Talk:Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2020-21/Power of gender in sport

Note on collaboration and contribution
Bearing in mind that the Wikibook discussion page is fairly inefficient collaboration tool that does not really suit modern style of communicating, we as group have collectively chosen to use alternative channels of communication. Given that, in order to provide some evidence of our joint collaborative effort, we have decided to prepare this short note that presents the development of our ideas and approaches in chronological order.

Wiki-book workshop: We have used this session to brainstorm about some possible topics to explore. We started the meeting by articulating our personal academic interests which luckily and conveniently happened to coincide. The willingness to explore power in some societies-related issue emerged naturally in the conversation. Initially we’ve expressed some interest in the geopolitical analysis of USA actions towards Kurds in the Middle East, but after a short discussion we have decided to leave it on due to the freshness of the issue and limited access to academic resources. Our attention was then pointed towards gender studies and gender inequality which presented to be not only relevant but also extensively researched. Almost immediately, we have all agreed that although this area of study is interesting, it is far too broad to approach it meaningfully without exceeding the 1200 words limit. With the intention of narrowing the topic down, we have decided to draw on our personal experience and knowledge. As a result, we have ended up choosing Power of Gender in Sport as our primary issue. Following this decision, we had a brief discussion on some possible disciplinary approaches that we could employ- at that time, however, we have made no commitments to any of them yet.

After this session, WhatsApp has become our primary channel of communication. We have also been holding in-person meetings every Monday.

Week 1:
 * In the first week we have decided to individually research the topic. The aim was to broaden our knowledge and explore different disciplinary approaches.
 * All members of our group have come across some interesting ideas and concepts which were shared in the group chat. We have ended up discussing mainly two topics:
 * 1) transgender people in sports (with the focus on power dynamics related to maintaining fair competition without discrimination)
 * 2) women in sports (with the focus on power structures in global markets and social organisation)
 * After the careful consideration, we have decided to settle on the second issue. From pragmatical point of view, we have figured that it would be easiest if we had approached the problem from three different disciplinary angles. The disciplines that were most frequently referenced in our conversations were business, biology, and feminist theory.

Week 2:
 * A discussion about the value of interdisciplinary approach that we had in our seminar group made us realize that we might have failed to identify the necessary tension between chosen disciplines. It prompted us to revisit our choices. As a result, we have decided to entirely drop the idea of exploring biology- the scientific/biological approach to the issue of gender equality in sports seemed to offer very little insight to the investigation of power relations. Instead we have chosen to focus on the role of education and sociology (which were chosen as a means to ascribing feminist theory to some academic disciplines). The business part remained the same, although we have had some struggles in isolating its theoretical approach- initially we have fallen into the trap of describing business theory in terms of sociological concepts- a trap which we later identified to be the disciplinary tension that we were looking for.
 * When our understanding of the issue became a little bit clearer- we have structured the contents of the chapter, and established some division of work, with each member of the group focusing on the different discipline.

Week 3:
 * Week 3 was the time when most of the proper writing took place.
 * Early on, we have adjusted the structure of the chapter. In the development phase, it turned out that points made in the education and sociology sections would be quite similar, and including both of them would not add any value to our work. With the intention to avoid repetition, we have decided to merge those sections together (leaving it under the name of sociology which presented to be sufficient to cover its contents). Thanks to that, we have saved some space for a concise introduction and conclusion.
 * With the deadline approaching, we have assigned additional tasks for each member of the group. Marius was chosen to ensure that our referencing fits the Vancouver style, Molly was appointed to work on editing and conclusion, and I was assigned to write this short note on our collaboration and contributions. which we proudly regard to be evenly distributed.