Men's and women's involvement in sports: An examination of the gendered aspects of leisure involvement

Although involvement has emerged as an important concept for understanding leisure behavior; the gendered nature of involvement has received scant attention. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the leisure involvement profiles of female and male participants in "conforming" (gender-appropriate) and "nonconforming" (gender inappropriate) activities. Specifically, the study involved a survey of general sports involvement and specific activity involvement among adult recreational hockey players (51 men and 76 women) and figure skaters (24 men and 54 women). Multiple analysis of covariance was used to test for gender and sport-type differences with regard to overall involvement scores as well as scores for the three main facets of involvement (attraction, centrality and self-expression). As hypothesized, male hockey players had higher centrality scores compared with the other groups. The results, however also showed that the women had higher activity-attraction scores, the female figure skaters reported the highest activity self-expression, and the female hockey players had the highest attraction for sports in general. The theoretic implications of these results are discussed. In particular it is suggested that leisure involvement may be influenced by societal ideologies about the gender-appropriateness of activities, as well as by individual interests and preferences.