Research project The possibility of exercising sport is considered a basic right in many parts of the world. However, for transgender individuals and for the organizations arranging sport this constitutes a challenge. This is mainly a consequence of the gender binary that constitutes the most central premise for competitive sport. This project investigates how this issue is handled and what implications it may have for the regulation, governance, administration, and exercise of sport.
The possibility for transgender individuals to participate in sport is an issue that causes debate. For some, it is an issue about justice for female athletes, for others it is about equal treatment. This project investigates what sport does to include transgender individuals by which we want to construct knowledge on the transforming effects of such work. This knowledge can be used to shed light on potential changes in how sex, gender, gender identity, and equality is understood and treated. It can also contribute to a broader understanding of also other dividing lines used in sport.
Transgender inclusion has surfaced as one of the more protruding issues in contemporary public debates. For sport, the issue is as a matter of the very basic right to participate. One reason as to why transgender inclusion is treated as a controversial issue is that it challenges assumptions about the ways in which sport is regulated, organised, administered and exercised. As the gender binary constitutes the most central premise for competitive sport, inclusion of transgender people necessitates a reconsideration of how to divide athletes, posing the very elementary question of who should be competing with and against who.
Knowledge about how National Sport Federations (NSFs) work to manage transgender inclusion and what implications such work potentially has on the regulation, organisation, administration and eventually exercise of sport is however completely lacking. Therefore, the overall purpose of this project is to explore what transgender inclusion work entails and the potential transformative effects it generates. Three Research Questions (RQs) are addressed. RQ1: How is transgender inclusion work managed? RQ2: What are the conditions for transgender inclusion work? RQ3: How does transgender inclusion work potentially transform understandings of gender? To answer these questions, the project draws on data generated from interviews with incumbents of positions that bear significance for NSFs’ management of transgender inclusion work.
The significance of this work lies in its potential to uncover aspects that lie beyond analyses of transgender policies or individual athletes’ experiences. The project extends knowledge via its focus on the organizational transformation associated with the implementation of transgender policies, the recursive relationship between norms around transgender people and organizational structures and practices, and the (mis)alignment between management of transgender inclusion and efforts associated with other social categories.
