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Challenging the Leadership Narrative in Sport: An Exploration of NCAA Division I Women Student-Athletes' Understandings of Leadership

Line, Joanna
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5529-3160
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1626709771716249

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, American Culture Studies.
Leadership discourse in U.S. sport tends to privilege White, masculine, heterosexual, individual, men (Anderson, 2009; Chin, 2007; Liu, 2019; Suyemoto & Ballou, 2007). The persistent lack of representation of women administrators and coaches in collegiate sport is demonstrative of this exclusionary discourse (Acosta & Carpenter, 2014; Burton, 2015). Student-athletes are emerging leaders in the field of sport and therefore how they develop an understanding of leadership and their leadership capacity should be considered. This ethnographic study explores the perceptions NCAA Division I women student-athletes of how leaders develop, who can lead, and which values and behaviors are characteristic of leadership. My exploration was guided by Batliwala’s (2011) feminist leadership diamond which includes five components: the self, power, principles and values, purpose, and practices. I also applied Foucault (1995), VeneKlasen and Miller (2007), and Batliwala’s (2011) conceptualizations of power to examine how power operates in interactions among people within an organization to influence who is perceived as a leader and how leadership is enacted. Crenshaw’s (1989) concept of intersectionality provided an analytical lens (Bowleg, 2008) to examine how inequitable distribution of power functions along multiple, intersecting axes of oppression (Collins & Bilge, 2016) and shapes the experiences of student-athletes with multiple minoritized identities. The results offered four major findings. First, the student-athletes’ definition of leadership offers an alternative to the traditional conceptualization of leadership in sport. According to these student-athletes, leaders are invested in the ongoing process of supporting team members’ personal and athletic growth. However, they negotiate this understanding of leadership with dominant cultural ideology within NCAA Division I athletics. This negotiation is also shaped by their postfeminist (Gill, 2007) and post-Title IX (Barak et al., 2018) cultural context. Second, the student-athletes’ discussion about their role models affirms the importance seeing people they can relate to in leadership roles. Third, the feminist leadership diamond provides a framework to integrate examination of power and the self into how leadership is defined in an organization. Fourth, the student-athletes’ insights offer the opportunity to reimagine coaching practices to cultivate an inclusive and collaborative understanding of leadership in sport.
Vikki Krane, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Andy Garcia, Ph.D. (Other)
Sandra Faulkner, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
V Rosser, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
310 p.
American Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Sports Management; Womens Studies
sport; athletics; collegiate athletics; college sport; student-athlete; leadership; women leaders; women athletes; student-athlete leadership; power; coaction; collaboration; collaborative leadership; feminist leadership

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Line, J. (2021). Challenging the Leadership Narrative in Sport: An Exploration of NCAA Division I Women Student-Athletes' Understandings of Leadership [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1626709771716249

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Line, Joanna. Challenging the Leadership Narrative in Sport: An Exploration of NCAA Division I Women Student-Athletes' Understandings of Leadership. 2021. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1626709771716249.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Line, Joanna. "Challenging the Leadership Narrative in Sport: An Exploration of NCAA Division I Women Student-Athletes' Understandings of Leadership." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1626709771716249

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1626709771716249
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© 2021, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.