Abstract
After 30 years of engagement with the Olympic spectacle, Helen Jefferson Lenskyj presents disturbing findings in Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry (2013). The book could not have arrived at a better time. The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games garnered a plethora of media coverage proclaiming the success and the progress of women globally. Women’s sport activists, feminist advocates, and reporters writing for mainstream media outlets heralded the women of the US National Team for outnumbering the men in participation and medal count, and celebrated “pioneer” women from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Brunei who were competing for the first time (Brennan, 2012; Wharton, 2012). The status of women both in leadership of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and in athletic participation needed improvement, the narrative suggested, but the message was clear: women have come a long way, and the Olympics have become a symbol of their success.
Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry digs into the success narrative of the Olympics, tears it from the ground and exposes its ugly roots. Lenskyj begins with an observation that feminist research and political organizing on women and the Olympics has relied upon liberal frameworks for reform. The liberal feminist approach, as the narrative of the London 2012 illustrated, takes women’s participation and placement in the Olympics as a standard by which their progress is measured. Lenskyj argues that this standard is flawed. In earlier works on the Olympics, Lenskyj (2000, 2002, 2008) addressed issues of gentrification, drug testing, role model rhetoric, and commodification. Building upon this rich body of knowledge, Lenskyj (2013) expands the critiques she previously articulated. The themes that Lenskyj analyzed in her earlier work reappear in Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry. However, the arguments are now more explicitly grounded in a sophisticated and explicit synthesis of feminist theoretical frameworks. Combining transnational feminism, radical feminism, critical race theory, and cultural studies, Lenskyj brings light to questions of gender politics missing from contemporary analyses of the Olympics.
It is precisely this theoretical hybridity that brings an essential and indispensable perspective on the Olympics into the field of sociology of sport and sport history. Lenskyj (1994) previously engaged with radical feminism in her critique of the values that govern sport, arguing that hierarchical organization, heightened competitiveness, and normalized aggression set exclusionary and oppressive standards, reinforcing male dominance. Particularly important for the book is that Lenskyj engages with transnational feminism and thereby addresses issues that other critiques might not: “the ways in which sport serves to entrench global systems of colonialism and oppression that extend well beyond gender issues” (p.43). Her radical feminism moves beyond theoretical boundaries to examine the construction of identity, the process of gendering and racializing of bodies, and the maintenance of social structures entrenched in ideologies of nationalism and geopolitics. This framework challenges the assumption that athletic participation and success at the Olympics necessarily corresponds with the treatment of minority groups in a particular culture outside of the Olympics. As Lenskyj asserted, “the historical record shows that there was no straightforward correlation between the status of women, Indigenous peoples or ethnic minorities in their home countries and their representation at the Olympics” (2013: 59). Rather than leading to social change, this structure, with the IOC acting as the “moral authority for the world of sport,” maintains inequities of power (Lenskyj, 2013: 9). The Olympic Movement, she argues, ultimately reproduces ideals, standards, and regulations that benefit and privilege elite athletes, particularly those athletes who are white and/or coming from western countries.
After setting up the book’s theoretical grounding in the first three chapters, which encompasses the first half of the book, Lenskyj (2013) provides a historical analysis of issues categorized under “Challenges to the Olympic Industry,” “In the Pool, on the Ice: Contested Terrain”, and “Sex and Games.” Chapter 4 focuses on the historical account of structural challenges to the Olympics, including efforts by the socialist sport leaders to minimize aggression in the 1930s, the attempts to include Indigenous peoples, and the brief life of the Women’s Olympics during the first half of the 20th century and the 1968 protest by African American athletes. Chapter 5 moves into the production of race, gender, and sexuality through two specific sports (ice skating and swimming), only so that the reader can arrive at sex-related problems (performance enhancement, sex-testing and exploitation of athletes’ bodies) in Chapter 6. While the book would have benefited from a more explicit connection between these issues, Lenskyj (2013) skillfully disrupts linear and one-dimensional narratives of history to address interlocking systems of oppression in a transnational manner by exposing how ideals of a white European body inform commentary, coverage, and even policy.
In the slim, yet decisive conclusion, Lenskyj suggests that the Olympics continue to reproduce bodily differences and thereby exclude women who did not fit the ideal of “hegemonic femininity” (2013: 132). For that process of reproduction, Lenskyj points fingers at mainstream media. As such, she sees tremendous potential in the power of social media and citizen journalists to generate social change. Otherwise, Lenskyj worries that, because of ubiquitous liberal narratives, “the bigger topic of gender politics and the Olympic industry is in danger of falling through the cracks” (2013: 135). The connection between Lenskyj’s historical critique of social issues and the claim that social media could be a solution thereof may not seem apparent for the reader. The conclusion lacks a clear transition to discussion on media practices and possibilities of their disruption and disregards the possibility that new technologies may reproduce inequities of power. However, using the social media use during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics as an example, Lenskyj makes a case that social media could be a plausible outlet for activism that brings visibility to critiques missing from the mainstream.
Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry brings a much-needed critique of global gendered power relations into a dynamic conversation in feminist sport studies. In this timely and highly relevant book, Lenskyj specifically critiques liberal feminist strategies for assuming that agendas for western sport widely apply to sport and physical activity in any cultural realm. Moreover, her sensitivity to the sporting context outside of elite-level athletics and outside of the normalized western conceptualization of sport provides a theoretical springboard for questions about the very purpose and function of sport in a society. Writing that “it should not be taken for granted that parity with men will benefit all women, or indeed, any women, much less benefit humanity,” Lenskyj challenges scholars to reconsider the efficacy of the strategies intended to improve the status of disadvantaged groups in sport (2013: 40).
The book offers compelling evidence that opportunity to compete—and perhaps even succeed—at the Olympics has not benefited and will not benefit disadvantaged groups. In light of the tremendous effort and resources groups and scholars put forth to promote women’s participation at the Olympics, this argument may be met with disappointment and displeasure, at best. That said, even if scholars do not arrive at the same conclusion, future inquiries in the field of sociology of sport would greatly benefit from Lenskyj’s recommendation to question normalized assumptions about the democratizing potential of sport in a global context.