Sport is said to bring people together, improve health and strengthen communities. But according to experts Agnes Elling and Kay Mars, those assumptions deserve closer scrutiny. The more positive the story we tell about sport, the easier it becomes to overlook structural inequalities. 'Some forms of difference are seen as perfectly normal, while others are immediately treated as sensitive or controversial.'
Everyone should have the opportunity to take part in sport. But what does that actually mean in practice?
Kay Mars: 'In policymaking, you often see a tension between universal policies and targeted policies. Universal policies are based on the idea that everyone can participate. Sport is open to all, everyone is welcome. That sounds reasonable, but the danger is that you stop seeing which groups face additional barriers.'
Agnes Elling: 'That's why targeted policies are sometimes essential. These are measures designed to address specific obstacles, such as adapted sporting opportunities for people with disabilities or activities that take financial or social barriers into account. The problem isn't that targeted policies are wrong. The problem arises when policies become either so universal that inequalities disappear from view, or so targeted that people are reduced to stereotypical categories.'
About the experts
Kay Mars is a PhD researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam as part of the Dutch National Research Agenda (NWA) programme Dilemmas of Doing Diversity (DiDi). His research explores how diversity and inclusion policies in sport and recreation work in practice, and how well-intentioned policies can sometimes create new forms of exclusion.
Agnes Elling is Head of the Participation, Inclusion, Diversity and Sporting Culture cluster and a senior researcher at the Mulier Institute, where she studies the relationship between sport, society and public policy. Her research focuses on social inequalities in and through sport, with particular attention to gender, ethnicity, sexual diversity and the ways in which these inequalities intersect.
Do targeted policies always work?
Mars: 'My research shows that sports policy pays a great deal of attention to what I would call the 'easy' forms of diversity: children, older people and people with physical disabilities. Policymakers are generally comfortable designing measures for these groups. But when it comes to religion, ethnicity or sexuality, there is a much stronger tendency to fall back on universal language. These issues are seen as more sensitive. Suddenly, the focus shifts to phrases like 'sport for everyone', 'a positive sporting environment' or 'participation for all'. As a result, the specific inequalities disappear from view.'
Elling: 'You see the same thing in the language of policy. Terms such as a positive sporting environment or sport for everyone sound appealing, but they can also obscure the issues that really need to be addressed, such as discrimination, racism or hostility towards LGBTQ+ people. Of course everyone wants a positive sporting environment. But if you don't explicitly address anti-discrimination as well, it's as if the problem doesn't exist.'
- More information
Want to read more? Download the latest white paper (in Dutch) from Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Universities on the dilemmas of diversity.
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