Superwomen? Young sporting women, and learning not to be perfect

What is it about?

New forms of neoliberal femininity create demanding expectations for young women. For talented athletes, these pressures are intensified by the establishment of dual-career discourses that construct the combination of high-performance sport and education as an ‘ideal’ pathway. These pressures are especially felt by young women who aim to live up to ‘superwoman’ ideals that valorize ‘success’ in all walks of life. Drawing on existential phenomenology, and in-depth interviews with 10 talented Finnish sportswomen (aged 19-22), we explored young sporting women's experiences of time, including their bodily experiences of inhabiting the achievement life-world. We analyzed how these sportswomen either learned ways of living up to this ambitious script or came to understand the detrimental effects of the script, necessitating other ways of being. For those who experience a disjuncture between the ‘perfect’ and their embodied experience, self-care practices are needed to restore life-world harmony.

Featured Image

Photo by Becca Matimba on Unsplash

Photo by Becca Matimba on Unsplash