Library Dissertation Showcase

“O … you’re the coach?”: how does the intersectional relationship of race and gender and its impact on the experiences of black female sports coaches

  • Year of Publication:
  • 2022

This research study investigated the impact of the intersectionality of race and gender on the experience of a black female sports coach. The aim was to identify and explore how the ingrained ideologies and norms impacted the experience of a black female coach within different coaching contexts. Both black feminist theory and existing research highlighted the absence of black women from both societal and coaching research, providing a lack of understanding on black women’s experiences. Autoethnography was used to collect a variety of personal memory (autobiographical timeline), self-reflective (culturagram) and self-observational data (systematic self-­observation). The data was analysed using thematic narrative analysis, identifying the key themes of the identity negotiation of black women within the simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility in sports coaching contexts. The study concluded that black women must negotiate a dual state hypervisibility and invisibility due the ingrained negative perceptions about their characteristics. Highlighting, the power of the dominant group and its ability to control the visibility and perception of black women, therefore black women were marginalised and excluded within the environment.

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