Religion, Sport, and Gender: Preliminary Findings of Intersection

Tensions emerging in the intersections of religion, gender, and sport have recently been highlighted with issues of inclusivity towards the presence of religious signifiers in athletic spaces. FIBA’s recent hijab ban, illustrates such intersections, as the inclusion of a religiously gendered identity marker became problematized through discourses of sport regulation and acceptable athletic performance wear. Such intersections of religion, gender, and sport have been largely ignored by scholars in both issues of public policy implicating issues in contemporary secularism, and the mutual imbrications of intersecting identity category performances. This paper presents the preliminary findings of my doctoral research on the intersection of religion, gender, and sport identities and explores through interviews with women from Muslim, Mormon, Christian, and Jewish identities, how sport identity and athletic performance has been shaped by their interactions within regulated athletic performance spaces.