The gendering of leadership in sport organisations: Post-structural perspectives

In this chapter, the author argues that the gendering of leadership in sport organisations has generally been under-theorized. She describes her search for clues that began long before she wrote the 1992 article, which might add to the theorizing about gender and especially to that about gender in sport organisations. The author focuses on gendered organisational processes and underlying assumptions using qualitative methodologies rather than looking at gender differences and quantifiable outcomes. J. Acker has argued that organisations consist of often invisible processes that together gender an organisation. The author and I. Claringbould explore the under-representation of women managers/directors in sport organisations by combining a post-structural discursive approach with Acker's processual theory of gender in organisations. Michel Foucauldian framework suggests that language and discourses often serve as sources of common sense and of invisible underlying assumptions and are seen as truths, that are internalised by individuals and become embedded in organisational processes and structures.