Aging Female Athletes: The Challenges of Performance, Policy and the Pursuit of Health
Abstract
The growing population of older competitive athletes presents an opportunity for exploring the ways older people negotiate the social construction of aging. It also presents an opportunity to explore the function of high-performance physical activity in aging. This dissertation seeks to investigate the narratives of women (60+) as they discuss their pursuit of sport and activity at the highest levels. Specifically, I explore how older women construct and maintain an athletic identity, in a Canadian sporting culture where policies supporting both sport for participation and sport for performance have impacted opportunities. For women beyond menopause, it is evident that individuals can achieve significant health and strength benefits from exercise and participation in sport.
In Masters Championships, in a variety of sports, senior women athletes are demonstrating that they do not need to accept a major decline of aerobic power and muscle strength as an inevitable feature of aging. They are demonstrating that they are capable of conditioning their bodies through rigorous training regimens (Kirby & Kluge, 2013; Pfister, 2012). They are a testament to the remarkable resilience of the human body when it is properly maintained and to the role of sport in successful aging (Akkari, Machin & Tanaka, 2015; Baker, Horton & Weir, 2010; Bülow & Söderqvist, 2014). This research highlights how the experiences and embodied knowledge of the participants in my study have facilitated their continued participation in sport and the maintenance of an athletic identity across the course of their lives.
Specifically, I explore the ways participants maintain their sporting bodies and athletic identities. My findings show that my participants tend to identify as outsiders within the current Canadian sporting context. They also reveal that healthy living discourses were an important motivation for prolonged involvement in sport. A considerable focus of this dissertation is directed at understanding how participants construct and maintain identities that address the discourses of sport for performance and sport for health. In doing this I show that Masters sport provides a site for the formation of multiple interpretations and constructions of sporting identities throughout the course of one’s life.
Description
Keywords
Education--Health, Education--Social Sciences, Economics--History, Recreation, WomenÕs Studies, Public Health, Recreation
Citation
Job McIntosh, C. (2016). Aging Female Athletes: The Challenges of Performance, Policy and the Pursuit of Health (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24748