Exploring legitimacy of women’s professional team sport

Wendy O’Brien, Alana Thomson, Kristine Toohey, Tracy Taylor and Clare Hanlon

Sport Management Review, 2025, vol. 28, issue 5, 1030-1053

Abstract: The recent growth in career opportunities for women athletes to be considered as ‘professionals‘, provides a fertile research environment to ascertain their employment conditions. Our research aims to scrutinise employers’ gendered organisation practices and how/if these act to position women in contested, recognised or denied states of legitimacy. Using a feminist post-structural approach and an application of legitimacy theory, we interrogate the employment practices of four team sports that have recently introduced women’s professional leagues. Drawing on grey literature, media reports and strategy documents, we analyse the power/knowledge relations present within each sport’s strategies and discursive practices for these leagues. We posit that women’s legitimacy positionality is evidenced through: teams and length of season; salary and employment contract inclusions; and health and welfare benefits. Our findings illustrate how the alignment with men’s Collective Bargaining Agreements and/or Players Associations has provided a degree of legitimacy for women’s claims. Our research expands legitimacy theory through a feminist poststructural approach, that frames legitimacy as a continuum with discursive and dynamic shifts, and conflicting narratives moving organisations towards or away from legitimacy.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14413523.2025.2533536 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:28:y:2025:i:5:p:1030-1053

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsmr20

DOI: 10.1080/14413523.2025.2533536

Access Statistics for this article

Sport Management Review is currently edited by Sheranne Fairley

More articles in Sport Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().