Cairo, Egypt

The Gender Symposium, held by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is an annual event that is designed to provide a platform for gender-focused debates. The theme for the 2009 symposium is Gender and Sports in Africa’s Development.

According to COSESRIA, sports is an arena that is uniquely gendered, differentiating as it does between men and women, boys and girls, in ways that have largely come to be accepted by many societies. Not only are most sporting activities organised along dual terms, they also set the competitive standards differently according to biological sex, with the female standard usually lower than that of the male. And yet for all these differences, the sporting arena retains its attraction for developmental projects. Most sporting activities offer opportunities for inclusive participation irrespective of gender, class, race, literacy, and other otherwise marginalising attributes. In recent times, a lot of sporting activities have also contributed to the development of individuals, communities, countries, and the African continent in various ways. At a political level, sport in Africa has made possible the renewal and expression of a continental African identity, especially with the upcoming Soccer World Cup in 2010, the first Soccer World Cup to be held in Africa.

Participants in the 2009 CODESRIA Gender symposium will be invited to consider various dimensions of gender and the multifaceted sports arena including athletics, cricket, children’s games in Africa, and ball sports, with a view to reflecting on emerging and continued possibilities and obstacles in the search for and process towards a gender-inclusive African development project.

The symposium will, among other things, explore the following topics:

• theories of play and development as viewed from a gendered perspective, including children’s versus adult forms of play;
• gender, sports, and theories of pace in development terms;
• traditional and modern sporting practices – and the interfaces between them – as viewed from a gendered perspective;
• gender, sports, and questions of audience and participation
• modes and patterns of the refraction of gender differentiation into local/global sports governance and participation;
• impact of global processes on local struggles for engendering sports;
• roles of local and/or global civil society in the mobilisation of gendered development through sports;
• sports, gender, and work;
• dialectics of multiple identities and citizenship in the practice of sports in a global age;
• sports, gender, and violence
• the gendered aspects of sports as performance and spectacle;
• sports and the articulation of gendered identities – including national, cultural, sub-cultural, and literary articulations;
• new forms of international commodification of players and their gender implications;
• new forms of trans-national commerce in players and potential players and their development implications through the gender lens;
• sports as global business and implications for the developing world in gender terms;
• sports, the media, and gender in Africa’s development; and
• re-thinking gender and development in a global sporting age: alternatives open to women and men in the quest for gender equality.

Click here for more information about the symposium in PDF format.

Participation will be by expression of interest and direct invitation to CODESRIA scholars working in the field. All those interested in the symposium are invited to send an abstract of the paper they would like to present not later than August 31, 2009. If accepted, the full papers developed out of the abstracts must be received by September 30, 2009 for further review prior to final confirmation of selection from CODESRIA.