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Sport is a powerful global arena (Coakey, 2001). Burstyn (1999) asserts that sports, more than any other secular cultural institution or activity, engages people in a shared experience (Hovden and Pfister,2006,p5). This experience can be seen as a uniting force; a bridge that bonds divisions of society. However, it also possesses the normative power to strengthen the social standards that create the divisions in the first place.

Gender and sex, distinctly, are two of these divisions. Gender is a social construction referring to the behaviours and norms associated with each sex. (FAO, 1997). In contrast, sex is a biological framework 'based in a combination of anatomical, endocrinal and chromosomal features’ (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet,2018:p2). Both are key social organising principles have the ability to create power dynamics and hierarchies through weighted social classifications. Given sport’s cultural and global relevance, it provides a key power base in the socialisation and presentation of gender. As Hall argues, ‘Sport today represents not only a global movement but also a highly institutionalised cultural practise that helps to maintain male hegemony in our societies’ (Hall, 1990 in Hovden and Pfister, 2006:p4). Sport has, historically, been male dominated yet more recently has also been a medium in the movement towards gender equality. Sport thus holds a key position for both fortifying traditional hetero-normative gender identities as well as being a vehicle for social and cultural change (Birell and Theberge, 1994). Disciplines have different stances on, and roles in, the power imbalance in sport.