No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change

In just a few decades, sport has undergone a radical gender transformation. However, Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner suggest that the progress toward gender equity in sports is far from complete. The continuing barriers to full and equal participation for young people, the far lower pay for most elite-level women athletes, and the continuing dearth of fair and equal media coverage all underline how much still has yet to change before we see gender equality in sports.   The chapters in No Slam Dunk show that is this not simply a story of an "unfinished revolution." Rather, they contend, it is simplistic optimism to assume that we are currently nearing the conclusion of a story of linear progress that ends with a certain future of equality and justice.  This book provides important theoretical and empirical insights into the contemporary world of sports to help explain the unevenness of social change and how, despite significant progress, gender equality in sports has been "No Slam Dunk."    

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 CHERYL COOKY AND MICHAEL A. MESSNER Part I Sport, Gender, and Sexuality 1 Gender Ideologies, Youth Sports, and the Production of Soft Essentialism 15 MICHAEL A. MESSNER 2 Policing the Boundaries of Sex: A Critical Examination of Gender Verification and the Caster Semenya Controversy 37 CHERYL COOKY AND SHARI L. DWORKIN 3 Gender Relations and Sport: Local, National, Transnational 54 MICHAEL A. MESSNER 4 Women, Sports, and Activism 70 CHERYL COOKY Part II Sport as Gendered Practice 5 Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender 93 MICHAEL A. MESSNER 6 "Girls Just Aren't Interested": The Social Construction of Interest in Girls' Sport 113 CHERYL COOKY 7 Ready for Anything the World Gives Her?: A Critical Look at Sports-Based Positive Youth Development for Girls 139 LAUREN RAUSCHER AND CHERYL COOKY 8 Separating the Men from the Moms: The Making of Adult Gender Segregation in Youth Sports 160 MICHAEL A. MESSNER AND SUZEL BOZADA-DEAS 9 Gender and Sport Participation in Montenegro 180 CHERYL COOKY, MARKO BEGOVIC, DON SABO, CAROLE A. OGLESBY, AND MARJ SNYDER Part III The Gender of Sports Media 10 "It's Dude Time!": A Quarter Century of Excluding Women's Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows 209 CHERYL COOKY, MICHAEL A. MESSNER, AND MICHELA MUSTO 11 Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Men and Masculinities 235 MICHAEL A. MESSNER 12 It's Not about the Game: Don Imus, Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary Media 247 CHERYL COOKY, FAYE L. WACHS, MICHAEL A. MESSNER, AND SHARI L. DWORKIN 13 "What Makes a Woman a Woman?" versus "Our First Lady of Sport": A Comparative Analysis of the United States and the South African Media Coverage of Caster Semenya 269 CHERYL COOKY, RANISSA DYCUS, AND SHARI L. DWORKIN About the Authors 295 About the Contributors 297 Index 299

About the Author :
CHERYL COOKY is an associate professor of American Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.  MICHAEL A. MESSNER is a professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is the author or editor of many books including Child's Play: Sport in Kids' Worlds (Rutgers University Press).  

Review :
"New Scholarly Books: Weekly Book List, June 8," by Nina C. Ayoub— Chronicle of Higher Education "Recommended." — Choice "No Slam Dunk is an invaluable, highly accessible resource and a fantastic addition to the sport and gender literature. Cooky and Messner provide a volume that is both entertaining and engaging."— Jeffrey Montez de Oca, author of Discipline and Indulgence: College Football, Media, and the American Way of Life "No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change by Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner (Rutgers University Press; 314 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $39.95 paperback). Combines empirical and theoretical perspectives in a study of challenges that remain for gender equity in sports."— Chronicle of Higher Education "A highly readable, engaging, and useful collection of crisply written chapters. Each chapter concludes with a series of thoughtful questions that could be used to stimulate reflection and debate within the classroom or lecture theater. As such, given the accessible writing and insightful commentaries, this text could be usefully employed as a course reader on sport and gender."— Sociology of Sport Journal "This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding gender and sport today....No Slam Dunk synthesizes a robust literature and brings multiple qualitative methods, from content analysis to ethnography, interviews, and subjects' accounts, to bear on timely topics."— Gender & Society "Sport is an essential window for understanding what unites and divides us. It shapes our world. No Slam Dunk is essential: a decoder ring for understanding issues of gender and sexuality with the Rosetta Stone that is the games we play."— Dave Zirin, sports editor, The Nation "'I don't think it's coincidental that the dunk becomes emblematic of men's basketball—and supposedly what makes men's basketball exciting—right at the moment the women's game is ascendent,' says Michael Messner, a professor of sociology and gender studies at USC and co-author of the upcoming book No Slam Dunk: Gender, Sport and the Unevenness of Social Change"— Natalie Weiner, Bleacher Report