The influence of gender segregation and teamsport experience on occupational discrimination in sport-based employment

This research uses 30 interviews with sport-based employers in the United Kingdom to examine how men’s teamsport participation reproduces men’s advantage in sport-related occupations during hiring for sport employment positions. Not only does formalized gender segregation in sport provide men with vital social networks less attainable to women, but teamsport competition experience, through gendered notions of what counts as ‘teamwork’, being a ‘team player’, and ‘leadership qualities’, also provides an illusory image of employment competency implicitly gendered as masculine. Results illustrate how men’s privilege of ‘teamsport hegemony’ occurs at the moment of social reproduction through expectations of social role congruity in leadership as well as how patterns of gender segregation within sport contribute to occupational segregation impeding women’s equality. We offer policy prescriptions to address the problem.