Sociology of Sport and Women in the Global South: An Evolving Epistemic Landscape

Summary

Sociological and social scientific studies of women and sport are situated within the geopolitics of knowledge production, which has historically rendered the field Northern-centered. This enduring epistemic structure continues to marginalize Southern women and researchers within extant scholarship. Particularly since the 2010s, however, growing numbers of scholars have critically engaged with women’s sporting experiences and their intersection with enduring coloniality and multiple relations of power across diverse regions of the Global South. A primary example is sport for development (SFD) literature, which, despite its continuing Northern orientation in authorship and circulation, has advanced research conducted with, rather than simply about, Southern women in sport. Its major contributions include critiques of Northern feminist and development logics structuring donor-led SFD programs and the reflexive reconfiguration of North–South research relations. Beyond SFD literature, Southern-led and Southern-centered scholarship has emerged from varied geographical locations, addressing such wide-ranging topics as physical education, public health, gender-based violence, nationalism, and transnationality. Women’s football remains the sport of greatest scholarly interest, while a nascent interest is identifiable in women’s engagement with Indigenous sports and games. Notably, Lusophone and Hispanophone feminist sport scholarship, which is well established across Latin America, has yet to be fully incorporated into the Anglophone body of work. Analytically and methodologically, decolonial, postcolonial, and Indigenous feminisms are emerging as primary frameworks for epistemic and methodological interventions within the field. Decolonial feminist approaches, increasingly employed by Southern researchers, may be complemented by locally grounded analyses that move beyond the “inclusion” of Indigenous and Southern voices. Anthropological and broader social scientific insights from Pacific Islands sport literature are illustrative in this regard.