Women participating in sport: tensions rising from negotiations of aging, gender norms, and personal responsibility for health in later life
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Older women have typically faced systemic exclusion from sport, often a result of intersecting age- and gender-based norms and/or constraints. This study investigated how 22 women (mean age 61 years) participating in recreational or competitive sport understood and experienced their participation in relation to societal expectations of aging, gender, and maintaining health and wellbeing. Methods: The women, aged 52-77 years, each participated in a semi-structured interview to explore their perspectives on aging, disability, societal perceptions, and sport engagement. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, anonymized, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, emphasizing researcher subjectivity and iterative theme development. Results: The women framed their sport involvement as a moral and disciplined practice, aligning with neoliberal ideals of personal responsibility and self-management for health in later life. However, their narratives also highlighted systemic barriers, such as professional demands, caregiving responsibilities, and gendered norms, that constrained their participation. This "double barrier" of age and gender norms produced a tension between perceived agency and structural exclusion. Discussion: While older women actively asserted responsibility for their health and engagement, their experiences revealed that structural inequities related to age and gender expectations, not personal failings, often limited participation. Conclusion: These findings challenge responsibility-centred narratives and call for inclusive sport policies that account for the socio-cultural and institutional barriers shaping older women's experiences in sport and exercise contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".