Gender in Womens Hockey !

Masculinity and Femininity in Womens Ice

Hockey
Daria Chamness
Pioneer High School

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Womens ice hockey is a game in the midst of its adolescence. The sport held its first
World Championships in 1990; it didnt join the Olympics until 1998. The National Womens
Hockey League became the first paying league for women in North America only in the winter
season of 2015-2016. Even as todays female hockey players cash their first paychecks, they
must navigate the complex relationship between ice hockey and femininity. These players face
obstacles including but not limited to the perceived masculinity of the game, the perceived
inferiority of the womens game, paternalism and male control over womens hockey, and
homophobic stigma. These are problems that will not go away without examination, discussion,
and practical action. This paper aims to examine and discuss research on the dynamics of
masculinity and femaleness in womens ice hockey and the perceived divide therein.
It is important to establish first the perceived divide between ice hockey and femininity.
Poniatowski (2011) lists physical force, pain, competitiveness, strength, power, and aggression as
stereotypically masculine qualities. According to Adams (2006), ice hockey embodies the
extremes of these masculine qualities and thus the (male) hockey player represents the epitome
of manhood (as cited in Poniatowski, 2011). This characterization of hockey as a masculine
game furthers the perceived divide that already exists between femininity and athleticism (Cohen
& Semerjian, 2008). Pelak echoes this idea, saying that hockey specifically is in contrast with
femininity and female identity (2002). Hockey, then, is a sport seen in direct contrast to
femininity, both for its inherent athleticism and for the extent to which it exists as a model of
masculinity.
In some ways, modifications to the womens game serve to accommodate the feminine on
the ice. Body checking is not allowed in womens hockey, although that has not always been so -

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women and men in fact played by the same rules until after the 1990 World Championship, when
body checking was removed from the game (Weaving & Roberts, 2012). Before that time,
Adams (2008) historical research notes a statement from the 1930s-1940s that the girls on the
ice have demonstrated they are as good scrappers as any boys team (as cited in Weaving &
Roberts, 2012). However, in the modern womens game body checking and fighting are banned.
The removal of checking as a threat opens up time and space for the puck carrier in a way that
promotes passing. Poniatowski (2011) notes that women do pass more than men, and that this is
a perceived weakness of the womens game. Poniatowski (2011) also draws a comparison to the
distinction within mens hockey between the European and North American styles, where North
American hockey is seen as superior because it favors physicality and heavy checks, while
European hockey favors passing. Weaving and Roberts (2012) agree that international hockey is
less physical and more fluid than North American hockey. Weaving and Roberts (2012) argue
that the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) rules for international play are a major factor
in those differences, and suggest that the similarly less-violent womens game evolved as a result
of the majority of womens hockey taking place under IIHF rules.
The exclusion of checking from womens hockey is held by Weaving and Roberts (2012)
as an example of paternalism, or male control over female activity with the assumption that the
men in control know better than and act in the best interests of the women under their
jurisdiction. A similar idea of paternalism is explored by Cohen and Semerjian (2008), though in
a different context: the policing of sex in recreational women hockey. Cohen and Semerjian
interviewed a transgender hockey player who used the pseudonym Angela. Angela had been
required by USA Hockey (the governing body of recreational hockey in the United States) to

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present not only her birth certificate and passport but letters of recommendation from three
separate doctors to vouch for her medical status as female. In other words, male officials in USA
Hockey sought to keep Angela from playing with women because of her supposed unfair
advantage despite the facts that one, she had been on estrogen for years, and two, both her
teammates and opponents supported her playing. It is interesting to note that USA Hockey limits
male participation in womens hockey but not female participation in mens hockey (Cohen &
Semerjian, 2008). From these bodies of research it may be summarized that male institutions in
hockey (the IIHF and USA Hockey) control not only what female hockey players can and cant
do (check) but also what a female hockey player is.
Because hockey is defined as a masculine sport (Poniatowski, 2011), female players are
gauged by their success at approximating masculinity. This may be a futile process, because
womens hockey is already seen as an alternative to the real sport of mens hockey (Pelak,
2002). Cohen and Semerjian (2008) agree and state that womens hockey could never appear to
be on par with mens, but the compliment comes in the comparison. Pelak (2002) found that
female players encouraged (or at least participated in) this comparison by adopting masculinecoded traits in hockey-related settings to prove their elite athletic status. This is a practice
encouraged by media coverage. Poniatowski (2011) found that commentators at the 2006
Olympics in the womens hockey tournament suggested that players might have more success if
they showed more confidence, a quality earlier identified by that same researcher as masculine.
Other masculine aspects of the game identified as ones female players should aspire to include
size, strength, and heavy body contact (Poniatowski, 2011). However, women are penalized for
showing the same masculine traits they are expected to aspire to by way of the no-checking rule.

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Women may also be penalized for demonstrating the masculinity expected of them on the
ice in other, less direct ways. Female athletes carry a taint of masculinity (Cohen & Semerjian,
2008). Lenskyj (2003) argues that female athletes are assumed to be lesbians because of their
perceived masculinity (as cited in Poniatowski, 2011). Fusco (2002) suggests that this idea is so
pervasive in sports that it is seen in sports architecture, and argues that the individual privacy
cubicles commonly available in womens locker rooms and less commonly so in mens act to
protect women from their own potential lesbian desires for their teammates bodies. Poniatowski
(2011) states that male athletes are assumed to be heterosexual, which may account for the lesser
amount of privacy built into male athletes spaces - they need not be protected from desires they
are not perceived to have. In either case, these several researchers agree that female athletes are
perceived as homosexual. Pelak (2002) states that this lesbian stigma discourages girls from
participating in masculine sports, including ice hockey. It seems evident that, whether through
diminished participation numbers or through more direct instances of homophobia, the lesbian
label that comes with the masculinity expected of women in contact sports like hockey hurts
those athletes and the sport.
Efforts are being made to overcome this lesbophobia, to mixed results. Forbes, Stevens,
and Lathrop (2002) discuss the method of adopting lesbian-identified athletes into the
mainstream. They argue that rather than reducing stigma by increasing visibility, this act of
mainstreaming has led to a dismissal of those athletes sexuality as unimportant. Within the
community of female hockey players, Forbes et al. found that players did not report a difference
in team cohesion when teammates were out as lesbian. This would seem to suggest a level of
acceptance within the sport. Angela, the transgender player interviewed by Cohen and Semerjian

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(2008), did find her teammates and even her opponents accepting of her transgender status.
Cohen and Semerjian note that many of the women who approached Angela to give their support
drew parallels between the backlash Angela faced for crossing gender boundaries and the
discrimination that they had faced (having to fight for ice time usually given to men) for crossing
those same boundaries, albeit in a different way. It is an interesting question to consider whether
the nature of hockey as a masculine sport may create solidarity between its female players due to
their shared experience of discrimination. Pelak (2002) found that the discrimination (again in
discrepancy of ice time) that the studied womens college team faced did bring the team together;
Pelak suggests that female athletes on the whole represent a social movement active in ending
their own oppression. It would seem from this research that although female hockey players are
subject to lesbophobia from outside of the community of players, that that community itself is
more tolerant of lesbianism than is the general public.
On the whole, this research suggests that female hockey players are seen as
contradictions. The validity of their athleticism is questioned; they are expected to display
masculinity and are then punished for it; they are stereotyped as lesbians at a time when that
label is still considered negative. More research is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of
these problems so that they might be addressed. The perception of women in hockey is important
because it affects the opportunities that players have, including, now, being paid to play the
game. It also affects women and girls decisions to join the sport and then to continue playing.
Negative perceptions should never be the reason that decision is no, but the fact is that that is
often the case. Negative perceptions of female athletes, then, deny women and girls access to the

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opportunity that sport represents. In this context, the perception of women in sports must be
addressed in order to protect the right for women and girls of self-determination.

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References
Cohen, J. H., & Semerjian, T. Z. (2008). The Collision of Trans-Experience and the Politics of
Women's Ice Hockey. International Journal of Transgenderism, 10, 133-145.
Forbes, S. L., Stevens, D. E., & Lathrop, A. H. (2002). A Pervasive Silence: Lesbophobia.
Canadian Woman Studies, 32-35.
Fusco, C. (2002). Bent on Changing? Imagining Postmodern Possibilities. Canadian Woman
Studies, 21(3), 12-19.
Pelak, C. F. (2002). Women's Collective Identity Formation in Sports: A Case Study from
Women's Ice Hockey. Gender and Society, 16(1), 93-114.
Poniatowski, K. (2011). "You're Not Allowed Body Checking in Women's Hockey": Preserving
Gendered and Nationalistic Hegemonies in the 2006 Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament.
Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal, 20(1), 39-52.
Weaving, C., & Roberts, S. (2012). Checking In: An Analysis of the (Lack of) Body Checking in
Women's Ice Hockey. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport.