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Embodying Contradictions

The Case of Professional Women's Basketball

University of Chicago

As women have continued to redefine themselves in a changing world, many barriers to their entry into sport have been lowered, and women's sports have flourished. This article is an ethnographic case study of a women's professional basketball team, the Midtown Wave. Analyses of this team reveal patterns of domination in a venture that might be viewed at first as a feminist success story, with the potential to challenge dominant norms. This research adds to current literature on women in sports, emphasizing the confluence of gender, race, and social class in women's basketball. It shows the difficulties of capturing social worlds in static social categories and provides a fuller picture of how these categories are lived as dynamic layers of identity within local contexts. A focus on ground-level social processes illuminates difficulties of attaining social change within the growing world of women's sports.

Key Words: women • gender • sport • race • intersectionality • identity • basketball

Journal of Sport & Social Issues, Vol. 30, No. 3, 265-288 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0193723506288655


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