Gender and Disability: How Filipino Women with Disabilities Construct Femininity through Professional Sports

Despite broader changes in elite sports, women para-athletes remain a minority in the traditionally able-bodied elite sports culture. As a sport profession, women para-athletes continue to be treated as secondary, subordinate, and dependent—attributes that are characterized as antithetical to hegemonic notions of athletic prowess. As a result, women para-athletes continue to be marginalized and undervalued regardless of their physical and mental ability to compete. Organizational-level efforts towards disability inclusion have not significantly closed these gaps either. This ongoing research examines how women para-athletes navigate the able-bodied and masculinized sports culture by constructing femininity and sports on their own terms. Using Connell’s hegemonic masculinity and Collins’ hegemonic femininity as a framework, this study explores the extent women para-athletes challenged, modified, and directed able-bodied sports spaces that are hostile and at many times, discriminatory to them. Through analyzing a qualitative dataset from 6 women para-athletes, this article hopes to reveal various (re)constructions of femininity of women athletes at the intersection of gender and disability. This article contributes to literature on how reconstructions of femininity can operate as a concept that resists hegemonic masculinity and femininity, which may encourage women with disabilities to reclaim their bodies that have long been subdued throughout history including sports.