Mulheres na Gestão Desportiva: um estudo sob a ótica de ex-atletas e atuais gestoras

Abstract

The society has been facing the gender issues more and more, fundamental agenda to institute a more equal society which also reverberates in sport. The influence of sport practice in woman's life, whether high-performance athlete or not, who later had interest in working as a manager on sports organizations, was one of the indagations which made it possible the questions from this study. Towards that scenario, the present study aims identify the motivations which leads an ex-athlete to work in sports management, to verify the possible differences, opportunity and existing prejudice, distinguish the woman acting as a sport management and identify their contribution to the area development. The research adopted the qualitative approach for having an exploratory, inductive and descriptive character. A pre-test of the interview script was carried out and, later, its validation. The sample is constitute by five selected participants which have experience, considering their career as a former athlete in distincts modalities and current career as sport management. Due the social reality in which the research happened, uses the questionnaire as the main resource, composed by open and closed-ended questions, with structured questions, of empirical nature and confirmatory function. The questionnaire was sent and answered via e-mail. The responses obtained were interpreted through content analysis. The interviewees showed that their interest in participating in sports management after the phase of athletics has had negative experiences in the past and aimed to add value to the area. The hierarchical position in which the majority is inserted corroborates with the theory, as there is a delimitation of women's work at the base of the hierarchical pyramid in the field of sports management. The skills, abilities and curriculum of the managers are in line with the demands of the market, but there are still lack of opportunity in a higher management positions. With the analysis of the interviews, it was possible to verify the performance of women in sports management and point out ways to overcome gender inequality in sports.