Exploration of Gendered Discourses – An Alternative Theoretical Perception of the Israeli Sports Realm-Juniper Publishers

 Annals of Social Sciences & Management Studies-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

This theoretical paper aims to shed light on the epistemological and methodological framework that led the authors to explore discourses of masculinity and femininity that underpin societies, specifically Israeli society and the institutions of sports within it. For the most part, men govern Israeli sports organizations, which serve the interests of hegemonic masculine forms. In order to explore unique underlying realities within the Israeli context (such as the discourse of militarization), the theoretical framework might be informed by post-structuralist feminism, which provides a way to analyze voices and narratives of the (predominantly female) “other,” and explore the historical contextual construction of current discourses of masculinity within Israeli sports organizations and society as a whole. This paper introduces readers to the process of narrative revisions, critical discourse analysis (CDA), and production of gendered knowledge, which is an alternative way of revealing how discourses produce and reinforce gender inequities in Israeli society. Examples would include the discourse of militarization or the unique, political affiliation system in the sporting arena, which implicitly excludes women (and some men) from gaining access to leadership positions in sports organizations.

Theoretical Review

Drawing on the work of Shaw & Frisby [1], and Meyerson & Kolb [2], we argue that the post-structuralist feminist theoretical perspective provides an important alternative to more traditional ones by addressing the complexities of gender relations through the process of critique, narrative revision, and experimentation. This should allow us to move beyond the simplistic assumptions and solutions offered by liberal feminist approaches typically used in organizational research and practice [1]. For post-structuralists, language is how social organizations and power structures are defined and contested, and where the sense of self and subjectivity are constructed. The objective of this research is not to identify truths, but to highlight issues inherent in the construction of meaning [3]. A relevant post-structuralist theory regarding language, power, and social organizations can be found in Foucault`s [4] work. According to Foucault, the discourse can be utilized as an efficient mechanism in creating oppression and resistance. Moreover, experience, expertise, and utilization of language are crucial elements of who is authorized to speak in organization and cultural settings. Bourdieu (2005) also argues that language constitutes a key concept and a crucial element of dominancy for those who hold the right cultural authority, or habitus: “He who clings to the right to speak, he who practically maintains the monopoly upon speaking - is totally enforcing his preliminary inquiry arbitrary, his interests arbitrary” (2005:99).

Moreover, by using a post-structuralist feminist approach, we can deconstruct the binary thoughts and processes of the knowing-self, providing otherness (in this case, men and women with voices and sets of values other than the dominant gendered discourse in specific organizations) to promote an inclusive space within the social contexts of Israeli sports organizations [5]. For example, we might be able to explore the practices and dominant gendered discourse that constructs the barriers that [some] women experience in accessing decision-making positions, rather than identify the truth of what prevents them from accessing these positions Betzer-Tayar et al. [5-7]. According to Richardson (1994), in Amara [8], understanding competing discourses as ways of giving meaning and organizing the world makes language a site of exploration and struggle. For example, Lev & Hertzog [9,10] show how gender identity and power relationships in three gyms in Israel depend upon context. According to their study, power relationships within the gyms were influenced by the residential area and discourse in which the gyms were located, and the managers’ gender. Therefore, post-structuralism, directs us (the researchers) to reflexively understand ourselves as people writing from particular positions (as an outsider, a female analyzing organizations dominated by males, but also as an insider as part of these organizational contexts) at a specific time (a local reality characterized by gendered discourse of gender and power relationships) (Richardson, 1994), in Amara [8]. Another example can be found in Lev’s [10] work on middle-aged, longdistance marathon runners. As a male sport-therapist, and a former professional athlete, Lev demonstrates the dilemmas and complexity of an insider/outsider researcher and the challenges of executing some degree of de-familiarization. Therefore, narratives of pain and suffering among his male and female informants received social and cultural meanings within the Israeli context of which he is part. To understand why so few women exist in decision-making positions in Israeli sports organizations, as well as the roles these women play, we used a post-structuralist feminist approach to identify gendered discourses and power relationships to develop key gender-equity policies within these organizations Betzer-Tayar et al. [5-7]. In our research, we adopted a post-structuralist feminist perspective and used CDA as a methodological approach to understand the nature and impact of discourses around gender equity in two policy examples from Israeli sports. Such an approach allowed us to identify the nature of the voices in the documents and interviews we undertook, together with the nature of the discourses themselves. By implication, we could determine the absence of certain discourses and voices from the material we reviewed.

We developed our exploration of these discourses through what Munslow (1997) and Booth (2004) term a deconstructionist approach to the history of the socio-cultural construction of the Israeli State and the sporting domain within it, with a special focus on gender roles. For instance, we found that the discourse of militarization is explicitly and implicitly unique to Israel Sasson- Levi [11]; Betzer-Tayar et al. [6]. This is crucial to understand, in order to explore underlying barriers for Israeli women to decision-making positions in civilian society, and sports within it. In that sense, the implicit gendering characteristic of civilian life is expressed in basic Israeli laws that provide equal rights for women: Mandatory Military Service (1949) and the Equal Rights Law for Women (1951). The army ethos, and the deep identification with it as the Army of the People, is structurally rooted in the Israeli psyche. It gives the army great influence in granting direct and indirect privileges to those who serve and command within it, by virtue of their cultural capital [12]. As a result, women are often socially constrained and excluded from mainstream life, due to many aspects of social public institutions, such as the army, political parties and posts, and jobs in industry or the public sector, as well as in the sports domain. One explanation for this exclusion might be that it occurs due to the early strictures in social circles, which often start during mandatory military service for both women and men within different army units. For example, combat units are more related to men’s military service, while administrative units are more related to women’s service. Army service is central to the Israeli context in a manner that may be difficult to appreciate in other societies [5].

Moreover, there is a phenomenon of army language that not everyone can comprehend. Women can find themselves excluded from mainstream discussions, as most combat units consist of men Sasson-Levi, 2003). Lev & Hertzog [9] argue that militaristic discourse, followed by machismic, discursively constructed culture, penetrate into the gym culture in Tel Aviv and exclude women from equipment and areas that are perceived as male territory. Moreover, Sasson-Levi claims that women are explicitly excluded from the sub textual conversations. Nonetheless, as men still hold the majority of decision-making positions in Israeli society, and because military service is a quasi-universal experience, militaristic discourse becomes the hegemonic language in the public sphere. Once again, women find themselves excluded in the local reality of social circles (Sasson-Levi, 2003). The flow between civilian and army cultures is significant and is almost impossible to differentiate. Kimerling (2001) claims that this mixed civilian-militaristic culture pervades all areas of Israeli society. In that sense, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) equality ethos is implicit to a different reality, in which the Army not only preserves civil inequality, but even increases this inequality to maintain the status and power of the controlling elite (mostly males) by selecting and maintaining other social groups in accordance with the amount of loyalty it receives from them [11]. Furthermore, the discourse of women’s integration into the IDF is characterized by internal contradictions. On one hand, women are called to serve in the military. On the other hand, along with this discourse of equality, another discourse differentiates women’s military participation and contribution from those of men. Women are construed as “others,”, but this otherness does not completely exclude them from the collective, but it subtly reinforces domestic roles.

It is possible to decipher the dual discourses of inclusion and marginalization by which the existing reality of gender order is preserved. As a central institution of both state and patriarchy, the army reconstructs the Israeli male, who serves in combat roles, as the prototype of hegemonic masculinity identified with good citizenship (Lomsky-Feder and Ben-Ari, 1999). This construction of masculinity is a major criterion in shaping the differential discourse of belonging to the state. To place the issue of gender roles and sports, particularly women in decision-making positions in sports organizations, into the wider context of women’s socially constructed position in Israel, it is important to understand the discourse on the militarization of Israeli society. To conclude, military service in the Israeli context influences a range of levels of socio-cultural contextual structures, including the sporting arena. To challenge this socio-historical gendered discourse, we took a deconstructionist approach to investigate history, which is related to the post-structuralist feminist approach we adopted in our research.

Studying the processes and discourse regarding the creation of gender-equity initiatives in relation to specific case studies highlight barriers to women’s access to decision-making positions and how they are discursively constructed. Learning from the narratives and perceptions of different actors allows us to understand and counter historical discourse that promotes such barriers. Using an alternative methodological approach, this study attempts to explore gendered discourses that are deeply embedded within the Israeli socio-cultural context about militarized discourse and might influence women’s participation within the political and sporting arenas. To do so, we analyzed our own perspectives and other actors’ perspectives, experiences, and narratives. This alternative methodology might help us deconstruct and challenge the gendered discourse regarding women’s participation as decision-makers within the Israeli sporting field, rather than offering the reader explicit data, as conventional positivist methodology offers.

Chronicle of theoretical considerations

We aimed to explore the theoretical considerations and steps we used, rather than looking at the results of the study’s research questions, in order to suggest the uniqueness of this approach and make it more accessible to social and gender researches who want to understand gendered, underlying, local realities. By applying such a complicated and somewhat controversial framework, we can show the rationale and logic of the theoretical and methodological steps we took to explore our research questions. Methodological context: To extend past an explicit understanding and identify how gendered discourse constructs barriers to women’s access to the sporting arena, this paper suggests using both life-career history interviews and an auto-ethnographical investigation of the researchers themselves. This approach is consistent with the research epistemology of the post-structural feminist approach. It is worth acknowledging that some researchers claim that gender not only shapes identity but is also an axis of power that plays an influential role in interactions, structures, and processes of sports organizations [1]. If we assume that gender is an axis of power, an analysis must go further than liberal feminist approaches, which suggest that just increasing the number of women in an organization is all that is required to challenge the male-dominated nature of such bodies. Liberal feminist theory largely focuses on increasing the number of women in managerial positions, without changing prevailing discourses, structures, and operating norms. In so doing, liberal feminist theory only deals with the symptoms, rather than with the causes of inequity. Research informed by liberal feminism fails to acknowledge the influence of gendered discourse and does not encourage a full examination of the assumptions, values, and beliefs about men and women that are deeply entrenched in organizations [2]. To realize the complexity of our approach toward exploring gendered discourses, we should understand the worldview of constructivism on social constructed realities.

Epistemological overview - Adopting post-structuralist feminist theory as a perspective: As mentioned before, this study’s aim is to introduce readers to the post-structuralist feminist approach. It is feminist in the sense that it takes gender disadvantage as a central issue, and post-structuralist in that it adopts the view that social realities are socially constructed, as well as mainly represented and other discursive systems of symbolic representation. The nature of these forms of social construction also normalizes certain interests and marginalizes others. The rationale for adopting post-structuralist feminism also derives also from the literature and the author’s own experience. Within the literature, few researchers in sports and leisure management have adopted a post-structuralist feminist approach to analyze gender equity. Aitchison [13], Hoeber [14], Shaw & Hoeber [15], and Shaw & Penny [16] are among the rare examples. The literature shows that gender equity has been conventionally theorized (and treated politically) as just a women’s issue [1]; Ely, Meyerson [17].This perspective is limited in that, if gender equity is a women’s issue, then it is their responsibility to address it, rather than that of all organizational members. Furthermore, Shaw & Frisby [1] noted that liberal feminist theory is limited because it largely focuses on increasing the number of women in managerial positions, but without changing prevailing discourse, socially contextual cultural structures, or dominant organizational values and beliefs. By using a post-structural feminist perspective, we challenge prevailing gendered discourse by deconstructing existing assumptions in the Israeli sports context. We argue that by increasing gender equity for both men and women, organizational performance may be improved. For example, if inequities exclude some executive board members and lowers motivation, disrupting dominant gendered discourse or norms may offer alternatives to ineffective work relationships and potentially contribute to successful new actions or initiatives. Post-structuralist social research also treats social realities as embedded in general discourse, which people use in conducting their everyday activities and interactions [18]. We applied post-structuralist feminist theory in this research, as it has a key role in shifting gender debates within sociology away from simple social learning theory. Methodological perspective - Qualitative research method: Qualitative research welcomes discourse through in-depth, detailed data that reflects individuals’ subjectivity (Cottle, 1982). Within post-structural feminist theory, that subjectivity provides depth and enables research participants to express the reality[ies] of their lived experiences [19]. This is in contrast to the quantitative method, in which researchers’ and participants’ subjectivities are seen as biases. In this theoretical paper, which is concerned with the in-depth investigation of the experience of men and women in recruitment, barriers and glass ceilings, the qualitative research method, which uses specific cases, observations, interviews and document analysis to gather data, is an appropriate strategy [20]. This study argues that the researcher can observe and be an insider for unique case studies by using a qualitative method. We sought to explore gendered discourses through interviews, observations, auto-ethnographical accounts of the researcher’s own experience as an insider, and the narratives of key actors. Ellis and Bochner (2000) advocate this as a form of writing that “make[s] the researcher’s own experience a topic of investigation in its own right” (p. 733), rather than seeming “as if they are written from nowhere by nobody” (p. 734), and their readers to “feel the truth of their stories and to become co-participants, engaging the storyline morally, emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually” (p. 745). Therefore, this is a standpoint approach that is entirely consistent with the poststructuralist perspective adopted for the study.

Although, this study’s focus is based on the uniqueness of the Israeli sports context, it also constitutes significant conjunctions in terms of efforts to reduce gendered barriers through equity policy and initiative elsewhere. The chosen case studies should shed light on how equity initiatives have been implemented and some women and men within the organizations explain the processes and the discourse involved in decision-makers’ engagement within these particular sports organizations. The research process also explores interviewees’ explanations of the importance of different voices in key positions, which allows women to create gender-equity initiatives [6].

To gain greater depth in exploring the research questions, we adopted a methodology drawing on CDA, which focuses on interviewees’ conceptions of specific organizational reality[ies], practices, and processes in relation to barriers, roles, influence, and experience of women in key decision-making positions in the two case studies. As noted earlier, we also used auto-ethnography to complements other approaches, including life stories, open interviews and, in some cases, background documentary analysis. By using such approaches, we can identify meanings, insights and significant conjunctions for the research questions discussed in the specific cases [21].

Data Analysis

Discourse analysis: “Debate on constructivism and poststructuralism, leads us to consider discourse analytic studies, which ‘combine’ analytic language proceedings with the analysis of knowledge process and constructions, without restricting them to the formal aspects of linguistic presentations and processes” Flick [22]. Discourse analysis emphasizes how versions of the world, society, and inner psychological events are produced in discourse. It is normally used to analyze transcripts of conversation from everyday institutional settings, open-ended interviews, or documents Silverman [23]. Critical discourse analysis (CDA): We chose to use CDA, which focuses on the linguistic aspects of discourse, but takes into consideration broader issues, such as the social context of the discourse [24]. Furthermore, it does not attempt the type of objectivity that scientists or linguists sometimes claim but recognize that such objectivity is likely to be impossible because of the nature of their experiences. Instead, the researchers are critical of, and open about, their own positions. Therefore, we are using CDA for this research, which focuses on the thoughts of interviewees regarding the organizational processes and gendered discourse relating to the roles of, and barriers to, women in Israeli sports organizations. CDA seeks (de)-construction of the perceptions and attitudes representative of male and female key actors from different socio-cultural backgrounds within the Israeli sport arena. As CD analysts, we are interested in how language and meanings construct and maintain dominant gendered discourse. As Bloor & Bloor [24] note, discourse achieves social goals and performs a role in social maintenance and change.

The CDA used in this study to analyze the interviews, and auto-ethnographical and background documents, first aims to discover how the designation of self and the other is experienced by men and women from different intellectual, ideological, or political backgrounds. Second, it involves revealing the position of interviewees in terms of their experience within the different case studies. Furthermore, for the purpose of this study, CDA is part of a general (research) deconstructivist process of Israeli sports organizations in relation to gender-equity discourse, according to interviewees’ views or accounts. CDA explores the social, historical, contextual and organizational structures, and sets of values and beliefs that discursively construct barriers for women to access key decision-making positions. This approach reflects a small, but significant and growing, body of research using CDA in relation to gender issues [25]; Shaw & Hoeber [15]. CDA is a mirror to detect the binary way of thinking (men/women, ordinate/subordinate), dichotomies (doublings, between-ness), and even ambiguities existing in interviewees’ designation of themselves (we, I, and our) and others (such as sports organizations, male values, other women).

Evaluating and Reporting

Warrantability in discourse analysis: The basic premise for the discourse analys is that the social world does not exist independently of our construction of it, so it does not make sense to ask if our analyses are valid, in the sense that they are true and correspond to an independent world. This research suggests that an analysis is warrantable, to the extent that it is both trustworthy and sound. In general terms, trustworthy claims are those that can be depended upon, not only as a useful way of understanding the discourse at hand, but also as a possible basis for understanding other discourses and further work because they are derived from accountable procedures. In comparison, sound claims are solid, credible, and convincing because they are logical, based on evidence from the discourse. Warrantability is a structure and, similar to analysis, it rests on shared knowledge. However, this does not diminish the responsibility of the analyst to use warranting as thoroughly as possible Wood & Kroger [26].

Trustworthiness and soundness: The requirements for trustworthiness and soundness are distinguished in terms of process versus product. Trustworthy claims have a theoretical foundation – a set of theoretical and meta-theoretical statements that concern the nature of data, claims, coding, and analytic procedures, and the relationships among them. How criteria should be addressed depends on their nature: Empirical, conceptual, and sometimes logical. Some criteria are relevant for both trustworthiness and soundness. The criteria are also concerned with different levels, some of which can be either internal or external to the data, the analysis, and the overall work [8]. Discussion of trust and trustworthiness in this research takes us further than discussion of even general rules governing research practice. This is important because, just as moral rules are components of ethical standards, trustworthy behavior often requires the responsible exercise of discretion, which is much more complex than simple rule-following, such as being consistent and discrete in presenting interviewees’ conceptions [27].

Coherence: Coherence is a criterion that refers to the set of analytic claims that are made about the text. Its application requires an identifiable set of claims. Furthermore, the claims must be clearly formulated to be coherent. This state of coherence might be applicable to post-structuralist feminist theory (the theoretical claims and their support from within the discourse must be coherent). However, coherence is not the same as grounding, although it does require claims to be grounded (Jackson, 1986). Grounding is concerned with the relationship between the analysis and the text. In contrast, coherence concerns the nature of the analysis or, more precisely, the entire set of claims made. Coding and analysis: A series of coding and categorizing exercises were performed to make a large body of transcripts more manageable. This involves searching through the material for a number of themes, or nodes, which can arise from concerns on issues relevant to the study focus (gender discourse and female experiences in sports organizations) or from reading respondents’ answers. The mechanics of this process are exercised in the light of the arguments outlined earlier, so that coding is subject to tests of warrantability, rather than validity. Therefore, we suggest an alternative approach to uncover explicit and implicit, contextually structured, gendered discourse that may explain how barriers to women’s access to decision-making positions in sports organizations are socially constructed. To achieve those aims, we constructed two sets of interview objectives. One set was organized under four main, deductively derived objectives (in other words, information on themes originating from the author’s definition of relevant information), while the other set comprised recognized objectives from the interviews with key actors, which also incorporated three main deductive issues. Although the interviews were organized around these deductively derived codes, the interviews were also designed to allow interviewees to generate ideas or themes themselves.

Data Collection

Choice of research sites: The selection of research sites should be influenced by the theoretical argument that genderpower relations are identified through discourse. These key organizational practices were identified as the influence of history; women in key positions; gender roles; and masculinity and femininity. The decision regarding which case and research site upon which to focus might take into consideration the desire to get in-depth evaluation of data relating to the socio-historical context and structure of gendered discourse and understand the processes occurring within that particular sport.

Research Tools

Interviews: Our approach to the interviews was in line with our post-structural feminist perspective for identifying and exploring the fluidity of interviewees’ perspectives and changing (non-/anti-) feminist ideologies throughout the process. Our intention with this methodological approach is to uncover explicit and implicit, contextually structured, gendered discourse that may explain how barriers to women’s access to decision-making positions are constructed. After the open-ended interviews, it is helpful to pay careful attention to the explicit and implicit cultural and socio-contextual differences between the languages and their meaning in specific contexts. The next step is to identify inductive, emerging, repeating, and accountable categories within the interview transcripts. The approach to analysing the interviews was in this case, in line with the post-structural feminist perspective adopted in this study.

In order for the reader to understand the place of the author’s auto-ethnographical account as one of the research tools, it is important to acknowledge that this was also analyzed with reference to similar objectives and categories. This experience inevitably influenced how she approached and conducted interviews, and the deductive, categories of information she regarded as potentially significant before going into the interviews themselves. The experience of the current contextual socio-cultural reality and experience as a woman or man are clearly important features of the researcher’s knowledge and understanding of the research problem.

Data analysis

Data analysis started by analyzing the author’s autoethnographical account:

i. Transcription into Hebrew.

ii. Reading and re-reading the scripts to identify passages that relate to the deductively derived themes and highlight and map inductively derived themes considering macro-criteria, such as ideology (values illustrated by the nature of author’s account); interests (whose interests were reflected in the nature of the discourse); differences in descriptions of events from those of interviewees; differences in explanation of causal factors concerning the behavior of individuals, groups, or organizations from those of interviewees; and any changes over time in the above.

iii. Coding and investigating the links/associations between codes.

iv. Explaining and translating quotes that illustrate/support arguments into English.

Document analysis

The importance of background documentary evidence for conceptualizing the current organizational practice was confirmed by providing the basis for interview questions and comparing individuals’ views. Documentary analysis is also key for developing a historical dimension to the analysis (Silverman, 2004). The influence of key historical events in Israeli sports organizations and individuals’ experiences are one of the central theoretical issues of the research. Documentary analysis can provide historical reference and contextual information on current policy decisions and practice initiatives.

With this analysis, we aimed to investigate different perspectives (on dominance, feminist ideology, and interests, for example) of opinions, gender conflicts, relationships, and decisionmaking processes and events, to identify the main ideologies, values, and gendered discourse that constructed the local realities of gender roles and barriers within sports organizations.

We used the following protocol to analyze the document content:

i. Find the relevant documents for a range of different formal and informal meetings.

ii. Identify the appropriate policy documents (to examine decision-making processes, board members’ terminologies, arguments, ideologies, perceptions, and reflections on the author’s actions or those of others).

iii. Examination of content consistency over time within and between national polices and the implicit personal values, beliefs, and ideologies of the research subjects and their actions.

Case study

We argue that case-study strategy deals with gathering the most information possible about a typical, small-scale research entity, such as a gendered group or organization, in a natural setting such as a sports organization. It focuses on individual instances, rather than taking a wide-spectrum approach [8]. The rationale behind focusing on one or two case studies, rather than many, is that there may be insights to be gained from an indepth analysis of central cases that may have wider implications and implementations. The case-study method offers more than other empirical methods because it goes into deeper detail to explain the complexities, power relationships, and (in our case) linguistic aspects of certain gendered situations. Justification for using auto-ethnography as a research method: Auto-ethnography, as Bochner & Ellis [17] describe, shows “people in the process of figuring out what to do, how to live, and the meaning of their struggles.” In essence, auto-ethnography is a story that re-enacts an experience by which people find meaning, through which they can reconcile themselves to that experience. It can be further explained as research, writings, stories, and methods that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political realms [28]. While ethnography is a social science, it is also a qualitative research method that describes human social phenomena based on fieldwork. In auto-ethnography, the researcher becomes the primary research participant/subject by writing personal stories and narratives. The term auto ethnography is controversial and sometimes used interchangeably with, or referred to as, personal narrative or autobiography. An auto-ethnography is a reflexive account of one’s own experiences, situated in culture. In other words, auto-ethnography provides a cultural accounting, in addition to describing, and looking critically at, the author’s own experience as for example being the only female member on executive board [6].

Autobiographical methods generally carry a strong humanist impetus, in that they provide a means of conducting research that can give voice to the socially excluded [29]. The holistic approach of the biography leads to broader depictions of individuals’ identities, both temporally and socially, within the social network that supports them [30]. Nevertheless, the concept of process has a particularly double-edged meaning within the autobiographical perspective. It is relevant to our case, in the sense that when a person’s life is viewed as a whole, the idea of their career history can be comprehended at two levels. First, the interviewee has their own history of personal development, barriers, and change as they proceed along their life. Second, a considerable period of time passes as they move along their life course. In this respect, “historical event and social change at the societal level impinge upon the individual’s own unique life history” [30]. The popularity of the biographical perspective is built on three basic approaches Miller [30]:

i. The realist approach is based on induction. Information is gathered by collecting life histories, and general principles concerning social phenomena are then constructed.

ii. The neo-positivist approach is based on deduction. Preexisting networks of concepts are used to make theoretically based predictions concerning peoples’ lives in real time. The collection of information centers upon areas of theoretical concern. Issues of conceptual validity are important for this approach. Similar to the realist approach, the neo-positivism also holds the existence of an objective reality and that the perceptions of the actor and their objective represent aspects of that reality.

iii. The narrative approach bases itself upon the ongoing development of the respondent’s viewpoint during the telling of a life story or a specific experience. Understanding the individual’s unique, changing perspective, as it is mediated by context, takes precedence over questions of fact.

The narrative approach is postmodern, in that reality is situational and fluid. The narrative approach is tightly located in the present moment, and remembrances of the past and anticipations of the future are continually reconstructed through the lens of the present Kohli, [31].

Although these three approaches may overlap in many cases, the realist and neo-positivist approaches share a common view of objective truth and that the macro-view can be captured by studying the micro-view. The aforementioned approaches emphasize the tension between the actor’s subjective viewpoint and their perception of the overarching social structure. The neo-positivist approach focuses on the depiction of structure and is evaluated by the respondents’ reporting of their subjective perception of placement in structure and time. Similar tension can be observed in the realist approach, in which reported subjective perception provides the basic units for generalizing structure. However, the narrative approach, which we suggest is most appropriate to this type of research, is built upon a similar tension, but at a different level. The postmodern view of structure does not see it as a single reality, but as the interplay between actors, which socially constructs reality through the power relationships among themselves (Miller, 2000). In that sense, the narrative approach accommodates auto-ethnographies and other interviewees’ career histories. The narrative in this study was based on the unique experiences of the interviewees and the author, and mediated by current contexts, but in relation to socio-historical discourse. Furthermore, it is interesting to evaluate Wolcott’s account Ellis [28] of ethnography as part art and part science as a way to understand auto-ethnography’s uniqueness. Ellis [28] suggests that readers can look at auto-ethnography in terms of its meaning as a form of ethnography. Auto-ethnography overlaps art and science; it is part auto (self) and part ethno (culture). Similar to ethnography, auto-ethnography refers to the process, as well what it produces. Auto-ethnography addresses the personal and its relationship to culture. It is an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness. It first looks through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of the personal experience, and then looks inward, exposing a vulnerable self that may be moved by and through cultural interpretations, as well as refract and resist those same interpretations.

Furthermore, auto-ethnography seeks to connect the autobiographical and ethnographic impulses. The ethnographic impulse has been characterized as “the gaze outward,” as Neumann [32] says: “Worlds beyond [our] own, as a means of marking the social coordinates of a self.” The autobiographical impulse “gazes inward for a story of self, but ultimately retrieves a vantage point for interpreting culture” (p. 173). Auto-ethnography moves back and forth, first looking inside, then outside, then backward, and forward [33], until the distinctions between individual and social are blurred. Auto-ethnography is further explained by Ellis & Bochner [17] as “an autobiographical genre of writing that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (p. 739). In that sense, the story’s validity can be judged by whether or not it evokes in readers a feeling that the experience described is authentic, lifelike, believable, and possible. The story’s generalizability can be judged by whether or not it speaks to readers about their experience. The benefits of auto-ethnography are the ways in which research of such a personal nature might give insight into problems often overlooked in culture, such as the nature of identity, race, sexuality, child abuse, eating disorders, and life in academia. In addition to helping the researcher make sense of their individual experience, auto-ethnographies are political in nature, as they engage us in important political issues, and often ask us to consider or do things differently. Chang (2008) argues that auto-ethnography offers a research method friendly to researchers and readers because its texts are engaging and enable researchers to gain a cultural understanding of self in relation to others, from which cross-cultural coalitions can be built between self and others. This study attempts to reframe the narrative voice. According to Ellis [34], evocative auto-ethnography does not question if narratives convey precisely how things actually are, but rather what narratives do, their consequences, and to what uses they can be put. In that sense, female executive members of sports organizations are not a homogenous group. Although many share the same interest in the love of sport, they nevertheless differ in terms of class, race, sexual identity, age, disability, body size, and cultural, religious, and linguistic heritage [35]. To some extent, this is reflected in the life stories and experiences of different women and men in executive positions in Israeli sport contexts. The story that follows highlights aspects of some women’s and some men’s career history and the author’s auto-ethnographical account, which aim to explore the reality[ies] of their feminist or other types of politics [36], and the barriers they might encounter, their perceptions on certain gender-equity initiatives, and the role and influence they had on the processes that led to these initiatives being established. However, there is no intention in this type of methodological approach to universalize or generalize this story to all cases of females in executive positions in Israeli sports organizations, and women in Israel in general. Instead, by using the post-structuralist feminist approach, we sought to explore and understand the socio-historical gendered discourse constructing barriers for women in the specific case studies within the Israeli sports context.

Furthermore, by using this methodology, we are attempting to tell the story from the perspectives of selected women and men. While writing our text, we made a clear distinction between the dual roles of researcher and subject. Use of a post-structuralist feminist theory allowed us to liberate the research from the boundaries of study validation (in the sense of truth as corresponding to the facts). We are telling a particular truth that takes place within a specific set of rules of one local reality, based on unique knowledge (in which validity concerns are replaced by the criterion of warrantability, emphasizing truth as coherence). We believe that sports organizations, like other social situations and relationships, represent a discourse established between people, based on power relationships. Different experiences constitute different kinds of knowledge, which lead to different socially constructed discourses. Therefore, the auto-ethnographical texts give us an adequate account from the subject’s point of view and help us reveal realities and truths of the self within the organizational culture, from the subject’s self-interpretation. In effect, the author’s account is judged against how plausible, coherent, and authentic it appears to be. By using an auto-ethnographic method, we provide opportunities for the readers to identify and learn from these life experiences and perspectives. They may also gain insight into, and an understanding of, their own and the subject’s, life experience [37-41].

Conclusion

In light of the foregoing arguments, we suggest that exploration of gendered barriers could be explained through a post-structuralist feminist perspective that allows freedom from the notion of a single truth that frees us to include different voices and narratives. Nevertheless, by using the narrative approach to present auto-ethnographical accounts and those of the interviewees, we are not claiming to universalize the story in all cases of female executives in Israeli sports organizations. Instead, we are telling the narratives of the author and other interviewees’ particular truths, which are specific to a certain reality within a specific organizational culture. Post-structuralist feminist theory sees great significance in how language or discourse is used to achieve social goals and the roles this discourse plays in social maintenance and change within the Israeli sport context, in relation to gender inequities. This realization led us to suggest the CDA methodology, which might assist us in exploring how dominant gendered discourse helps maintain power structures and supports gender inequities.

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