Michelle Helstein - University of Lethbridge
Français
The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and Physical Activity (CAAWS) is the only national public sector initiative and the only multi-sport organization in Canada charged exclusively with promoting and enhancing sport and physical activity for girls and women. In this privileged position as the predominant public sector voice, CAAWS has the potential to offer competing, more diverse and just, representations of active females than might be expected of profit motivated private companies. The proposed research will ascertain whether this is the case through an analysis of how private sector funding in Canadian sport impacts upon representations of female sport participants in Canada. Popularly, CAAWS is considered an advocacy group and its representations of the female sport participant are framed, for example, within discourses of empowerment, participation, diversity and inclusion. However, the CAAWS leadership has also acknowledged discourses of marketing, efficiency, commodification, and corporatization as legitimate (CAAWS, 2006). Through the systematic collection and review of CAAWS promotional materials this research will ascertain if these latter discourses, which seem necessary given current federal funding regimes (Sport Canada, 2006b), are intersecting, marginalizing, and/or silencing the former discourses and impacting the ways in which female sport participants are represented by CAAWS. Given the power of representation to communicate, legitimate, and reify certain types of knowledge and identity, the representations produced by CAAWS are significant texts that need to be explored for their politics. This research aims to identify who and what counts as a female sport participant within public sector representations produced by CAAWS at a historical moment marked by increased private sector funding. The research will contribute to a necessary discussion of the place of private sector funding within CAAWS specifically and the Canadian sport delivery system generally.
The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport and Physical Activity
(CAAWS) is the only national public sector initiative and the only multi-sport organization in
Canada charged exclusively with promoting and enhancing sport and physical activity for girls
and women. In this privileged position as the predominant public sector voice, CAAWS has the
potential to offer competing, more diverse and just, representations of active females than might
be expected of profit motivated private companies. The proposed research will ascertain
whether this is the case through an analysis of how private sector funding in Canadian sport
intersects with changing federal funding regimes to impact upon representations of female sport
participants in Canada.
CAAWS was first established in 1981 through the Fitness and Amateur Sport Branch of the
federal government in response to recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Status
of Women. Initially, CAAWS was a feminist advocacy group committed to “advancing the
position of women” in and through sport (Hall, 2002). Through a series of shifts in federal
funding regimes, CAAWS was transformed into a multi-sport organization with core operational
and project funds from Sport Canada. In its shift from a specifically feminist advocacy group to
an agency of the Canadian sport delivery system CAAWS has become increasingly more
concerned with marketing, business administration, and private sponsorship (McKay, 1999).
Given the acknowledged necessity to monitor and evaluate public policies designed to enhance
participation in sport in Canada (Sport Canada, 2006a), there is a need for an analysis of
CAAWS in this contemporary historical moment. Popularly, CAAWS is considered an advocacy
group and its representations of the female sport participant are framed, for example, within
discourses of empowerment, participation, diversity and inclusion. However, the CAAWS
leadership has also acknowledged discourses of marketing, efficiency, commodification, and
corporatization as legitimate (CAAWS, 2006). Through the systematic collection and review of
CAAWS promotional materials and interviews with its executive staff and board of directors, this
research will ascertain if these latter discourses, which seem necessary given current federal
funding regimes (Sport Canada, 2006b), are intersecting, marginalizing, and/or silencing the
former discourses and impacting the ways in which female sport participants are being
represented by CAAWS.
The representations of female sport participants that are popularized and authorized within the
Canadian sport delivery system are a product of the discourses that have emerged and been
produced as legitimate in that context. Given the power of representation to communicate,
legitimate, and reify certain types of knowledge and identity, the representations produced by
CAAWS are significant texts that need to be explored for their politics. That is, how do these
representations contribute to a knowledge of “what can spoken, how it may be spoken about,
and who can speak it” (Shogan, 1999)? This research aims to identify who and what counts as
a female sport participant within public sector representations produced by CAAWS at a
historical moment marked by increased private sector funding. The research will contribute to a
necessary and systematic discussion of the place of private sector funding within CAAWS
specifically and the Canadian sport delivery system generally.
SCRI 2007 Presentation Slides
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