Higher Goals: Women's Ice Hockey and the Politics of Gender - Paperback

by Nancy Theberge (Author)

Offers a fascinating ethnography of physicality and gender relations in women's team contact sports.

Winner of the 2001 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Book Award

The most extensive treatment to date of women's experiences in team sports, Higher Goals provides an ethnographic account of the "Blades," a Canadian team that plays at the highest levels of women's hockey. With a vivid depiction of life on the Blades, the book follows the team over two seasons, tracing their journey to a national championship. Key issues in the sociology of sport and gender studies are explored, including the construction of community among women athletes; the "feminine apologetic" and pressures on athletes to conform to feminine ideals; homophobia and the experiences of lesbian athletes; and physicality and women's experience in contact sports.

Author Biography

Nancy Theberge is Professor in the Departments of Kinesiology and Sociology at the University of Waterloo. She is coeditor of Sport and the Sociological Imagination and coauthor of Why People Recreate.