, 123). The association of sport and masculinity is so pervasive that men need not even be athletes to reap its benefits. According to Crawley, Foley, and Shehan (2008), men gain vicarious masculinity (and its attendant power) through the athletic successes of other men (e.g., professional athletes), reliving their own previous athletic achievements, possessing knowledge of sports, and simply having a male body. Moreover, some research specifically on fantasy sports suggests that men use their participation to establish, reinforce, and police masculinity in much the same way that traditional sports provide a mechanism for perpetuating hegemonic ideals (Davis and Duncan 2006).
What then happens when women enter such a domain? Despite their increasing presence as participants and consumers, sports largely remain a space where men construct “women as outsiders” (Pfister, Lenneis, and Mintert 2013, 862). Sometimes, female participants stand out by virtue of their sex alone, as is the case for Olive, McCuaig, and Phillips’s (2013, 268) female surfers, who are subject to a set of patronizing behaviors from their male counterparts that they interpret as “reinforcing and maintaining their place as ‘women who surf’ rather than simply including them as ‘surfers.’” Other research reveals how women’s competency is questioned, their access and roles limited, and their successes dismissed. Messner (2009) finds women in youth sports have their authority challenged by other coaches, parents, umpires, and youth and are locked out of the “good ol’ boys’ networks” of men coaches, thus limiting their access to information that could increase their confidence and abilities. Female snowboarders similarly report feeling their male counterparts do not take them seriously, leading to their being labeled as “girls,” constantly surveilled, assumed to be less competent, and made to feel unwelcome in certain areas of the snowboarding park (Laurendeau and Sharara 2008). Because of women’s presumed inferiority, Wachs (2005) finds people engage in ideological repair work to realign the challenges to the gendered order that capable female players pose—(re)evaluating skilled women as “lucky,” “good for a girl,” or not “normal” women.
Even as consumers “women are ‘Others’ because what it means to be a legitimate sports fan . . . is to be a man, particularly one who conforms to the hegemonic masculinized aspects of sporting cultures” (Esmonde, Cooky, and Andrews 2015, 41). Lacking male bodies or experience playing sports that occupy the institutional center, women cannot achieve the vicarious masculinity or full status as a fan that men can (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008). They are also marginalized because constructions of femininity are incompatible with the fervent, aggressive, and often misogynistic and homophobic chants integral to fandom (Jones 2008). Women’s assumed inferiority in sports-related knowledge further weakens their authenticity as fans, as do presumptions that their fandom is motivated by sexual attraction to players or a desire to build and maintain relationships with men (Esmonde, Cooky, and Andrews 2015; Jones 2008; Klugman 2012; Pope and Williams 2011). Women’s fandom is demeaned in other ways, such as when female football fans in the United Kingdom are asked to “get your tits out for the lads” (Jones 2008).
Yet sports can also be a site where women assert themselves and seek inclusion, challenging gender stereotypes in varied and even contradictory ways and potentially gaining power in and making changes to this highly masculinized space (Heywood and Dworkin 2003). Hays (1994) distinguishes between two types of agency—that which is structurally reproductive and that which is structurally transformative. Reproductive agency involves actions that range from being unremarkable to having trivial consequences, but in all cases, the underlying structures remain unchanged. Structurally transformative agency, however, affects “the pattern of social structures in some empirically observable way” (Hays 1994, 64). Although these are presented as two distinct categories, Hays (1994, 64) emphasizes that agency “occurs on a continuum [emphasis original]” and may not even be conscious. The literature on women in sports provides examples of both reproductive and transformative agency. Reflective of reproductive agency, some women athletes and fans attempt to dismiss the relevance of their gender by distancing themselves from behavior seen as stereotypical (and those women engaging in such behavior) or positioning themselves as just like men. Female fans, for example, may disassociate themselves from women who get “dolled up” to go to games and devalue (emphasized) femininity (Jones 2008, 528; see also Esmonde, Cooky, and Andrews 2015 and Pope 2013). Women snowboarders wear baggy clothes and helmets to conceal their gender (Laurendeau and Sharara 2008), while some female fans embrace a “tomboy” identity or normalize homophobia and sexism as part of sports (Jones 2008; Pope 2013). Other women reproduce stereotypes of women’s position in sports by using gendered assumptions to their advantage. Some female skydivers, for instance, use their sexuality to gain extra altitude or free coaching (Laurendeau and Sharara 2008), while some of Wachs’s (2005) female ballplayers hit softballs over the heads of those ballplayers who, relying on unchallenged gender assumptions, play shallow when any woman bats.
Other examples indicate, however, that women athletes and fans assert their legitimacy in ways that potentially transform the gendered power structure in sports. Experienced women snowboarders challenge the stereotype that women are less skilled by making it obvious they are women while proving their worthiness (Laurendeau and Sharara 2008). Moreover, Pfister, Lenneis, and Mintert (2013, 857), drawing on work by Selmer (2004) and Sülzle (2007), report female football fan groups across Europe strategically take on gendered and/or sexualized names (e.g., “tits abroad” or “hooli-geese”) to “ridicule the misogyny of male fans and neutralize sexism.” Other female fans further challenge the homophobic and sexist chanting and verbal abuse at sporting events directly by confronting and correcting those doing it, with some going so far as to redefine proper fandom to exclude those practicing “abusive hypermasculinity” through homophobic and sexist language (Jones 2008, 524).
In this article, we expand upon the literature by exploring fantasy sports, a unique environment we see as presenting opportunities for both transforming and reproducing gendered arrangements. On one hand, women here may gain legitimacy, transforming gendered power dynamics as they play side by side with men—something rare in highly sex-segregated American sports (McDonagh and Pappano 2008). Further, fantasy sports blur the distinctions between (1) real and virtual sports and (2) consumers and active participants. Success is not contingent on one’s own athletic performance, thus rendering presumed sex-differentiated physical prowess irrelevant. Just as women’s fandom can be a source of power in that women demand something of (male) players and teams (Klugman 2012), female fantasy sports players draft and trade male athletes and expect something from their performance—potentially reaping power from this and from winning when they effectively employ these athletes. Moreover, women can be active producers in fantasy sports—playing general manager just like men, building all-male teams, managing male players, and competing within the context of sports in the institutional center, an arena from which they’ve been largely excluded or marginalized as more passive spectators and fans. On the other hand, women may remain outsiders even in this unique context. Although the virtual environment of fantasy sports may create the opportunity for anonymity, the majority of our respondents play in leagues with those they know; as such, gender is known and potentially salient. Moreover, fantasy sports remain grounded in a highly masculinized sports culture. While it is women who are competing in fantasy sports leagues, their success is still contingent on the performance of male athletes typically playing in the institutional center of sports. It is likely, then, that female fantasy sports players cannot share vicariously in the success of these athletes in the same way as men, in part because they do not share the same sexed bodies as the athletes they use on their teams. Thus, they still may encounter subtle and overt barriers to their entry, inclusion, and legitimacy.
In short, fantasy sports are a compelling context in which to study women’s marginalization and agency in historically masculine arenas. In fact, Hays (1994, 64) argues that the continuum of agency “is influenced by the depth and durability of the structural form in question, by the level of power held by those making the choices, and by the larger cultural milieu in which the choices are made,” and further specifies that structurally transformative agency is more likely at times when social structures become more flexible or open to revision. Fantasy sports are embedded in a deeply gendered institution, sports, within which women participants historically have less power. Yet, at the same time, fantasy sports present a blurring of distinctions between real and virtual and production and consumption, perhaps representing exactly the type of malleable structure that enables transformative agency.
Method
The first set of qualitative data for this article comes from an online survey launched in October 2012 and closed January 2013, with respondents recruited through fantasy sports–related message boards and websites, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Additionally, a Philadelphia sports columnist wrote an article that included a link to the survey (Hofmann 2012), which further publicized the study. In all, 453 individuals responded to the survey, with 396 indicating they had ever played fantasy sports. Of those who had played, 74 (19%) identified as female and were asked, “Do you ever feel like you are treated or perceived differently by other people involved in fantasy sports because you are a woman?” Those that answered “yes” (44 respondents, or 59.5% of the female players) were asked to elaborate on the way(s) they thought they were treated or perceived differently. The 42 responses to this open-ended field on the survey serve as the first part of data for our analyses. These data are augmented by responses to open-ended survey questions (asked of all respondents) about why they play fantasy sports and what they get out of playing. We also analyze 17 qualitative interviews with women who currently play fantasy sports. The first author conducted these interviews between October 2012 and January 2013, obtaining the sample by contacting a subset of survey respondents who indicated an interest in being interviewed to discuss fantasy sports in more depth (25 female respondents did so). These qualitative, semistructured interviews covered a range of topics, such as the respondents’ level of involvement in fantasy sports and what they got from playing, motivations for playing, views of other players and skills needed to play, and experiences playing. Each respondent chose a pseudonym; these are used throughout the article to protect the interviewees’ confidentiality. The majority (n = 15) of interviews occurred over the phone, with one interview being conducted in person and one via e-mail. The phone and in-person interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim and, on average, lasted 50 minutes. Interviews were conducted until theoretical saturation was achieved.
On average, our respondents, like fantasy sports players generally, are well educated, white, under 35 years old, and married or cohabiting. We imported their answers to the open-ended survey questions and the interview transcripts into NVivo10, a qualitative data analysis software. At this stage, we organized these data into inductively derived conceptual categories (or nodes), subcoding into smaller nodes as we progressed with the analyses and looking for patterns within and across categories and cases. Thus, in line with qualitative approaches (Charmaz 2006), our findings emerged from the coding process itself, rather than from predetermined hypotheses. Our method also privileges female respondents’ voices and perspectives, utilizing the words of this understudied group to better understand women’s position in fantasy sports. This “epistemic privileging of women’s experience” is in line with other recent scholarship on women in sports, which advances that women’s subordinate position better enables them to perceive gendered inequities (Esmonde, Cooky, and Andrews 2015, 29; see also Hartsock 1987 and Ramazanoglu and Holland 2002).
Marginalization, Resistance, and Transformation in Fantasy Sports
Overall, our analyses revealed three major themes. First, our respondents viewed fantasy sports as a male/masculine domain—one where they felt they were considered and treated differently than male players and had their ability to perform and compete like men questioned. Second, our respondents’ attitudes and behaviors were variously reflective of reproductive and transformative agency—some reinforced men’s dominance and women’s marginalization, while others resisted. Third, much like fantasy sports’ blurring of real and virtual, and active and passive consumption, some simultaneously resisted men’s dominance and their attendant outsider status in this space and reproduced gendered assumptions about women’s inferiority and lack of belonging.
Experiencing Marginalization in Fantasy Sports
When directly asked, nearly 60 percent of the survey respondents reported that their womanhood led to differential treatment and perceptions. Notably, about half of our interviewees at first indicated they weren’t perceived or treated differently because of their gender, but then all but three (one of whom kept her gender unknown to other players) recounted numerous ways their womanhood set them apart. Thus, we suspect more of our survey respondents would have responded affirmatively to this question upon further reflection. Indeed, our respondents repeatedly referred to fantasy sports as a male or masculine domain in which they stood out as women, were marked as outsiders, and faced uncomfortable (or even misogynistic) environments. One survey respondent, for example, indicated men “make lots of jokes about me being one of the few ‘token’ girls in the league,” while Nicole simply stated, “you are kind of looked down upon because you are a woman trying to play a man’s game.” Lynn similarly commented that the “guys were rude and crude and did everything to push the girls away,” as they “still see it as their domain.” And Caroline revealed that a team name in her league (which was ultimately “vetoed”) “made fun of the rape allegations against Big Ben [Roethlisberger], and we have a team member who has been a victim.”
Further reflective of their outsider status, our respondents indicated that male players did not view them as capable of performing and competing like men, but rather saw them as “easy wins” and underestimated them. Some were vague about why they were seen as less proficient, indicating, “They don’t take my ability as a manager as seriously,” or “I feel like male managers think female managers are a joke.” Others, though, like Jane, specified they were viewed as lacking the necessary level of interest in, experience with, or knowledge of sports to be successful:
It’s a man’s world of sports and fantasy sports in particular, and there’s not a lot of expectation that a woman would even want to do it or be interested, let alone be good at it, you know what I mean? It’s just there’s like an inherent advantage to being a man involved in a sports-related pursuit, ’cause he’s a man.
Moreover, at times the women referenced being belittled for their presumed lack of sports knowledge, being the object of men’s patronizing behavior, and having their decisions scrutinized more or evaluated differently than their male counterparts. One survey respondent reported, “Men don’t think I’m as smart as them and sometimes when we are talking about sports, they can be extremely condescending towards me.” Brittany also explained, “I was the only girl [in the league] . . . They’re like, ‘Are you sure you understand what we’re doing? Are you alright?’” A survey respondent commented,
I think men believe that women don’t follow the stats as closely as guys . . . [so] if a woman were to make a slightly random or chancy pick/move, guys are more likely to say “she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” but if a guy were to make that move then they would think “oh that’s so interesting, I wonder what made him choose that player, maybe he knows something I don’t.”
Our respondents noted being confronted with additional gendered and (hetero)sexualized assumptions that supposedly hindered their play, including that women are “illogical,” relationship-oriented, and focused on physical appearances. Caroline revealed men in her league thought she would put her relationship with her friend over playing to win. She explained, “When the other girl and I play each other . . . she and I have been friends forever . . . they were giving us a hard time that I would tank for her, and I don’t think they would have said it to any of the guys.” Lynn reported that men thought she was using a fantasy sports message board as a “dating service,” assuming she was there to “pick up on guys.” Our respondents also indicated that men expected women to “pick teams based on ‘cute guys’ or ‘cute outfits,’ not based on player skill” (survey respondent) or that they “get some trash talk on draft day, like, ‘Oh, I see you drafted Tom Brady, he’s so dreamy’” (Jane). One survey respondent noted that she was dismissed as “illogical,” “despite the fact that I’ve come in first place twice already, second place twice and am currently in first place at this point in time in the playoffs.”
Although many of our respondents, as suggested above, were skilled and successful fantasy sports players, winning or placing high in the league’s standings did not guarantee respect. Instead, they found men explained away (or ignored completely) their successes, rendering women’s skill inconsequential. For example, one survey respondent wrote that in her league, “I am the only girl. They seem to think [when I win] I get lucky instead of being skilled.” Others claimed that men credited other men with their success, thus providing a plausible explanation for their successes while reinforcing notions that women play for reasons connected to their heterosexuality. One respondent complained, “Some people don’t expect you to do well, or assume that if you do, it’s because a man is helping you.” Another reported, “I also deal with jokes that my husband manages my team for me. My first year playing, I won the championship and people still give my husband the credit.”
Women’s responses to their marginalization and the underlying presumption of fantasy sport as a male/masculine arena varied on three key dimensions. First, as Hays (1994) would predict, women engaged in behaviors that variously reproduced and transformed the gendered structure of fantasy sports and, sometimes, in ways that involved both simultaneously. (We discuss this as conflicted and mediated agency below.) Second, reflecting Hays’s (1994) argument that choice need not be intentional, our respondents varied in how explicitly or consciously they responded—some pushed back against male dominance with little awareness or acknowledgment of what they were doing, while others were quite forthcoming about the ways in which they challenged gendered assumptions. Finally, our respondents varied in the extent to which they embraced and/or rejected their femaleness, femininity, and/or womanhood in general. Importantly, this interweaves in complex ways with how they reproduce their marginalization or establish their legitimacy in fantasy sports. For some, legitimacy hinges on distancing oneself from womanhood, thus reproducing women’s marginalization more generally. Some, though, embrace both womanhood and success in this realm, potentially transforming what it means to be a legitimate participant. Others actively play into stereotypes about women’s inferiority or weakness in ways that simultaneously reproduce these stereotypes and potentially transform the manner and extent to which gender is institutionalized in fantasy sports.
Reproductive Agency: Reinforcing Male Dominance and Women’s Marginalization
In many ways, female fantasy sports participants engage in reproductive agency (Hays 1994), playing but acting and responding in ways that do little (or nothing) to change gender dynamics and gendered assumptions. Exemplifying this, some women retreated from male-dominated and masculinized fantasy sports spaces by quitting leagues, refusing to participate in message forums or trash talking, or opting only to play in all-female leagues, leaving men to play unimpeded by the presence of women. Mindy, who plays in an all-female league, admitted doing so because she would be “intimidated” to play with men. Relatedly, Claire suggested men’s often gendered and abrasive smack talk pushes women to quit, in one case from her husband’s fantasy baseball league. She stated: “The smack talk that goes down in that room is just to the point where my mother-in-law was in the league at one point and dropped out. She was so offended.” Lynn stopped using message boards for about “a year or two” because of the “crude” response she received after innocently asking, “How’d I do?” after her draft, which “turned her off.”
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Nicole similarly disengaged from banter with men in her league, explaining:
I’m the only girl in one of my leagues and one of two in another. The one where all the trash talking occurs . . . I just don’t want to be involved. I play with my brothers and they’re both really in your face, and I just don’t even want to rile them up at all . . . so I kind of stay out of it, ’cause I don’t want to be involved.
In responding to undesirable situations and contexts in fantasy sports by not participating in them, these women’s actions largely reaffirm women’s position as outsiders.
Other women remained engaged, yet chose to excuse sexist and homophobic displays as part and parcel of fantasy sports or men’s behavior more generally, wrote such behavior off by not taking “it personally,” or felt it “wasn’t worth the effort” (or the possible negative consequences) to confront. Jane, for example, seemed to justify “homophobic jokes” in her league “because they [are] dudes,” yet she claimed “you kind of want to engage” people making “excessively nasty” comments but “you’re just like, forget it.” Anne too assessed the men in her league as “offensive in general” but then indicated not being “personally offended because I know them well and that it is all just for the laugh of it.” Marie complained men in her leagues assumed that because she was a woman she was not knowledgeable about sports, but when asked if she tried to counter that misperception, she replied, “Sometimes, but I tried not to because I think that could make it worse. Then it just eggs it on.” In such ways, these women, and others in our study, quit, in one case failed to confront the gendered order of fantasy sports, leaving it relatively unchanged and unchallenged.
Transformative Agency: Implicit and Explicit Resistance to Male Dominance and Women’s Marginalization
In contrast, some of our respondents recounted behaviors or expressed attitudes more reflective of transformative agency (Hays 1994); that is, they challenged fantasy sports—or sports more generally—as the province of males/men. Importantly, these women varied in the extent to which they were explicit about or conscious of their resistance. For some, the transformative potential of their statements was implied through their assertion of qualities usually associated with men and central to the institutionalization of masculinity in sporting culture. For example, in discussing why they played fantasy sports and what they got out of playing, many survey respondents referenced loving sports (e.g., “I love football and know a lot about the sport, and fantasy football is another way I can use my knowledge and connect with the game”) and/or being competitive people (e.g., “I like competition and it’s a fun way to get involved with sports beyond rooting for my favorite teams”). Women in our interviews went even further, emphasizing their love of sports as central to their identities. Nicole told us, “I would say that part of my identity is that I love watching sports, and I love football and that is actually really a big part of my identity.” Michelle too claimed,
I had always been a bit of a sports nut, a bit of a football junkie. Willing and able to participate in just about any athletic endeavor you might want to throw at me. So, I think it fits with my personality to be interested and enjoy playing something like fantasy sports.
Notably, several women discussed how fantasy sports provided an outlet for a competitive spirit no longer satisfied by actual sports participation. Reminiscent of how sports fandom allows men to achieve vicarious masculinity (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008), this motivation challenges the notion that reliving past glories and finding substitute competitive outlets are uniquely masculine, even if our respondents did not explicitly discuss this in gendered terms. For example, Kels claimed,
[I] used to be an athlete when I was younger, I can’t say I’m one anymore, but there is some level of competitiveness when you do play sports and you do like sports. For me it [fantasy sport] seems the only way to have any real involvement at this point where I’m not gonna be playing a sport anymore.
Likewise, Anne, when asked what she got out of playing fantasy sports, answered that they
get [at] that level of being a competitor even though you’re not actually competing. . . . I played basketball, I played soccer, and so I was always competitive my whole life, and then, so that [fantasy football] gives me an outlet for it . . . it gives me an outlet to beat somebody I guess.
Some women’s resistance was much more intentional; it wasn’t just that they were sports fans or competitive, but that they wanted to gain, did gain, or reveled in gaining recognition for those qualities. Anne alluded to this desired recognition when she explained, “Sports is a big part of my identity, so the fact that I play fantasy sports sort of, I think, would let somebody who didn’t already know that, know that I am a serious sports fan. It gives me a little bit more street credit.” Similarly, Jane revealed that her fantasy sports involvement “says that I am all in on this football stuff. And I’m not just here talking about it and just saying like ‘Oh well this player’s good, and this team is good, and this is a good matchup.’ I’m also like walking the talk.”
For many, this was an explicitly gendered process. A majority of those interviewed asserted feeling they had something to prove as women fantasy sports players. They used their outsider status as motivation, driven to show others that they and their gender more generally were as capable as men. Interestingly, in so doing, some embraced elements of hegemonic masculinity—namely, focusing on winning, one-upping others, and outwardly displaying sports knowledge and skill—and, perhaps, challenged the notion that being male is required to be a fierce competitor. Accordingly, Annick explained, “There is a little bit of a chip on your shoulder [being a woman in a masculine domain], and you do want to do the best you can, and you wanna crush those boys.” Jane similarly asserted, “I like to win . . . it’s pretty important. And it’s just bragging rights, to be the woman in the league full of dudes who beats them all.” One survey respondent wrote, “I enjoy the glory of beating my male friends who think they know more about football then me.” Notably, though, these women often recognized having to work “doubly hard” to prove themselves and buck prevailing stereotypes. Lynn explained,
[Women] have to prove even harder that they’re not picking their players because they look cute in their pants or whatever . . . you have to work, I think, almost doubly hard than the guys to prove your knowledge . . . [being the only woman in the league] makes me want to beat them [the men] even more to prove that I’m not the token female, that I can hang with the big boys and I know what I’m talking about . . . I’m representing all of womanhood here.
Indeed, though not common, some indicated that through their assertions of sports interest and knowledge, men recognized or even accepted them as legitimate fantasy sports players, thus suggesting the structural impact characteristic of transformative agency. Mindy offered such evidence:
I like knowing things, and I like the fact that I can actually sit and talk with men and know what I’m talking about—there’s two guys I work with and every week they ask me, “What do you think about this? Should I draft this player? Should I pick this person up? Who do you think I should start?” Like they actually valued my opinion on this stuff ’cause they knew I knew what I was talking about.
Other women played with gender in ways that had the potential to challenge the masculinized culture of sports. Some owned their “girly” qualities and interests, suggesting that being feminine was not incompatible with interest and success in fantasy sports. That is, while the women above embraced being female and legitimate participants, other women combined femininity and legitimacy in potentially transformative ways. Brittany, for example, made sure to inform us that besides fantasy sports, she had “the stereotypical interests of shopping and doing those kind of things . . . the shopping is kind of reinforcing the fact that I am a female and people should remember that I still like going out buying clothes, that sort of thing [even though I play fantasy sports].” Similarly, Alyssa related,
I am a girly girl, and by that definition, I am prissy. When my female friends found out I was playing [fantasy football] they were surprised, and when they learned how much more football I was watching, they were even more surprised, and when I won, I shocked them all!
Some women used team names to satirize gendered and heteronormative expectations or suggest girl power—another way of actively inserting women and womanhood while also taking on what are considered masculine qualities. Alyssa used the name “Queen of the Turf” revealing, “I’ve heard the catchphrase ‘King of the Turf,’ so [I] just made it female.” Lindsey employed the name “Abusement Park,” while Annick named one team “Nobody Beats Our Johnson” (a sexualized pun incorporating a professional football player’s last name). Jennifer drew on a reference from a fantasy sports–centered sitcom, The League, to play with gender. She explained that when a character, Jenny, talked about how “good she was at sex,”
the other character goes, “Oh you have vaginal hubris.” And I was like, that’s the best name ever for a team. And I remember watching that episode and saying if I ever have a fantasy team, that’s what my team name will be. So my name is the Vaginal Hubris. And I mean it’s pretty right. I’m really proud that I’m a woman and I’m doing this.
Mediated and Conflicted Agency: Simultaneously Reproducing and Transforming
While the above largely reflect either reproductive or transformative agency, our data make clear that more often women’s reactions to their marginal status and their understandings of themselves as fantasy sports players were simultaneously reflective of reproductive and transformative agency. One manifestation of this is what we call mediated agency, where women use men in their lives to improve their fantasy sports experience and play. Such agency both defers to men’s power and knowledge (a largely reproductive approach) and makes visible problems with the status quo while, perhaps, positioning men as allies who might ultimately help challenge the gendered assumptions and workings of the space (more transformative approaches). Jane, for example, complained about her competency being questioned by the men in her league, as she receives only “ridiculous” trades. In response, rather than retreat from trading entirely (as other women did), she enlisted the support of men outside her league, claiming,
I’m not a big trader, I hate trading players, and so I always second guess, I always feel like I’m being taken advantage of when someone proposes a trade, that I always have to go to someone [a man] who’s not in that league who I trust, “Would you trade this person for this person?” because I always feel like they’re trying to get the best of me because I’m a girl. Even after all these years I still feel that way.
Jennifer, too, engaged in mediated agency when she enlisted the help of her boyfriend in response to an offensive comment made in her league. She explained,
[A male player] said something so offensive about women. And I went to an all-women’s college, I am as feminist as they come, and I said to my boyfriend, I was like, “You need to e-mail him and tell him that crosses the line and that can’t happen.” And he did, and he also posted something on the message board and said “Remember we are respectful men, and there are ladies in this league.”
Thus, this self-described feminist, who clearly wants to embody power and transform the climate of her league, calls on a man to put her resistance into action.
More commonly, the women in our study exhibited what we term conflicted agency—a type of agency where they reinforce or accept gender stereotypes about women while either using those stereotypes to their advantage or positioning themselves as atypical women to whom the stereotypes do not apply. Although in some ways reproducing women’s inferiority, we note transformative possibilities in both these cases, as women visibly demonstrate being female does not mean one embodies stereotypical feminine attributes, and those who are successful may teach men that women should not be underestimated. To illustrate the first example of conflicted agency, women in our study sometimes gleefully reported using gendered assumptions about their inability to compete like men to their advantage, such that, as one survey respondent wrote, the other players “never see the ass kickin’ coming!!!” Likewise, Brittany claimed,
I actually consider it [being seen as less capable] to be an advantage because they don’t expect as much from me . . . I ended up being able to use that to my advantage. They think that I know less than I do, but it gives me a better playing field.
Jane also saw being underestimated as “kind of advantageous” because others, at least at first,
don’t expect a lot out of that one woman who is in the league, and it’s a good opportunity to kind of show off a little bit and be like, “Hey, you’re underestimating me and you shouldn’t. I know exactly what I’m doing here and probably more than some of you.”
There were also respondents who exhibited conflicted agency by understanding and positioning themselves as “atypical” women or “one of the guys.” While these women could be seen as engaging in gender deviance by pushing against how they, as individual women, were being defined, such women were rather typical in many ways for which they failed to account (e.g., they were heterosexual). More importantly, unlike the women discussed previously who considered sports fanship and competitiveness as part of their identities in rather gender neutral and more transformative ways, these women explicitly positioned themselves as unlike typical women. In doing so, rather than challenging stereotypes, they bolster ideas that women generally can’t compete with men in the world of fantasy sports. Instead, only women like them—that are similar to men—can compete. For example, Lindsey asserted that playing fantasy sports “reinforces an idea I have about myself that I have knowledge beyond just what a typical woman would. . . . Like I know things about cars and tools and fixing stuff and sports.” Jennifer, who claimed her father “made” her “into a tomboy,” seemed to revel in how her fantasy sport play aligned her more with men than women by saying, “I love that when [at a wedding] I was standing with the group of frat brothers, all talking about fantasy football while the rest of their wives are in another place . . . I like the fact that I was an exception.” Michelle claimed, “I think I just always, my whole life, been a bit more of a guy’s girl. I was never a girly girl. I’ve always been into sports.” Annick nicely demonstrates the conflicted nature of the above sort of self-positioning by simultaneously embracing femininity, establishing her sex as irrelevant to her legitimacy as a fantasy sports player, and suggesting her acceptance is predicted on her being “one of the guys.” She explained,
I love my long time league. Yes, I’m a woman, and yeah, it’s fun that I’ve won it the last two years being the only woman, like I don’t consider myself, I’m not a token by any stretch, I have established my credibility whether I was male or female. It is fun [to] have the big steak dinner [the winner gets with the other managers] but wearing a dress and being a girl that is fun. But, I don’t, it [my sex/gender] doesn’t play into the day to day at all, I mean at all. It’s just, I am just one of the guys.
Thus, these women sought to mark themselves as competent fantasy sports players (and as sports aficionados overall), but in so doing reinforced notions that the average woman was not as knowledgeable or interested in sport and could not compete like them. And, we see evidence that this framing may give men another way to make sense of women’s successes when they happen—they are not “real” women. For example, Marie, who has been rather successful in fantasy sports, explained, “I don’t think they [male players] see me that way [as a woman] anymore. I’m just kind of the random anomaly of a girl. Like, ‘Whatever, she’s not really a girl.’” As such, we see that conflicted agency, while potentially transformative in that individual women gain acceptance, does little to disrupt what it means to be a woman or the notion that males and masculinity define legitimacy and acceptance in this space.
Conclusion
Fantasy sports are a unique context in several ways: They blur the distinctions between real and virtual, combine active production and passive consumption, allow men and women to play side by side, and make seemingly irrelevant the presumed sex differences in physical abilities that rationalize sex-segregated athletic competition. As such, they offer the potential for transformations in the gendered order of traditionally highly masculinized athletic environments. Yet our findings indicate that the potential for gender neutrality/transformation in this space is only partially realized. Like previous research on gender in sport (see, e.g., Esmonde, Cooky, and Andrews 2015; Messner 2009; Pfister, Lenneis, and Mintert 2013), we find that men’s dominance and women’s marginalization is frequently presumed and actively asserted by male participants. More specifically, our respondents described fantasy sports as a male or masculine domain where they encountered exclusionary and, at times, sexist and hostile environments, had their competency questioned, and found their accomplishments discounted. Given that success in fantasy sports is predicated on knowing and studying athletes’ performances, the gendered questioning of competency moves from one based on presumed physical differences (as in “real” sports) to one centered on women’s presumed lack of knowledge or questionable decision making (e.g., picking teams based on sexual desire).
Yet fantasy sports offer opportunities for women to gain acceptance in a male-dominated domain and to, perhaps, challenge the masculinized culture of sports. What we see, though, in the women’s accounts is a continuum in this regard, where women variously reproduced and (potentially) transform the gendered order of sports. A number of women were seemingly resigned to the dominance of men and masculinity in this space, exhibiting behaviors and attitudes reflective of reproductive agency as they retreated altogether or excused men’s hypermasculinized or offensive behavior as “boys being boys” or not “personally” offensive. Outright challenges to the gendered dynamics of sports generally and fantasy sports particularly were less common, although we do find some examples of what might be considered transformative agency among our respondents. Some established themselves as competitive sports junkies or asserted one could be both feminine and interested in playing fantasy sports, thus indicating that this is a space where gender can be “redone.” Others utilized team names to satirize gendered expectations or suggest girl power. Finally, some used their outsider status as motivation, working to prove they and their gender more generally were capable participants. These women articulated challenges with potential to go beyond just including women in a man’s world to transforming the definition of what legitimate fantasy sports players are and can be.
Our analyses move beyond existing research in two key ways. First, while previous analyses of women in potentially gender neutral sporting contexts have largely positioned their agency as either reproductive or resistant (see, e.g., Laurendeau and Sharara 2008), we find the attitudes and behaviors of these female fantasy sports players are typically neither wholly reproductive nor transformative; rather, they are both and often simultaneously so. In so doing, we take seriously Hays’s (1994) assertion that agency exists on a continuum. Many of our respondents sought acceptance and legitimacy, but did so by exhibiting what we call mediated or conflicted agency—for example, by couching themselves as “atypical” women who were more like men and could hold their own, using their underestimation to their advantage, or enlisting the aid of men to validate their presence and/or make their fantasy sports experience more enjoyable. In all these instances, women reproduce assumptions about men’s dominance and women’s inferiority but also open up the possibility for transformation of the gender order if through these efforts the climate in their leagues change and they are able to secure recognition as legitimate participants.
Second, we examine how women variously embrace and distance themselves from their femaleness and femininity in ways that both reproduce their marginalization and establish their legitimacy in fantasy sports—again, sometimes simultaneously. Some effectively reproduce women’s marginalization by distancing themselves from the category “woman,” while others potentially transform what it means to be an authentic participant by embracing both womanhood and success. Others play into stereotypes as a way to gain power in this space, simultaneously reproducing these stereotypes while potentially resisting the ways and extent to which gender is institutionalized in fantasy sports. While much of the previous literature on gender and sport demonstrates how men gender the space, our findings highlight how women too are gendering the space in ways that both contribute to and potentially resist their marginalization. Thus, as third-wave feminists might suspect, the accounts and behaviors of these women are muddled and filled with contradictions (Heywood and Drake 1997), as they make sense of themselves and their fantasy sports experience in a space where they are decidedly outsiders.
We acknowledge our sample may not represent female fantasy sports players’ experiences more generally, and we cannot verify that the women’s perceptions reflect the reality of their leagues. Yet the coherence of disparate women’s comments around similar themes collectively strengthens the veracity of these claims. Moreover, we argue that understanding how understudied and marginalized groups perceive their interactions with others and their position in varied contexts is important and useful for uncovering privilege in action. We suspect that for several reasons, we offer a conservative portrait of women’s exclusion in fantasy sports and its hypermasculinized climate. First, by definition, these women were not playing in all-male leagues and were, thus, not privy to all-male spaces in which one might expect more displays of hegemonic masculinity and sexist commentary. Second, our respondents were predominantly playing with friends and family whom they likely did not want to judge as discriminatory or sexist and with whom familiarity may discourage the use of misogynistic and homophobic language. For example, Rebecca, when asked if she thought others perceived her differently because she was a woman, responded, “Oh, possibly, but I don’t, [long pause]. Umm. I guess possibly, probably, but not so much in the leagues, not amongst my friends who tend to be less, to my mind, gender oriented than maybe the average person.” Third, many of our respondents openly admitted to retreating from hostile climates and indicated they would not play in leagues where sexism was rampant. Thus, as one might expect, the women are likely self-selecting into the most favorable environments.
Taken together, our findings suggest women fantasy sports players are variously cast as outsiders and position themselves as legitimate participants, reproducing and transforming—sometimes simultaneously—the notion of sports as a male/masculine domain. Hays (1994, 64) asserts that the extent and type of agency exercised in a space is contingent on the rigidity of the social structure in question, the larger cultural context, and the power of actors, further specifying “structurally transformative agency . . . is made possible under particular historical circumstances—when portions of what were once deeper social structures become particularly malleable and provide occasion for significant collective refashioning.” The (albeit limited) transformative agency we find reflects the unique aspects of the fantasy sports context—they are relatively new and challenge other boundaries, such as those between real and virtual sports and active athletic participation and more passive sports fandom. This suggests that they represent a more malleable arena in which women can push against the institutionalization of masculinity in sport. At the same time, the many instances of reproductive agency we uncover reflect both the deeply gendered and highly masculinized structure and culture of sports more generally and the limited power of women as actors within such a context. Yet the combination of these conditions—a more malleable specific context embedded in a highly masculinized larger institutional structure, both of which exist in a deeply gendered cultural context—give rise to the simultaneous expression of reproductive and transformative agency, which we refer to as conflicted and mediated agency. Such circumstances create the conditions for the expression of attitudes and behaviors that reproduce some aspects of women’s inferiority and men’s dominance but in ways that have the potential to produce cultural and structural change.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to Jo Reger, Joya Misra, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful feedback on previous versions of this article. We would also like to thank Dana Ahern and Laura Dallago for their assistance in transcribing the interviews.
Notes
Rebecca Joyce Kissane is associate professor of Sociology at Lafayette College. Her work on families living in poverty, nonprofit organizations that serve the poor, the Moving to Opportunity housing mobility demonstration, and fantasy sports has been published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociological Perspectives, Society and Mental Health, Social Service Review, The Journal of Poverty, and Social Currents.
Sarah Winslow is associate professor of Sociology at Clemson University. Her work on gender inequality in couples’ earnings, academic careers, and fantasy sports has been published in Gender & Society; Journal of Marriage and Family; Journal of Family Issues; Social Currents; Community, Work, and Family; and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
The authors are currently collaborating on a book tentatively titled Game On! Inside the Gendered World of Fantasy Sports.