Content uploaded by Kathryn Henne
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Kathryn Henne on Apr 14, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Dilemmas of Gender and Global Sports Governance:
An Invitation to Southern Theory
Kathryn Henne
University of Waterloo and Australian National University
Madeleine Pape
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Most research on global sports policy either negates or underappreciate perspectives from the Global South. This article
incorporates Southern Theory to examine how Northern worldviews profoundly shape gender-specific sports policy. It highlights
two dilemmas that emerge, using illustrative case studies. First, it considers questions of gender and regulation, as evidenced
in the gender verification regimes of track-and-field. Then, it addresses the limits of gender and empowerment in relation to sport
for development and peace initiatives’engagement with the diverse experiences and perspectives in non-Western contexts,
considering them in relation to programming for women in Pacific Island countries. The article concludes with a reflection on
possible contributions of Southern theory to sport sociological scholarship.
While research on gender and sports governance is not new
(e.g., Adriaanese & Schofield, 2013;Claringbould & Knoppers,
2008), recent studies point to new avenues for feminist inquiry.
Work by Palmer (2013, p. 15) underscores how sports policy takes
shape amid governance relations in which “interconnected organiza-
tions and agencies”—many of them governmental, nonstate, private,
and hybrid entities—interact across local, national, and global levels
(p. 14). Since policy is “createdbysomeandimplementedby
others,”its study requires careful consideration of “who is involved,
how, where, when, and why,”as well as the globalized conditions
that inform them (p. 40). In drawing attention to these issues, Palmer
(2013) points to growing scholarly interest in sports and policy in the
Global South,
1
while acknowledging there is little research that
draws upon Southern knowledges. Postcolonial feminist scholarship
on sport demonstrates many of the challenges that come with this
kind of engagement, as well as the value of grappling with the
influence of colonial dynamics, past and present (e.g., Carney &
Chawansky, 2016;Hayhurst, MacNeill, & Frisby, 2011;Sykes,
2017). Here, we reflect on how these feminist insights can—and
should—inform scholarship on sports policy and governance.
In this article, we examine gender-specific sports policies as a
lens through which to highlight how Northern worldviews are
embedded in contemporary global sports governance, thereby
limiting opportunities for perspectives from the Global South to
inform policy and its analysis. We focus on dilemmas that emerge
during sports policymaking and implementation. While feminist
scholars acknowledge a range of possible dilemmas (Avishai,
Gerber, & Randles, 2012;Scott, 1988), most relevant for our
purposes is the dilemma posed by Spivak (1988): that is, despite
attempts by Northern actors—in this case, those involved in
governance or research—to support progressive agendas, (post)
colonial discourse undermines the representation of subaltern
experiences and perspectives, often foreclosing the possibility of
such voices being heard or understood.
2
We look to Southern
theory, to date underutilized in sport studies, as a way to illuminate
this dilemma in sports policy.
Southern theory draws critical attention to global periphery-
center relations, with a focus on the power relationships underpin-
ning knowledge. It aids in unveiling how the epistemologies of the
Global North profoundly shape global knowledge production; the
structures and institutions supporting academic research often
ignore, subordinate, and discredit epistemologies from other parts
of the world, including those of Indigenous peoples living along-
side and within settler colonial states (Connell, 2009). Connell
(2009) contends that Northern theory often posits universal claims
even though it evokes distinctly Eurocentric worldviews, values,
and biases. In doing so, it negates theories from the global
periphery that offer alternative conceptualizations and explana-
tions, thus perpetuating the colonial structures from which con-
temporary knowledge relations derive.
Consider sociology: the birth of discipline took place in the
“centers of the major imperial powers at the high tide of modern
imperialism. They were the ‘metropole’::: to the larger colonial
world”(Connell, 2009, p. 9). Canonical social theories may seek to
explain global change but do so from the position of the metropole,
yielding a skewed vision of the world. As Connell (2011, p. 288)
explains, “Much of current sociological thought is based on a great
fantasy—that the world of the metropole is all there is, or all that
matters, so that theories developed from the social experience of the
metropole are all that sociology needs.”Claims buttressed by
Northern beliefs are thus likely to serve hegemonic rather than
liberatory agendas (p. x). Southern theory, as a counter-hegemonic
project, challenges the supremacy of the Northern intellectual
thought by revealing how knowledge from the metropole reflects
Henne is with the Dept. of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and also with the School of Regulation and Global Governance,
Australian National University, Canberra, ACT. Pape is with the Dept. of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI. Address author correspondence to
Kathryn Henne at khenne@uwaterloo.ca.
216
Sociology of Sport Journal, 2018, 35, 216-225
https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2017-0150
© 2018 Human Kinetics, Inc. ARTICLE
a position of privilege and by drawing on knowledges from other
parts of the world.
The relegation of knowledges from the global periphery poses
a problem for governance (Basu, 2016). Reflecting on global sports
policy, Palmer (2013) acknowledges the lack of Southern theory
informing practice and research, a shortcoming that may have far-
reaching implications for the diverse peoples living in the global
South. Without their perspectives, we have a limited understanding
of what they are or might be. This article is an initial step in
promoting a larger sport-specific agenda that takes seriously the
tenets of Southern theory, using two illustrative case studies. First,
we analyze the relationship of women from the Global South to the
gender verification regimes of track-and-field. We then interrogate
assumptions of gender empowerment within sport for development
and peace (SDP) initiatives for women in Pacific Island nations.
Although distinctly different case studies, both are instances in
which Northern entities and actors exercise gendered forms of
biopower in the global South—that is, techniques of power lever-
aged through the coercive and productive management of Southern
women’s bodies (Foucault, 2007).
In illuminating dilemmas that emerge in each case, this paper
does not aim to provide a comprehensive picture of gender-specific
sports policy, nor does it offer a model for a Southern theoretical
agenda. Since we, as two Northern, White feminist researchers, are
arguably incapable of such an analysis, we offer what we can:
grounded analyses of the Northern assumptions embedded within
the universalist claims asserted through governance practices, and
reflections on the challenges of overcoming them. We conclude with
a discussion of how sport sociologists might embrace tenets of
Southern theory by taking steps outlined by Santos (2012) to support
and learn from epistemologies of the South. Our analysis is therefore
an invitation to consider how Southern theory might refigure analy-
ses of gender in sports governance, as well as the limits of such
endeavors when carried out by researchers from the Global North.
Methods
This analysis is based on two separate qualitative projects addres-
sing questions of gender and global sports policy through an
intersectional lens, using subsets of data from each. In each
case, we independently collected different forms of qualitative
data as we sought to capture the different sides and angles of the
issues at hand (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2008). As each author had
previously completed open coding and fine-grained analyses inde-
pendently, the analysis for this paper builds upon our earlier
immersion in the data and benefits from our in-depth knowledge
of each case study.
The first empirical section draws upon interview and textual
materials to analyze the regulation of eligibility in elite women’s
track-and-field. Our analysis stems from two key moments: first, a
2015 appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which saw
the suspension of the most recent International Olympic Commit-
tee (IOC) and International Association of Athletics Federations
(IAAF) policies aimed at prohibiting the participation of women
with so-called “unfair”biological advantages; and second, the
reaction of the elite track-and-field community to this suspension,
particularly in light of results at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de
Janeiro. We excavate the knowledge politics embedded in the
content and context of these regulations, as revealed in the CAS
assessment of their scientific legitimacy, procedures for informed
consent, and semi-structured interviews with 42 stakeholders in
elite track-and-field.
3
The second empirical section relies on ethnographic findings
on the development and implementation of gender-specific SDP
programming in Oceania.
4
In addition to 26 interviews with SDP
practitioners and policymakers, the data are distinct from the first
case study in that they come from “micro-ethnographies,”which
offer in-depth insights when combined with other data (Silk, 2005).
They entailed participant observation of individual workshops
dedicated to SDP programming in the region, policy meetings
and stakeholder outreach, work conducted in development orga-
nizations, as well as analysis of relevant SDP policy documents and
program evaluations. Existing collaborations with Pacific scholars
who are experts in transnational migration, health, and community
change (since 2010), and work with SDP programs serving Pacific
peoples (2012–2015), helped in capturing the nuances of these
perspectives during the research. The process revealed dilemmas
that emerged when considering Southern perspectives in both the
design and delivery of programs.
To build the analysis, we revisited our existing thematic codes
and focused specifically on the gendered dimensions of policy
practices in each case. We isolated relevant data by considering the
following: when and how Northern perspectives contributed to
policy, instances where Southern voices had limited to no oppor-
tunity to weigh in on policy issues, and challenges or tensions
arising from their inclusion. This approach enabled us to system-
atically tease out dilemmas of regulation and empowerment, in-
forming the structure and argument of the article.
Dilemmas of Regulation
The fraught regulation of female athletes with intersex character-
istics is a high-profile dilemma in Olympic sports, particularly
track-and-field. Sometimes described as gender verification or
sex testing, such practices aim to ensure that female athletes
with differences of sexual development do not benefit from a
“male-like”(thus unfair) athletic advantage. Feminist scholars
have critiqued these practices for policing women’s bodies and
imposing binary sex categories in ways that deny human biological
complexity (Henne, 2014;Pieper, 2016). In the wake of several
recent high-profile cases in track-and-field, featuring exclusively
women of Color from the Global South, many more scholars have
asked how the politics of race and imperialism intersect with these
gender dynamics (Bohoun, 2015;Cooky, Dycus, & Dworkin,
2013;Nyong’o, 2010). Such concerns, combined with the central-
ity of scientific and clinical knowledge in justifications for these
regulations, render this issue a productive site to illustrate Palmer’s
assertion that policy is not a “neutral or value-free exercise”
(2013, p. 82).
To briefly summarize recent events,
5
the Hyperandrogenism
Regulations of the IAAF and IOC were introduced in 2011 to
regulate the participation of women whose testosterone levels were
considered higher than “normal”due to differences of sexual
development.
6
In 2015, the CAS suspended these Regulations
following an appeal by Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, citing incon-
clusive evidence that women with elevated testosterone gain a
male-like advantage over their competitors (CAS, 2015). Caster
Semenya, a South African athlete whose gender was questioned in
2009, subsequently returned to world-leading form leading up to
the Rio Olympic Games, prompting a renewed international debate
that escalated when two other leading 800 m athletes (both women
of Color from African nations) were accused of having similar
biological advantages. The three athletes went on to become the
Olympic medallists in the women’s 800 m. In April 2018, the IAAF
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
Dilemmas of Gender and Global Sport Governance 217
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
announced new Eligibility Regulations to be applied only to
specific women’s middle-distance events, including the 800 m.
As articulated by Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina (2012;
see also Karkazis & Jordan-Young, 2018), a key claim among
feminist scholars is that the Hyperandrogenism Regulations dis-
proportionately target women of color from the Global South.
7
Historical analyses suggest that there is a longstanding preoccupa-
tion with the transgressive bodies of non-Western “Others”
(Henne, 2014;Pieper, 2016), which has focused on muscular
women athletes from the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War, turning
more recently to a racialized “North/South antagonism”(Bohuon,
2015). In this section, we introduce new empirical material to
consider how contemporary Hyperandrogenism Regulations are
racialized and imperialist. We focus our analysis on two dimen-
sions that sports governing bodies claim as objective and value-
free: the expert and procedural content of the regulations them-
selves and the context within which they are implemented. Both
contribute to constructing the bodies of women of Color from the
Global South as deviant and suspect.
Content: Value-Free Experts and “Informed”
Consent
The Hyperandrogenism Regulations stipulate only the selective
testing of female athletes. In the case of the IAAF, an athlete may be
investigated if the Medical Manager has “reasonable grounds”for
suspecting hyperandrogenism, with sources described as including
any information received by IAAF medical officials (IAAF, 2011,
p. 3). Similarly vague, the IOC states that only certain officials can
request an investigation but without specifying how they might
come to suspect a case of hyperandrogenism. The considerable
room for subjective interpretation goes unproblematized by gov-
erning bodies, evoking the tacit assumption that the clinical gaze is
impartial with respect to race and nation. The projection of this
knowledge as universal conceals its role in Northern projects of
Whiteness and the association of deviance with the bodies of
women of Color.
In addition to definitions of intersex being “context specific”
(Dreger & Herndon, 2009, p. 200), the history of intersex as an
object of clinical and scientific knowledge is tied to the colonial
production of racial difference. As Magubane (2014) demonstrates,
the emergence of intersex as a clinical condition entailed its
construction as a predominantly non-Western defect (see also
Fausto-Sterling, 1995). For example, medical texts from the
19th century to the 1980s alleged the over-representation of
sex-based abnormalities among people of Color in non-Western
contexts and the absence or rarity of intersex characteristics among
White populations (Magubane, 2014). Thus, expert knowledge of
intersex variation has long cast Black women as suspect in their
embodiment of femininity.
Experts from these and other presumed impartial scientific
fields were centrally involved in drafting the Hyperandrogenism
Regulations and justifying them before the CAS (see Pape, 2017).
While Chand’s appeal emphasized the partiality of clinical exper-
tise, including its geopolitical dimensions, the adjudicating CAS
Panel dismissed such claims as “sociological opinion”(CAS, 2015,
p. 134). The limited diversity of expert voices involved in the
development of the IAAF’s Hyperandrogenism Regulations was
also not considered a cause for concern.
8
As stated, the CAS
adjudicators were satisfied “that the IAAF has diligently sought to
create a system of rules that are fair, objective and founded on the
best available science”(p. 145). Although favorable to Chand in
the short term, the CAS decision endorsed the objectivity of the
IAAF and its experts, defining hyperandrogenism in sport as a
scientific matter and science—as the basis of this sports policy—as
neutral with respect to race and geopolitics. As warned by Palmer
(2013), we see the paradoxical embrace of evidence as value-free at
the same time that Northern actors in this sphere of sports gover-
nance are actively constructing what counts as evidence. It takes
Chand—a Southern actor with alternative experts—to reveal this
interpretive power, subsequently denied by the CAS.
A second problematic aspect of the Hyperandrogenism Reg-
ulations is the consent process for initial diagnosis and subsequent
medical interventions, which states that an athlete must give
informed consent before undergoing any diagnosis or treatment.
The alleged neutrality of informed consent deserves scrutiny, as the
gendered worldviews of physicians can influence the preferences
of patients (or their guardians), encouraging patients with intersex
characteristics to consent to unnecessary procedures (Hester,
2004). During the Chand appeal, a witness “cited examples of
athletes being forced to undergo surgery without clear information
about what the treatment involved”(CAS, 2015, p. 110). An IAAF
witness conceded “that it was ‘questionable at best’whether young
women in that position can give informed consent for medical
interventions within the current procedures”(p. 97).
Such concerns are exacerbated in the case of athletes from the
Global South. For instance, there are only six “IAAF Approved
Specialist Reference Centres”where athletes can undergo diagno-
sis and plan any subsequent course of action. With the exception of
Rio de Janeiro, these centers are located in OECD countries and
primarily the home countries of key individuals involved in draft-
ing the Regulations.
9
This raises questions of independence –both
professional and cultural –with respect to the “treatment”options
presented to athletes. Consequences of these arrangements are
captured in an article written by IAAF experts, which details
the treatment of four women athletes diagnosed with hyperandro-
genism, all aged 21 or younger and from “rural or mountainous
regions of developing countries”(Fenichel et al., 2013, p. 2). They
consented to a gonadectomy, clitoral surgery, and a “feminizing
vaginoplasty”(pp. 3–4), none of which are required under the
Regulations for an athlete to return to competition. In the absence
of health-related risks, these actions reflect the heteronormative
panic over ambiguous genitalia undergirding the accepted North-
ern clinical management of intersex bodies (Chase, 1998), which
prioritizes a so-called “normal”appearance and the capacity to
engage in heterosexual sex over the life-long discomfort that such
surgeries can cause (Chase, 1998;Grabham, 2012).
10
We know little about what information these women received or
how they came to make these so-called choices. The power dynam-
ics underpinning consent reflect longstanding concerns of postcolo-
nial scholars about the possibility of subaltern resistance—of being
able to speak and be heard—in the context of Northern imperialist
interventions (Spivak, 1988;Swartz, 2005). The guise of informed
consent conceals the severely constrained choices facing athletes in
this situation, which are between complying with a treatment plan,
never competing again, or attempting an appeal with limited re-
sources, which risks revealing one’s identity to the world. Witnesses
for Chand described risks faced by “outed”female athletes in
countrieslike India with a culture of “misogyny and violence against
women”(CAS, 2015, p. 111). The CAS panel defined these as
peripheralconcerns, with the key question being whether the IAAF’s
Hyperandrogenism Regulations were scientifically supported (Pape,
2017). Amidst these complications, an appeal to “informed consent”
serves to protect international sports governing bodies from liability
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
218 Henne and Pape
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
while legitimizing clinical interventions on the bodies of women
with limited ability to pursue other courses of action.
Context: Constructing “Suspect”Athletes and
Nations
Beyond the politics of expertise and consent, it is important to
consider the social context within which an athlete may be distin-
guished as “suspect.”According to the IAAF, the “community of
athletes”supports the Hyperandrogenism Regulations and should
be allowed to determine the boundaries of fairness in their own
sport (CAS, 2015, p. 27). Thus, the justification of the Regulations
is directly linked to views within the broader track-and-field
community on this issue, which have rarely been addressed within
academic research (Wells & Darnell, 2014). Our interview data,
collected following the 2016 Olympic Games, suggest that mem-
bers of the international track-and-field community do view certain
women from the Global South as suspect, a finding that not only
reflects the gaze of the Regulations but is also constitutively linked
to colonial histories and contemporary policy.
Echoing the historical association of intersex with Black
African women found in medical texts and practices, interviewees
conveyed that White female athletes are less likely to be “sus-
pected”of being intersex. For example, as a media commentator
and administrator stated, “If there’s a [white] female athlete who’s
very muscular and has a strong jaw, it’s not about her gender as a
man, it’s more that she’s butch. Whereas, I feel when people talk
about Caster [Semenya] or [Margaret] Wambui or [Maria] Mu-
tola,
11
it’s more that ‘she is a man,’so she is deceiving someone
[and] has internal testes at the very least.”Although not using the
language of suspicion, a female athlete similarly suggested that the
athletics community would be more “sympathetic”to “a woman
from London, who was White”than a Black woman from “a
remote faraway place”in rural Africa where “people just think they
live in villages and don’t have electricity.”Indeed, across the
interviews, we identified a racialized discourse in which African
nations were depicted as “tribal,”more prone to the “illness”of
intersex variation, economically impoverished, and more likely to
exploit their athletes, rendering them less morally upright than
countries in the Global North.
Two rumors were particularly revealing. First, several inter-
viewees referred to women with intersex characteristics being over-
represented within African “tribal”contexts, such as a female 800m
athlete who spoke of “certain tribes in Africa where there are larger
populations of hyperandrogenous women.”The second rumor,
which arose frequently in interviews, was that coaches and man-
agers were “going off [to Africa] looking for people with [intersex]
conditions specifically to make money out of them [female ath-
letes].”A team administrator had heard of “talent scouts that go to
Africa looking for girls who have gender discrepancies.”One
athlete described a manager as saying, “they’re coming from
everywhere, there’s going to be one on every African team.”
12
Such rumors were accompanied by descriptions that such women
were vulnerable to exploitation because of their impoverished
living conditions and limited life experience (according to one
athlete, “some probably have never left their town”). A more
general view of African nations as morally corrupt was evident
in comments that “the developed world”would be “more con-
cerned with protecting a girl than with winning medals ::: more
concerned with the social impact or consequences.”
Our interviews evidence a racialized moral discourse circulat-
ing in the track-and-field community that constructs women of
Color—and from African nations in particular—as suspect not only
in terms of the perceived greater likelihood of intersex variation,
but also in terms of their desperation to escape poverty, their
vulnerability to exploitation by corrupt national coaches or greedy
managers from the Global North, and the greater willingness of
African nations and their athletics federations to pursue winning at
any cost. Although these women are imagined as exploited, they
are still considered individually suspect and culpable for their
transgressions. Given the relationship between the context and
content of regulation, as well as the vague process by which an
athlete may be singled out for investigation, the presence of this
discourse further challenges the alleged geopolitical neutrality of
the Hyperandrogenism Regulations.
What remains unexplored here and in other research is how
perspectives of sex difference and fairness from outside the metro-
pole might inform these debates. For example, an interviewee
suggested that Black female athletes in one African nation sup-
ported the Hyperandrogenism Regulations and lobbied their
national federation to prevent certain athletes from competing.
Similarly, Chand allegedly came to the attention of Indian authori-
ties via the complaints of her domestic competitors (CAS, 2015).
Such insights add complexity to the view that gender verification is
a contemporary form of Northern imperialism, highlighting how
colonialism may still inform notions of gender and sex(uality) in
the Global South. McClintock (1995), for example, illustrates how
imperialism did not simply shape race and racial difference, but
also actively recruited Northern ideologies of sex and gender in its
service, the vicissitudes of which are still present. Understanding
how and why competitors in the Global South might subscribe to
these beliefs—as well as how others have refuted them—is part of a
larger agenda to which Southern theorists would be integral.
Dilemmas of Empowerment
Feminist scholars have critically examined gender empowerment
as a development objective, expressing concern about how ideol-
ogies and institutions can undermine its pursuit (Kabeer, 2005).
Neoliberal development models popular in Oceania offer a case in
point in that they fail to address the concerns of women in the
region (Underhill-Sem, 2012). They can reiterate tacit assumptions
that women in the Global South need Northern “modernizing”to
become empowered—what J.K. Gibson-Graham (2006, p. 177)
refers to as “the metaphorical ladder of evolutionary development.”
As such, many women in Pacific Island nations must navigate “the
legacy of colonial conquest and hyper-commodification,”both of
which contribute to their misrepresentation in policy (Hall, 2009,
p. 16). Here, we examine the impact of tensions manifest in SDP
policy targeting Pacific women, pointing to Northern misrepre-
sentations of Southern perspectives and experiences. Since formal
policy-level decisions often take place outside the local context of
service delivery, we account for perspectives of policymakers,
many of whom are White men of European descent, as well as
participants of Pacific heritage, only some of whom were involved
in consultation and policymaking processes.
SDP initiatives intended to empower women and promote
better health outcomes in the Pacificfit within broader development
agendas. A notable portion of SDP funding in Oceania comes from
the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT),
which supports other gender and development initiatives in the
Pacific. For instance, government funding backs Pacific Women
Shaping Pacific Development (Pacific Women), a ten-year, $320-
million program that works with the governments of 14 Pacific
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
Dilemmas of Gender and Global Sport Governance 219
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
countries, United Nations (UN) and regional agencies, civil soci-
ety, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and private-sector
actors to promote objectives laid out in the 2012 Pacific Island
Forum Leaders’Gender Equality Declaration. They include aims to
enhance women’s leadership and decision-making at different
levels of governance, encourage economic participation, reduce
gender violence, advance educational access for marginalized
women, improve health outcomes, and commit to regular moni-
toring and evaluation.
13
Here the hope, as stated in an interview
with an Australian policymaker, is that SDP programs targeting
Pacific women “would support our [DFAT’s] development targets
in the region.”
Sport, according to DFAT, has the capacity to support several
development aims, including women’s leadership, non-communi-
cable disease (NCD) prevention, community cohesion, and “life
skills”for children, such as “teamwork, respecting rules, discipline,
and perseverance”(Australian Government, 2015, p. 5). Although
formal agendas endorse the transformative potential of SDP, their
embedded assumptions of individuality, autonomy, and choice are
not necessarily congruent with Pacific worldviews (Lepani, 2012).
Northern notions that “value the individuated person”are often at
odds with how many Pacific peoples see themselves—that is, as
part of a network bound together by kinship, spiritual, ethnic, and
communal ties (Jolly, 1996, p. 18). Thus, well-intended programs
can uphold Eurocentric values and biases, which can have long-
standing consequences for communities. Pacific scholars, for
instance, make compelling critiques that foreign aid and develop-
ment contribute to the undermining and erasure of Pacific histories
and values (Hau’ofa, 1983). They warn that efforts to empower
Pacific women often fail to address the cultural norms underpin-
ning gender roles and inequality (Chattier, 2013). Our analysis
considers how Northern ideologies inform the design and the
delivery of SDP policy, sometimes negating Pacific perspectives
even after actively soliciting them. One outcome of these dynamics
is an incomplete—and sometimes misguided—construction of the
challenges facing Pacific communities.
Design: Policy Development and Politics of
Consultation
When developing guidelines for SDP programs targeting women in
the Pacific, policymakers navigate a range of institutionalized
governance demands. Key among them is the need to demonstrate
clear and measurable results. The strategic choices made against
this backdrop yield policies that tend to reflect governmental
priorities and accountability metrics (see Henne, 2017), not nec-
essarily the lived conditions that SDP participants navigate on the
ground. The problems targeted by policy are thus largely framed by
Northern worldviews, as are the mechanisms to ensure compliance
with policy objectives.
During the research, value judgments and tacit assumptions
surfaced in how policymakers presented women in the Pacificasa
target population during discussions around the use of sport to
support development objectives. Women’s empowerment was a
central concern, as was their health. Recognizing that NCDs
contribute to most deaths in the Pacific(Friel et al., 2011,
p. 248), they pursued policies to support programs that would
contribute to reducing women’s NCD risk, framing their SDP as an
anti-obesity intervention that could make Pacific women “more
active and fit.”In meetings and interviews, policymakers recounted
how weight loss measures were necessary to counteract pressing
health threats. As exemplified by one interviewee’s statement, there
are “troubling and unacceptable statistics, which show the vast
majority of these women are physically not healthy.”Those
lobbying for SDP would often emphasize this point, citing popu-
lation statistics about women—for example, that 93 percent of
Tongan women are overweight or obese (Scanlon, 2014)—along-
side particular claims about their bodies, such as the oft-repeated
assertion that “the average weight of a Tongan woman is 97
kilograms”or that “[Pacific] women should not be so large.”Their
statements about female bodies emerged as self-evidently alarm-
ing, a tendency observed by others writing on the gendered
dimensions of the “obesity epidemic”(Murray, 2008). When
probed for more information, however, the same participants
provided little, if any, detail about why the issue was particularly
distressing in relation to women.
Despite the individuated focus on the body, there was an
absence of disaggregated data on specific groups of women,
negating the diversity of women who live in the region. The
gap often became filled by ideological assumptions, particularly
around gendered relations in Pacific contexts, and presumptions
that the pursuit of fitness promotes health and female empower-
ment. In explaining how and why women become less physically
active through the life course, most interviewees acknowledged
that women have more household and familial responsibilities—a
point that resonates well beyond the Pacific. Careful not to blame
women for the high rates of obesity, many policymakers explicitly
acknowledged patriarchal traditions as the reason why women
were sedentary. As observed in other contexts (Eskes, Duncan, &
Miller, 1998), participants co-opted female empowerment rhetoric
to encourage physical activity. While some stated that SDP would
“give women opportunities to do something together on their own
without the men,”others were more forthright, with one even
saying it would “get the women out of the house and away from
controlling families.”Some also saw the strong role of religion in
many Pacific Island nations as an obstacle, claiming that it en-
courages norms that undermine both physical activity and female
independence by encouraging women to attend to familial obliga-
tions over their (individual) selves.
The supposition that Pacific women are inactive—and pre-
sumably obese as a result—overlooks the fact that many women
have disproportionate household and care-giving obligations,
which require significant labor and time and also extend well
beyond Eurocentric notions of the nuclear family. Preoccupied
with the goal of promoting change by making women more active
through sport, policymakers often lost sight of the issue that many
women negotiate communal dynamics and responsibilities. They
also negated how families, communities, and Church provide
forms of social protection that weaker state institutions often cannot
(Jolly et al., 2015). These connections are also central to many
Pacific peoples’relational sense of self and their wellbeing
(Manuela & Sibley, 2012). As one female participant of Pacific
heritage explained in an interview, “We don’t see things like you.
We are part of something bigger ::: We all have a place and have
obligations that are part of it. My family, Church, community, they
are part who I am and what I do. It wouldn’t make sense another
way.”While policymakers acknowledged women’s demanding
responsibilities, they did not consider the more complicated point:
that women’s roles might be integral to their and their communi-
ties’wellbeing, not simply sources of female marginalization or
isolation.
Disconnects between policymakers’understandings of Pacific
communities and lived experiences on the ground shaped SDP
agenda setting, becoming manifest in the commitment to
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
220 Henne and Pape
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
“evidence”within policy development and evaluation (Henne,
2017). Although policymakers spoke of the importance of con-
sulting Pacific peoples, they usually did so after identifying desired
—and usually measurable—outcomes. Northern priorities thus
informed the core elements of policy, with engagement serving
to demonstrate that interventions were not imposed top-down (or
North-South). However, as one Pacific respondent conveyed, “at
least it’s something.”But, as scholars have observed in other
contexts (Reardon, 2006), consultation can serve to legitimize
Northern projects rather than ensure marginalized or underrepre-
sented groups are genuinely enabled to shape the process or redress
embedded Northern biases. Consultation in the context of SDP
policy design did not always go smoothly. For instance, to secure
support for a program targeting women in Tonga, policymakers
consulted male leaders since few women hold political positions,
even though they are influential in family networks (Jolly et al.,
2015, p. 21). In recounting the meeting, policymakers expressed
frustration over their Tongan counterparts’initial “resistance to
programs that would benefit women, even though it’s clear they
[women] need their own spaces.”When Tongan leaders stated
concerns about disrupting familial and communal networks, pol-
icymakers doubted the potential negative consequences, describing
some of their language as “clearly patriarchal”and citing the
absence of women in attendance as evidence that women had
been excluded from consultation.
Follow-up discussions with two Pacific female interlocutors
yielded alternative interpretations. When asked about securing
local support for SDP targeting women, they highlighted (North-
ern) policymakers’failure to take seriously the relational aspects of
personhood, something they explained was essential for getting
community members on board.
They acknowledged the stigma around adult women partici-
pating in sport, saying it was essential to work on getting support
from community members and institutions, including the Church,
because “they will affect whether women actually participate [in
programs].”Rather than condemn men’s“patriarchal talk,”their
primary concern was that policymakers’characterizations would
be used to keep local stakeholders out of planning discussions
rather than to ensure the inclusion of women. As one stated, “So
now these [White] men are worried about Tongan women being
disrespected?”She continued, “Do they realize we how long Tonga
has been a matriarchal society and that it’s colonialism that
changed that?”While there was “still a ways to go”in terms of
gender equity, she pointed to Tongan women’sinfluential roles as
sisters and the additional responsibilities that come with men
migrating overseas for work. Her words pointed to the multiple
ways that European beliefs about gender have influenced different
areas of the Pacific, including through engagement with Christian
missionaries, traders, and other settlers (Jolly & Macintyre, 1989),
as have ongoing changes linked to the globalized movements of
people and ideas across the region (Teaiwa, 2008). Thus, any effort
to encourage women’s empowerment must attend to these com-
plexities, which instrumentalized outcome measures fail to address.
Delivery: Unintended Consequences of
Empowerment
Although women from the region were not present in many SDP
policymaking contexts, it did not mean that programs planning and
implementation failed to involve Pacific women. In fact, Pacific
interlocutors suggested that discussions between leaders and
women likely occurred through alternative modes of engagement.
As observed during SDP planning meetings, a Pacific man of high
status might, for example, make an authoritative statement that
would go unchallenged by other Pacific men or women in the room.
In follow-up interviews, though, it became clear that the other
participants had conveyed different sentiments. As one woman
said, “That wasn’t the place [in front of White policymakers] to
challenge [him]. There are other ways to handle them [the matters
discussed].”Another reiterated that the priority was to ensure
funding for local programs, as “women will decide how it’s
implemented”in communities. In contrast, policymakers made
judgements and decisions based on what they could observe in
public spaces, and, as revealed through interviews, their perceived
absence of women’s voices increased the likelihood that they
would dismiss Pacific viewpoints on grounds they were not fully
representative. However, many Pacificwomen’s conversations and
modes of engagement, for various reasons, remained beyond the
observation of a pa¯lagi (here, a Northern policymaker or
researcher).
Nearly all interviewees, irrespective of background, contended
that the strongest SDP programs relied on women and their
understanding of distinct Pacific values and contexts. One program
that policymakers referred to as “best practice”received praise for
its promotion of women’s health and empowerment, because its
organizers, including women of Pacific heritage, worked closely
with local groups to identify barriers to participation among women
ages 15 to 45 and to develop outreach strategies to assuage
community concerns and counteract social stigma around adult,
particularly married, women’s participation (Australian
Government, 2011). Media campaigns included participants,
church representatives, and doctors to reinforce messages about
the benefits of sport activity. “Community Mobilizers”at the
grassroots level encouraged participation, and the program sup-
ported tournaments, coaching training, and equipment provisions.
Pursuing the policy objective of promoting weight loss, the pro-
gram requires women to be weighed at annual tournaments,
offering prizes to participants who lose the most weight (Sherry,
Schulenkorf, Nicholson, & Hoyle, 2014). Formal evaluations
maintain a focus on individual change, providing no insight into
community-level change or the broader effects of disciplinary
messages focused on weight loss, such as possible lower self-
esteem or negative body image perceptions.
Other funded programs, such as the Pacific Volleyball Part-
nership in Fiji, received positive endorsements from a variety of
interviewees for empowering women and conducting outreach
with village headmen to encourage local support for women’s
physical activity. Additionally, the Pacific Women’s Sport Lead-
ership Forum, a weeklong program held in Papua New Guinea,
involved 20 women from across the region. Supporting the goal of
gender empowerment, it encouraged Pacific women’s participation
in sport governance by facilitating new professional opportunities,
networks, and presumably adjoining forms of social capital.
Although the overwhelming majority of participants framed the
Forum in positive terms, two interviewees questioned whether the
umbrella “Pacific women”negated the diversity of women and
gender ideologies across the Pacific. Moreover, analyses of educa-
tional outreach suggest that access to such training does not
necessarily ensure empowerment, especially if broader inequalities
are not addressed (Chattier, 2013). However, to dismiss such
programs as merely essentialist and thus not productive fails to
consider how the subjectivity of different actors in development
can be “fluid, contradictory and multiple,”partnering in ways
that can yield “alternatives to hegemonic neoliberal policy and
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
Dilemmas of Gender and Global Sport Governance 221
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
practice”(Underhill-Sem, 2012, p. 1110). For example, as Yvonne
Underhill-Sem (2012) acknowledges, feminist activists in the
Pacific, despite being few in numbers, have made notable in-roads
in political domains where women are rare, with some leading UN
agencies and prominent NGOs.
14
Despite the diversity of women in the Pacific, intersections
between ethnicity, gender, and sexuality often remain outside the
discourse and formal SDP agendas in the region. Women, includ-
ing, but not limited to, those participating in traditionally male-
dominated sports (e.g., rugby in Fiji), occupy and navigate a double
bind. Their participation can require them to navigate, transgress,
and sometimes actively resist not only gendered inequalities, but
also the broader norms that sport traditionally reinforces
(Kanemasu & Molnar, 2017). Consider Fiji, where there is signifi-
cant racial diversity and inequality and where homosexual activity
was criminalized until 2010. Can sport provide a space to express
and protect non-normative gender and sexual identities? How
might SDP better address the benefits and risks posed by sport
participation?
Instead of being formally attentive to intersectional subjectiv-
ities, the SDP discourse analyzed here tends to reify static notions
of Pacific women struggling under forms of patriarchy rooted in
traditional local norms. Such characterizations minimize the im-
plications of colonialism and global capitalism and render Pacific
cultures as homogenous and static. They persist even though all
Pacific participants interviewed for this study expressed strong
feelings about colonialism’s enduring effects, the vitality of Pacific
cultures, and the complexities of promoting traditional agendas,
especially when simplistic narrations and rhetoric might marginal-
ize women. Also rendered invisible in discourse is the gender
diversity across Pacific Island countries, which exceeds Northern
constructions of binary sex (male/female), such as Tongan fakaleiti
and Samoan fa’afafine (both of which are considered male at birth
but have masculine and feminine traits). Work concerned with
gender and development often fails to attend to their experiences
and needs, even though Pacific communities have long recognized
these identities and their shifting contours under colonial condi-
tions. Northern categories of binary gender, even with good
intentions, tend to either negate or misunderstand them. In doing
so, the development objective of women’s empowerment threatens
to become a mechanism for buttressing heteronormative beliefs,
continuing the longer history of colonial and neoliberal economic
interventions that misrecognize—yet still try to intervene in—the
Pacific Island nations and communities.
Discussion and Concluding Considerations
Southern theory is an important reminder that hegemonic forces
can prevent the inclusion of knowledges from outside the metro-
pole. The case studies presented here offer only partial accounts of
such barriers in sports governance; however, they illuminate two
distinct dilemmas for consideration: (1) the problematic nature of
rules reliant upon universalist claims around women’s bodies, even
those that purport to be scientifically informed and therefore value-
free, and (2) the impossibility of Northern perspectives being able
to fully grasp the postcolonial dynamics that contribute to the
development and reception of policy. Because Northern values
are embedded in governance practices, they are difficult to identify
at first. Concealed within allegedly universal, rational, and objec-
tive structures of global sports governance, they are dynamics
that Southern theory can bring to the surface. Santos’notion of a
“sociology of absences”is therefore particularly relevant, defined
as “research that aims to show that what does not exist is actually
actively produced as non-existent ::: as an unbelievable alternative
to what exists”(2012, p. 52). If Southern critiques of Northern bias
within systems of sports governance appear incredible, it is because
Northern systems actively produce them as irrelevant—even invis-
ible. This practice of obscuring is part of Northern politics, whether
intentional or not. A situated approach to Southern theory offers a
corrective lens that aids in illuminating them, as seen in both cases
presented here.
In the case of the Hyperandrogenism Regulations, race and
nation are actively produced as irrelevant to the regulatory practices
of sports governing bodies. Consistent with a broader push towards
evidence-based policy in international sport (Palmer, 2013), the
IAAF (and CAS) claim to be deferent to the “best available
science.”Despite the expertise that underpins these regulations
projecting objectivity and universality, women from the Global
South are disproportionately cast as suspect. Applying the insights
of Santos, the apparent absence of an association between the
IAAF’s regulatory regime and Northern imperialism relies on
institutional arrangements that shore up and conceal the hegemony
of the metropole as a site for the production and application of
gendered knowledge.
In the SDP case, dilemmas emerge in relation to Northern
influences on policymaking and perceptions of Pacific contexts.
Although governance arrangements create spaces for consulting
Pacific communities, they limit the scope of engagement, present-
ing seemingly self-evident solutions that fail to fully hear or value
Pacific perspectives. Coincidentally, initiatives echo shortcomings
of colonial interventions; that is, as in the case of gender verifica-
tion, there are no meaningful mechanisms for including Southern
knowledges. In another parallel, the governance of SDP—and
arguably aid and development more generally—reinforces certain
kinds of absences, erasing the historical and contemporary role of
the Global North in shaping conditions in the Pacific(Hau’ofa,
1983). While Northern researchers may understand these dynamics
in a general sense, the depth of knowledge necessary to fully
engage them can exceed Western feminist sensibilities—a limita-
tion that even the most reflexive practices may not account for.
Connell (2009,2011) encourages the inclusion of Southern
perspectives in academic knowledge, but Santos provides clear
advice on how to do so. Fostering Southern epistemologies,
according to Santos (2012), demands moving beyond the excava-
tion of absences—that is, locating the invisible, discredited, and
non-intelligible. It requires recognizing the capacities and possi-
bilities of the South, the plurality of these knowledges, and the need
for horizontal translations of experience and ideas between South
and North. This approach poses a challenge for Northern gover-
nance systems, which often institutionalize hierarchies that pre-
serve metropolitan worldviews. As gender inequality pervades
structures of sport governance beyond questions of policy, fem-
inists from the Global North cannot fully deconstruct or develop
strategies for refiguring sport as a gendered institution without
Southern partners. Although there is important sociological schol-
arship on sport that embraces feminist postcolonial thought and
critically engages the privileges afforded to stakeholders in the
Global North (e.g., Hayhurst, 2011;Hayhurst & Giles, 2013;
Kanemasu & Molnar, 2017;Magubane, 2014;Sykes, 2017),
most work in the field does not query how these dynamics are
rooted in unequal global knowledge flows—a core prescriptive
consideration of Southern theory.
This article contributes to what Santos (2012, p. 58) calls the
“deconstructive challenge”of identifying where and how Northern
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
222 Henne and Pape
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
biases persist within two areas of sports policy. The “reconstructive
challenge”is in large part the task of Southern scholars, since it
involves revitalizing subaltern knowledges that have been inter-
rupted and discredited by the metropolitan worldviews. As Connell
(2009) reminds us, Northern scholars can be critical allies in
facilitating the dissemination of these much-needed knowledges.
We thus invite fellow scholars of sport to not only more deeply
engage with the tenets of Southern theory in their research, but to
also strategically consider how their positionality can be used to
promote knowledge produced outside the metropole.
Notes
1. We acknowledge that many scholars prefer “Two-Thirds World”or
“Three-Fourths World”, because it rejects binary constructs and their
ideological assumptions (Hayhurst & Giles, 2013). Since we are engaging
with Southern theory, we use “Global South”to avoid confusion.
2. The subaltern, according to Spivak (1988), occupies a subject position
in which discourse prevents the accurate representation of their experience
or expressions.
3. Interviews for this first study were conducted in late 2016 and early
2017. 28 interviewees were directly connected to the Rio Olympic Games.
The remaining 14 participated in other Olympic Games, World Champion-
ships, or Commonwealth Games. The sample includes 26 athletes, 12
coaches, 4 media personnel, and 3 team staff, representing nine, primarily
English-speaking countries. The sensitivity of the topic at the time of
interviewing prohibited a broadly representative sample; however, a
combination of purposive and snowball sampling ensured various per-
spectives and arguments were reflected, with follow-up questions used to
elicit them as fully as possible. Interviewing continued until reaching
saturation, which became evident when no new information or distinct
thematic codes were emerging in the data.
4. Keeping with an ethnographic approach, interviews for the second
study were unstructured to generate more information about the parti-
cipants’experiences and perspectives (Briggs, 1986). Doing so required
establishing rapport—which was especially important when interview-
ing participants of Pacific heritage and usually required introductions
from one of their trusted colleagues. Collected between late 2012 and
2015, the data come from a sample that includes 9 SDP advocates and
practitioners, 6 development workers in the Pacific, 7 Pacific community
representatives, and 4 policy-makers. Interviews sought an in-depth
understanding of observed contexts and conditions, thus requiring
purposive sampling to ensure that the sample reflected different gendered
perspectives and did not over-represent the accounts of close
interlocutors.
5. For an extended historical account of gender verification, see Pieper
(2016).
6. Regulations stipulate that any female athlete found to have functional
testosterone levels above 10nmol/L—defined as the beginning of the
“male range”—must undergo “normalizing”treatment before returning
to competition (IAAF, 2011).
7. Similarly, an IAAF official claimed that the Hyperandrogenism
Regulations “were ensnaring athletes from developing countries with
little ::: means to contest the rules”(Leicester, 2016).
8. Fourteen experts, including ten from Western Europe, North America,
and Australia, developed the IAAF’s Hyperandrogenism Regulations. A
2015 review of the IOC Hyperandrogenism Regulations and Transgender
Guidelines involved 20 experts, with 16 from Western Europe and North
America.
9. Centres are in Melbourne (Australia), Nice (France), Stockholm
(Sweden), Hershey (USA), Tokyo (Japan), and Sao Paolo (Brazil).
10. It was reported that the IAAF cancelled a press conference promoting
this research because of concerns regarding legal action (Bouchez, 2016).
11. Multiple interviewees identified Mutola, a retired Black female
800m runner from Mozambique whose successes spanned the 1990s
and 2000s, as suspect. Other successful competitors from this same period
were not. One such British athlete, also a woman of Color, was described
by a coach as “not as identifiable as a Black athlete as Semenya or
Mutola.”
12. Karkazis and Jordan-Young (forthcoming) have identified similar
rumors circulating among policy-makers and elected officials of the IAAF
and IOC (see also Pieper, 2016).
13. More information is available via the Pacific Women website: http://
www.pacificwomen.org/
14. Examples include the head of UNIFEM Pacific (2005 to 2011), Fiji
Women’s Rights Movement and Punanga Tauturu in the Cook Islands
(Underhill-Sem, 2012, p. 1111).
References
Adriaanese, J.A., & Schofield, T. (2013). Analyzing gender dynamics in
sport governance: A new regimes-based approach. Sport Manage-
ment Review, 16(4), 498–513. doi:10.1016/j.smr.2013.01.006
Australian Government. (2011). Tonga netball strategy: Health commu-
nication strategy and phase 1 campaign workplace, 2011–14. Can-
berra, ACT: Australian Sports Outreach Program.
Australian Government. (2015). Australian sports diplomacy strategy,
2015–18, Retrievedfrom http://dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/
Documents/aus-sports-diplomacy-strategy-2015-18.pdf.
Avishai, O., Gerber, L., & Randles, J. (2012). The feminist ethnographer’s
dilemma: Reconciling progressive research agenda with fieldwork
realities. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 42(4), 394–426.
doi:10.1177/0891241612458955
Basu, S. (2016). The Global South writes 1325 (too). International Poli-
tical Science Review, 37(3), 362–374. doi:10.1177/01925121166
42616
Bohuon, A. (2015). Gender verifications in sport: From an East/West
antagonism to a North/South antagonism. The International Journal
of the History of Sport, 32(7), 965–979. doi:10.1080/09523367.2015.
1037746
Bouchez, Y. (2016, August 19). Mauvais genre. Le Monde.
Briggs, C.L. (1986). Learning how to ask: A sociolinguistic appraisal of
the role of the interview in social science research. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Carney, A., & Chawansky, M. (2016). Taking sex off the sidelines:
Challenging heteronormativity within “Sport in Development”
research. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 51(3),
284–298. doi:10.1177/1012690214521616
Chase, C. (1998). Hermaphrodites with attitude: Mapping the emergence
of intersex political activism. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay
Studies, 4(2), 189–211. doi:10.1215/10642684-4-2-189
Chattier, P. (2013). Does schooling and work empower women in Fiji?
Or have gender inequalities persisted and why? Global Chance,
Peace & Security, 25(1), 61–76. doi:10.1080/14781158.2013.
758097
Claringbould, I., & Knoppers, A. (2008). Doing and undoing gender in
sport governance. Sex Roles, 58(1–2), 81–92. doi:10.1007/s11199-
007-9351-9
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
Dilemmas of Gender and Global Sport Governance 223
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
Connell, R. (2009). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in
social science. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Connell, R. (2011). Sociology for the whole world. International Sociol-
ogy, 26(3), 288–291. doi:10.1177/0268580911404452
Cooky, C., Dycus, R., & Dworkin, S.L. (2013). “What makes a woman a
woman?”versus “our first lady of sport”: A comparative analysis of
the United States and the South African media coverage of Caster
Semenya. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 37(1), 31–56. doi:10.
1177/0193723512447940
Court of Arbitration for Sport. (2015). CAS 2014/A/3759 Dutee Chand v.
Athletics Federation of India & The International Association of
Athletics Federations. Interim Arbitral Award. Retrieved from. http://
www.tas-cas.org/fileadmin/user_upload/award_internet.pdf
Dreger, A.D., & Herndon, A.M. (2009). Progress and politics in the
intersex rights movement: Feminist theory in action. GLQ: A Journal
of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 15(2), 199–224. doi:10.1215/10642684-
2008-134
Eskes, T.B., Duncan, M.C., & Miller, E.M. (1998). The discourse of
empowerment: Foucault, Marcuse, and women’sfitness texts.
Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 22(3), 317–344. doi:10.1177/
019372398022003006
Fausto-Sterling, A. (1995). Gender, race and nation: The comparative
anatomy of ‘hottentot’women in Europe, 1815–1817. In J. Terry & J.
Urla (Eds.), Deviant bodies: Critical perspectives on difference in
science and popular culture (pp. 19–48). Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Fenichel, P, Paris, F., Philibert, P., Hiéronimus, S., Gaspari, L., Kurzenne,
J.Y., ::: Sultan, C. (2013). Molecular diagnosis of 5α-reductase
deficiency in 4 elite young female athletes through hormonal screen-
ing for hyperandrogenism. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology
and Metabolism, 98(6), E1055–E1059. PubMed ID: 23633205 doi:
10.1210/jc.2012-3893
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the
College De France, 1977–78. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian.
Friel, S., Chiang, T., Cho, Y., Guo, Y., Hashimoto, H., Jayasinghe, S., :::
Rao, M. (2011). Freedom to lead a life we have reason to value? A
spotlight on health inequity in the Asia Pacific region. Asia Pacific
Journal of Public Health, 23(2), 246–263. PubMed ID: 21398299
doi:10.1177/1010539511402053
Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2006). The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A
feminist critique of political economy (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Grabham, E. (2012). Bodily integrity and the surgical management of inter-
sex. Body & Society, 18(2), 1–26. doi:10.1177/1357034X12440825
Hall, L.K. (2009). Navigating our own “Sea of Islands”: Remapping a
theoretical space for Hawaiian women and Indigenous feminism.
Wicazo Sa Review, 24(2), 15–38. doi:10.1353/wic.0.0038
Hau’ofa, E. (1983). Tales of the Tikongs. Honolulu, HI: University of
Hawai’i Press.
Hayhurst, L.M.C. (2011). Corporatizing sport, gender, and development:
Postcolonial IR feminisms, transnational private governance, and
global corporate social engagement. Third World Quarterly, 32(3),
531–549. doi:10.1080/01436597.2011.573944
Hayhurst, L.M.C., & Giles, A. (2013). Private and moral authority, self-
determination, and the domestic transfer objective: Foundations for
understanding sport for development and peace in Aboriginal com-
munities in Canada. Sociology of Sport Journal, 30(4), 504–519. doi:
10.1123/ssj.30.4.504
Hayhurst, L.M.C., MacNeill, M., & Frisby, W. (2011). A postcolonial
feminist approach to gender, development and EduSport. In B.
Houlihan & M. Green (Eds.), Handbook of sport development
(pp. 353–365). London, UK: Routledge.
Henne, K. (2014). The “science”of fair play in sport: Gender and the
politics of testing. Signs, 39(3), 787–812. doi:10.1086/674208
Henne, K. (2017). Indicator culture in sport for development and peace:
A transnational analysis of governance networks. Third World
Thematics, 2(1), 69–86. doi:10.1080/23802014.2017.1353892
Hester, J.D. (2004). Intersex(es) and informed consent: How physicians’
rhetoric constrains choice. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 25(1),
21–49. PubMed ID: 15180094 doi:10.1023/B:META.0000025069.
46031.0e
International Association of Athletics Federations. (2011). IAAF regula-
tions governing eligibility of females with hyperandrogenism to
compete in women’s Competition. Monaco, Europe: IAAF.
Jolly, M. (1996). Woman ikat raet long human raet o no? Women’s rights,
human rights, and domestic violence in Vanuatu. Feminist Review,
52(1), 169–190. doi:10.1057/fr.1996.14
Jolly, M., Lee, H., Lepani, K., Naupa, A., & Rooney, M. (2015). Falling
through the net? Gender and social protection in the Pacific.
UN Women. Progress of the World’s Women, 2015–16. Retrieved
from http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/
9/dps-gender-and-social-protection-in-the-pacific
Jolly M., & Mcintyre M. (Eds.). (1989). Family and gender in the Pacific:
Domestic contradictions and colonial impact. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Jordan-Young, R., & Karkazis, K. (2012). Some of their parts: “Gender
verification”and elite sports. Anthropology News, 53,S1–S41.
Kabeer, N. (2005). Gender equality and women’s empowerment: A criti-
cal analysis of the third millennium development goal 1. Gender &
Development, 13(1), 13–24. doi:10.1080/13552070512331332273
Kanemasu, Y., & Molnar, G. (2017). Double-trouble: Negotiating gender
and sexuality in post-colonial women’s rugby in Fiji. International
Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(4), 430–446. doi:10.1177/
1012690215602680
Karkazis, K., & Jordan-Young, R. (2018). The powers of testosterone:
Obscuring race and regional bias in the regulation of women athletes.
Feminist Formations, 30(2), in press.
Leicester, J. (2016, August 15). Inside an Olympian’s testosterone ordeal.
The Big Story. Retrieved from http://bigstory.ap.org/article/38fe98
c9a6fb44b7a133a2bffbdafc9c/only-ap-inside-olympians-testosterone-
ordeal
Lepani, K. (2012). Islands of love, islands of risk: Culture and HIV in the
Trobriands. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
Magubane, Z. (2014). Spectacles and scholarship: Caster Semenya, inter-
sex studies, and the problem of race in feminist theory. Signs, 39(3),
761–785. doi:10.1086/674301
Manuela, S., & Sibley, C.G. (2012). The Pacific identity and wellbeing
scale (PIWBS): A culturally-appropriate self-report measure for
Pacific peoples in New Zealand. Social Indicators Research, 112(1),
83–103. doi:10.1007/s11205-012-0041-9
McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in
the colonial contest. New York, NY: Routledge.
Murray, S. (2008). The ‘fat’female body. New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillian.
Nyong’o, T. (2010). The unforgivable transgression of being Caster
Semenya. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory,
20(1), 95–100. doi:10.1080/07407701003589501
Palmer, C. (2013). Global sports policy. London, UK: Sage.
Pape, M. (2017). The fairest of them all: Gender-determining institutions
and the science of sex testing. In M.T. Segal & V. Demos (Eds.),
Advances in gender research: Gender panic, gender policy (pp. 177–
202). Emerald Books.
Pieper, L.P. (2016). Sex testing: Gender policing in women’s sports.
Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
224 Henne and Pape
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
Reardon, J. (2006). Creating participatory subjects: Science, race, and
democracy in a genomic age. In S. Frickel & K. Moore (Eds.),
The new political sociology of science: Institutions, networks, and
power (pp. 351–377). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E.A. (2008). Writing: A method of inquiry. In
N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Collecting and interpreting
qualitative materials (3rd ed., pp. 473–500). Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage.
Santos, B.S. (2012). Public sphere and epistemologies of the South. Africa
Development, 37(1), 43–67.
Scanlon, J. (2014). Fighting women’s health problems in the Pacific.
Sportanddev.org Newsletter. Retrieved from https://www.sportand
dev.org/en/article/news/fighting-womens-health-problems-pacific
Scott, J.W. (1988). Deconstructing equality-versus-difference: Or, the
uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism. Feminist Studies, 14(1),
32–50. doi:10.2307/3177997
Sherry, E., Schulenkorf, N., Nicholson, M., & Hoyle, R. (2014). Tonga
Netball Association Pacific Netball partnerships phase one evalua-
tion. Melbourne, VIC: Centre for Sport and Social Impact, LaTrobe
University.
Silk, M.L. (2005). Sporting ethnography: Philosophy, methodology, and
reflection. In D.L. Andrews, D.S. Mason, & M.L. Silk, (Eds.),
Qualitative methods in sports studies (pp. 65–103). Oxford, UK:
Berg.
Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L.
Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp.
271–311). Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Swartz, S. (2005). Can the clinical subject speak? Some thoughts on
subaltern psychology. Theory & Psychology, 15(4), 505–525. doi:10.
1177/0959354305054749
Sykes, H. (2017). The sexual and gender politics of sport mega-events:
Roving colonialism. London, UK: Routledge.
Teaiwa, T.K. (2008). Globalizing and gendered forces: The contemporary
militarization of Pacific/Oceania. In K.E. Ferguson & M. Mironesco
(Eds.), Gender and globalization in Asia and the Pacific: Method,
practice, theory (pp. 318–334). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i
Press.
Underhill-Sem, Y. (2012). Contract scholars, friendly philanthropists, and
feminist Activists: New development subjects in the Pacific. Third
World Quarterly, 33(6), 1095–1112. doi:10.1080/01436597.2012.
681499
Wells, C., & Darnell, S. (2014). Caster Semenya, gender verification and
the politics of fairness in an online track & field community.
Sociology of Sport Journal, 31(1), 44–65. doi:10.1123/ssj.2012-0173
SSJ Vol. 35, No. 3, 2018
Dilemmas of Gender and Global Sport Governance 225
Downloaded by khenne@uwaterloo.ca on 12/11/18
