A history of the present on the “sportsman” and the “sportswoman”

The purpose of this article is to disseminate the construction of manliness and womanliness in Swedish sport. Of particular interest is gender equity policy in sport as a new way of creating sexual/ gender difference. Michel Foucault’s concept ‘a history of the present’ – a genealogical approach – serves as an important tool in this work. Interviews with athletes in their teens (track and field athletics) and texts published by the Swedish Sports Confederation serve as empirical material. When asked about themselves as track & field athletes and their ways of seeing others participating in track & field, the boys often speak about themselves and other boys in a straightforward and unproblematic way. The girls on the other hand, speak about themselves and other girls in a problematic way. This is not an unexpected result, but the conventional interpretation is that it is a sign of gender inequalities in sport. From a genealogical point of view, it might rather be seen as an effect of gender equity policies. Gender equity policy can be seen as a practical strategy of guaranteeing women and men the opportunities to do the same thing – sport, simultaneously performing two distinct and clearly differentiated gendered subjects, to be equalised. As such, gender equity policies might be perceived as an apparatus that produces and regulates sexual/ gender difference.