This book focuses on the variety of strategies developed by women athletes in the Pacific Islands to claim contested sporting spaces – in particular, rugby union, soccer, beach volleyball, recreational sports and exercise – as a prism to explore grassroots women’s engagement with heavily entrenched postcolonial (hetero)patriarchy. Based on primary research conducted in Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, the book investigates contested sporting spaces as sites of infrapolitics intersected primarily by gender and also by other markers of inequality, including ethnicity, sexuality, class and geopolitics. Contrary to historical and contemporary representations of Pacific Island women as victims of gender injustice, it explores how these athletes and those who support them actively carve out space for their transformative agency. Pacific IslandWomen and Contested Sporting Spaces: Staking Their Claim focuses on a region underexamined by sport or gender studies researchers and will be of key interest to scholars and students in Gender Studies, Sport Studies, Sociology and Pacific Studies as well as sport practitioners and policymakers.

This book presents the most comprehensive mapping and analysis of women’s football in Oceania and is the first to examine the game’s historical development alongside social, political, and cultural issues, weaving origin stories with players’ day-to-day challenges. Alongside presentation of the contemporary state of play and its overarching narrative of women’s game in the region, the book highlights key issues, discusses established and emergent themes, examines relevant contexts, investigates the status of the game at local and national levels, and lays foundations for further research. Its primary objective is to detail and illustrate the historical, social, and organisational development of the women’s game, including international tournaments, national competitions, and teams in an effort to amplify the efforts of the individuals that made or make a significant contribution to the game. It draws on extensive formal and informal discussion, realises insight, proposes the means and related fields of further investigation, and generates new knowledge alongside the uncovering of old. Women’s Football in Oceania covers key events, actors, and moments and fills a gap in research for scholars of sports history and women’s history.

Female Masculinity and the Business of Emotions in Tokyo investigates the novel “emotion business” of dansō escorting as a phenomenon emerging between gender performativity and pop-culture, commodified relationships and the wish for self-expression. Fanasca documents the dreams, ambitions and fears of young crossdresser escorts negotiating their identity with and within the Japanese society, as well as those of crossdresser escorts’ clients: women looking for the perfect man and the opportunity to experience emotions. Combining anthropological, sociological and gender studies theories with an ethnographic approach, Fanasca argues that dansō crossdressing is the tool used by a sector of Japanese women to resist the heteronormative and patriarchal society and its expectations, while reinventing themselves and their identities looking for self-actualization. Female Masculinity and the Business of Emotions Tokyo is an interdisciplinary work which will interest both scholars and students of Japanese studies, gender studies, and anthropology.

#UsToo: How Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Women Changed Our Communities examines the relationship between sexual harassment, gender, and multiple religions, highlighting the voices of women of different faiths who found their voices and used them for the betterment of their communities. Through personal interviews and other research, this book explores the actions of American Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women who broke the silence about sexual misconduct and abuse of power by male co-religionists. Using a three-dimensional, ethnoreligious approach that examines gender, ethnicity, and religion, it addresses the relationship between religion and women’s experiences and examines both historical contexts and present-day experiences of sexual misconduct within faith communities. This book will be of key interest to students within Gender Studies, History, Religion, and Sociology, clergy and lay religious leaders, and human rights advocates.

Although socio-cultural issues in relation to women within the fields of sport and exercise have been extensively researched, this research has tended to concentrate on the Western world. Women, Sport and Exercise in the Asia-Pacific Region moves the conversation away entirely from Western contexts to discuss these issues with a sole focus on the geographic Asia-Pacific region. Presenting a diverse range of empirical case studies, from bodybuilding in Kazakhstan and Thailand, karate in Afghanistan, and women’s rugby in Fiji to women’s soccer in North Korea and netball in Papua New Guinea, the book demonstrates how sports may be used as a lens to examine the historical, socio-cultural and political specificities of non-Western and post-colonial societies. It also explores the complex ways in which non-Western women resist as well as accommodate sport and exercise-related sociocultural oppression, helping us to better understand the nexus of sport, exercise, gender, sexuality and power in the Asia-Pacific area. This is a fascinating and important resource for students of sports studies, sports management, sport development, social sciences and gender studies, as well as an excellent read for academics and researchers with an interest in sport, exercise, gender and post-colonial studies.

This insightful Handbook explores how sport intersects the experiences of asylum seekers, refugees, workers and migrants. Editors Joseph Maguire, Katie Liston and Mark Falcous bring together esteemed experts who draw on globally diverse cases studies to capture the complexities surrounding sport and migration, revealing how it is embedded in the wider power struggles that characterize global sport.