Sport gender stereotypes in Italy

This study investigated gender stereotypes in sport among Italian university students. In particular, it examined respondents' views of a large number of sports as either feminine or masculine endeavors and whether these views varied across respondents' gender and their self-beliefs concerning gender-role personality descriptions. Five hundred fifty-nine university undergraduate students (M=256; F=303) were asked to rate the gender connotation of 72 different sport disciplines. They were also presented with an already-validated (Bem, 1974) questionnaire presenting a list of masculine/feminine personality characteristics and asked to indicate the extent to which each characteristic was self-descriptive. Finally, respondents' past exposure to sport was assessed. Each sport discipline was coded as masculine, feminine, or neutral (i.e., no gender connotation) on the basis of respondents' sport rating scores. As a whole, most sports were viewed as either masculine or neutral endeavors, and there was varying homogeneity in respondents' normative views across types of sports. Female students and students who assigned masculine characteristics to themselves rated sports as more feminine than did their counterparts. Respondents' prior exposure to sport was not correlated with their sport ratings. Findings were discussed for their implications to the assessment of gender stereotyping in sport.