2009 Gender Symposium

In line with its mandate of developing, promoting, consolidating, and disseminating the highest quality of research on and about Africa, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) will hold a Gender Symposium from 23-25 November 2009 in Cairo, Egypt.

The Gender Symposium is an annual event that provides a platform for gender-focused debates.

Participants in the 2009 CODESRIA Gender symposium would be invited to consider the various dimensions to the landscape of gender and the multifaceted sports arena including athletics, cricket, children’s games in Africa, and ball sports, with a view to reflecting on the possibilities and barriers that have emerged alongside the old obstacles that have persisted in the search for and process towards a gender-inclusive African development project.

The symposium will, among other things, assess the:

• Theories of play and development as viewed from a gendered perspective, including children’s versus adult forms of play
• Gender, Sports and theories of Space in Development terms
• Traditional and Modern Sporting Practices – and the interfaces between them – as viewed from a gendered perspective
• Gender, Sports and questions of Audience and Participation
• Modes and patterns of the refraction of gender differentiation into local/global sports governance and participation
• The impact of global processes on local struggles for engendering sports
• The Roles of local and/or global civil society in the mobilisation of gendered development through sports
• Sports, gender and work
• Dialectics of multiple identities and citizenship in the practice of Sports in a global age
• Sports, gender and violence
• The gendered aspects of Sports as Performance and Spectacle
• Sports and the Articulation of gendered Identities – including national, cultural, sub-cultural, and literary articulations
• New forms of international commodification of players and their gender implications
• New forms of trans-national commerce in players and potential players and their Development implications through the gender lens
• Sports as Global Business and Implications for the Developing world in Gender terms
• Sports, the Media and Gender in Africa’s Development
• Re-thinking Gender and Development in a global Sporting age: Alternatives open to women and men in the quest for gender equality
• Participation will be both by expression of interest by those interested in being considered for invitation and direct invitation to CODESRIA scholars working in the field.

Dates: 23-25 November 2009

Location: Cairo, Egypt

Theme: Gender and Sports in Africa’s Development

For more information, click here.