Can Kenyan Women Really Perform? Women on the Sports Field and in the Boardroom

Abstract

Sport is a major sociocultural phenomenon in Kenya, and in the world as a whole. It plays a key role in shaping the collective identities of nations and societies in the modern era. Sociologists have since the 1950s and 1960s established that sport is vital in maintaining stability in society. From this perspective, modern sport is a mechanism for the integration of social categories within one national entity. Various theories have been used to justify and contextualize the national and economic aspects of modern sports. These theories on the socioeconomic significance of sport in society stimulated extensive discussion on sport as a cultural field, subject to control and power relations. Some of the theories that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s were the feminist theories in sport that created an awareness that sport is a central cultural institution, directly related to gender identity and male hegemony (Burke, 2010; Coakley, 2009; Cooky et al., 2013; Knijnik, 2013; Perets et al., 2011; Wadesango et al., 2010). The feminist theories argue that sport creates and recreates ideological support of the superiority of men over women, and glorifies women in fields perceived as contrary to their biological “nature” (Burke, 2010; Mean, 2001). This ideology, which is deeply associated with the evolution of sport, draws its justifications from assumptions that attribute fragility and physical and mental weakness to women, thereby assuming that the female body is unable to attain physical feats in athletics compared to men (Burke, 2010; Sabo, 1993).