There has been gender inequality in sports for years. In the culture of sports, the perspective of hegemonic masculinity is the norm, thereby marginalising other perspectives such as the perspectives of women and subordinated men. This inequality can have damaging consequences and there have been several attempts at addressing this problem. However, these attempts mostly focus on inequalities between men and women and therefore leave out another important aspect of this inequality, namely the marginalisation of the perspectives of subordinated masculinities. It is crucial to disclose these different perspectives to challenge the dominant and supressing discourse, so sports become more equal and accessible to all men. This research contributes to this movement by uncovering the perspectives on masculinity in two contrasting spheres, namely a gym and a yoga context. In this study, these perspectives will be compared with one another and subsequently, with the hegemonic norms. The research question that guides this process is as follows: How do the experiences on masculinity by men who exercise at the gym or do yoga relate to our current understandings of masculinity in sports? To answer this question, ten qualitative, phenomenological interviews have been executed to gather these personal experiences on masculinity. Five men exercising at the gym and five men doing yoga have participated and their ages were mainly between 20 and 30 years. On top of that, four participated observations have taken place of which two at the gym and two at yoga. The empirical results showed that the experiences of the men exercising at the gym or doing yoga in some respects reinforce the existing stereotypes of masculinity in sports, but on many other aspects push the boundaries of this framework. For example, the men at the gym seem to attach less value to the hegemonic values than is framed in the literature. Or, the men doing yoga still experience elements of hegemonic masculinity even though it was thought not so. What can be concluded from this, is that the way masculinity is generally perceived in sports does not completely add up to reality. The comparisons show that the framing created in the literature about masculinity in sports is too restricting and this research is a step to broaden this. Implications of this research could be to facilitate dialogue groups where athletes can express their different perspectives on masculinity freely or that future research could focus on deepening this understanding of masculinity and include participants from different age groups, socio-economic classes or cultural background.
- masculinity
- inequality in sports
- masculine stereotypes
- yoga
- gym