Mkumbuzi Nonhlanhla Sharon
Department of Sport, Exercise, and Rehabilitation, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Department of Human Movement Science, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa.
Eur J Sport Sci. 2024 Dec;24(12):1754-1764. doi: 10.1002/ejsc.12127. Epub 2024 Jun 14.
Women rugby players are participating in the sport at the highest levels to date. However, despite this increase in participation, sports sciences and sports medicine/sports physiotherapy (SEMS) research output has not mirrored this increase. Females have hormonally mediated anatomical and physiological profiles, which may have implications for rugby performance, injury risk and rehabilitation outcomes. However, hormonal fluctuations and the physiological differences between the sexes are not the only contributors to sex-related differences in the rugby experience. Rugby is a highly gendered environment, which operates within a hegemonic masculine norm and marginalises female and women athletes. Further, while women players in general are underrepresented in sports sciences and SEMS research, women rugby players and experts from ethnic minorities and the Global South are near invisible in the literature as they are marginalised on multiple fronts. Sports sciences and SEMS research should take an intersectional lens to investigate the joint relationship between the various sources of inequity in rugby. Intersectional research in women rugby players would encourage the conceptualisation and analysis of the complex social inequalities that the most marginalised women players and those who simultaneously negotiate multiple identities experience. Such data can better inform federation-level interventions and policy changes to address the needs of historically marginalised player populations as our research portfolio will be more representative of the world's rugby population.
目前，女子橄榄球运动员正参与到这项运动的最高水平赛事中。然而，尽管参与人数有所增加，但体育科学与运动医学/运动理疗（SEMS）的研究成果却并未相应增长。女性具有由激素介导的解剖学和生理学特征，这可能会对橄榄球表现、受伤风险及康复效果产生影响。然而，激素波动和两性之间的生理差异并非造成橄榄球运动中性别差异的唯一因素。橄榄球是一个性别特征鲜明的环境，它在霸权男性规范下运作，将女性运动员边缘化。此外，虽然女性运动员在体育科学和SEMS研究中的代表性普遍不足，但女性橄榄球运动员以及来自少数族裔和全球南方的专家在文献中几乎不见踪影，因为他们在多个方面都被边缘化了。体育科学和SEMS研究应采用交叉视角来调查橄榄球运动中各种不平等来源之间的联合关系。对女子橄榄球运动员进行交叉研究将有助于对最边缘化的女运动员以及那些同时具有多种身份的运动员所经历的复杂社会不平等进行概念化和分析。这些数据可以更好地为联合会层面的干预措施和政策变化提供信息，以满足历史上被边缘化的运动员群体的需求，因为我们的研究组合将更能代表全球的橄榄球人群。
