The Gendered World of Sport. An Analysis of the Influences on Italian Society and Communication

The practice of sports is now thought to have a positive influence on the various social aspects that characterize a person’s well-being: health, socializing, volunteer work, economic development and integration. In the specific sphere of this study, if it is true that sport can be defined as a new right, then it is worth exploring if and how this right is experienced and exercised in real terms from both the male and female standpoint. Is sport really a place of equal opportunities? How do these opportunities manifest themselves and what value is attributed to them by women and men? What result do the strategies to promote women’s entrance into the world of sport have? These are the question this study will consider. Here we can raise interesting issue by linking equality in sport with equality in the workplace and in society. Throughout history, these two ideas seem to run directly parallel to one another, and even reflect the state of one another. As women have continued to assert themselves in the workplace, they also seem to be breaking through the gender barriers in the world of sports. The idea reflects the inclination of our society to keep women in roles that are normative not only in the area of sport, but throughout all other spheres of a woman’s life as well. Hence a good course of action in attempting to deal with inequality in general, is to investigate and attack it on all fronts simultaneously as a single broad issue, and not to simply examine inequality in sport or inequality in the workplace as separate issues.