Tackling gender inequity : Singapore's national female hockey players speak up

• Main Author: Shahrani Rahiman
• Other Authors: Ken Peh Kian Chye
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59155
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Over the years, the gender equity movement in the sporting domain has been very successful in narrowing the gap between the male and female athletes. However, such rapid advancements would also prove to be the root of the increasing complacency in addressing this issue. In Singapore, gender equity has easily turned into an assumed organizational value of the governing National Sport Associations. In most cases, these organisations become complacent when they believe that sufficient has been done in addressing this issue. The aim of this study was to use a women-centred approach to challenge the assumed gender equity notion in the provision of the national teams in Singapore, using Singapore Hockey Federation (SHF) as a case study. This study revolves around the question of whether the female national hockey players perceive the SHF to be gender equitable when providing for the national teams of the two genders. Two focus groups were conducted, involving female national/ex-national hockey players (n=11) to gather their perceptions while interviews were also conducted with SHF’s full time executives and Team Singapore Hockey members, to understand the circumstances surrounding the perceptions of the female players. The players felt very strongly that they have been treated inequitably and it was compromising their team performances. However, they were unaware of Singapore Sports Council’s centrality in the provision of the Women’s national team and may be wrongly attributing SHF as the cause of their perceived inequity. This perceived inequity challenges local sports administrators to take a step backwards and first acknowledge the possibility of a gender inequity problem in the provision of Singapore sports.