Chapter 6: The Face of Gender, Sport for Development

The idea of sport being directed towards achieving ulterior social, political and economic outcomes is not new. Historically, there have always been developmental outcomes tied with sport, whether it was made apparent through the European state and its concerns for the physicality of its agents and general populations, a readiness for war, or for health and hygiene purposes. In a historical analysis of sport, it is useful to understand how sport was used in the era of colonialism and imperialism as a tool for change and ‘discipline’, where those in power aimed to control the population and avoid resistance.

Concerns within the current sport for development discourse surround the way sport is being positioned in the current sport-in-development ‘movement’ as inherently ‘good’, prescribing a level of ahistoricism which considers sport a priori to be a force of good (Giulianotti & Armstrong, 2014). This notion that sport is inherently good relies on various assumptions about what sport is able to do at micro, meso and macro levels.