The ethnological research project ’Women’s races as a cultural phenomenon: conditions for women’s exercising’started in January 2014 at the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University. A pilot study and some collection of material had then already been conducted, in collaboration with Nordiska Museet.
The aim has been to analyze recreational sports races for women as a cultural phenomenon. What is a women-only race? Why, how and when did this phenomenon emerge? How has it changed over time? What do these races tell us about society and the conditions for women s physical exercising? How do women experience these races and how do they talk about them?
Sports events for women, so called women-only races (‘tjejlopp’), are an important part of sports for all. Hundreds of thousands of women participate every year. This project has aimed to contribute to the knowledge about women’s physical exercising, sports races in general and women-only races in particular, from a Swedish context, linked to an international, interdisciplinary and intersectional discussion about sport in relation to equality, culture, and society.
The study has included four races: Tjejvasan, Tjejvättern, Tjejmilen and Vårruset. The project has consisted of two parts: An ethnographic study of women-only races today, based on fieldwork and a call for written stories, and a historically oriented study, based on archive materials. Initially, the idea was that these two parts would be of approximately the same size, but it turned out that the contemporary material was immensely rich and multi-faceted and we decided to focus on this part. However, there is a large amount of archive materials that would be valuable to investigate in depth in future research. Within the project, we have also made some international comparisons, although not as broadly as we initially had planned.
While we have in general kept to the original project plan, there have been some changes in personnel (approved by RJ). The project leader Dr. Karin S. Lindelöf started her work in January 2014 and the researcher Dr. Agnes Ers one year later, in January 2015, but left in April the same year because of another job. A new researcher, Dr. Annie Woube, was recruited from August 2015 and has worked until the end of the project (December 2017).
Our research shows that the phenomenon women-only races is much more complex and multi-faceted than we had thought. There is a strong resistance against the diminishing aspects that many exercising women experience in the framing and composition of these races: E.g. that the distances are short and that they build on stereotypical images of what women are like, what they can accomplish and what they want. The name ‘tjejlopp’ for shorter races with a more social and playful approach, is provoking for many race participants and public debaters. On the other hand, these races are also very much appreciated by many participants, even by some of those who are critical. Many of them argue that the women-only races create possibilities for women to start exercising and participating in races – and that many of these women would never have given it a thought if the women-only races had not existed. Many participants talk about a certain atmosphere, that some describe in terms of ‘girl power’, a sense of strength, pride and companionship that they experience in the women-only races and nowhere else. In a historical perspective, we can also see that the women-only races have been important to make room for women within recreational sports and to become self-evident exercising subjects. The emancipatory aspect is clear. Women are now in larger numbers also starting to participate in gender-mixed races, and races over longer distances, in many cases after having started their race ‘careers’ in the women-only races. In recent years, there have also been some new women-only races with longer race distances. Interestingly, the feminist potential is actively being downplayed in the Swedish women-only race context, which does not seem to be the case in e.g. the American.
The three most important results of the project are:
1)    WOMEN-ONLY RACES LET WOMEN
a.    Obtain physical strength, as well as bodily and mental confidence, and experience how ’I cannot… (and don’t know how to do sports)’ turns into ‘I can (do sports)!’
b.    Experience sport and exercise together with other women, in a single-sexed room where the activity is in focus, while the meaning and importance of gender is being erased.
c.    Get access to the world of sports, become visible as sporting and exercising subjects, and with self-evidence enter a field that has been defined as male.
2)    WOMEN-ONLY RACES LIMIT WOMEN
a.    Through a specific commercial framing that builds on stereotypical understandings of gender.
b.    By being defined as ’just for fun’, which makes participation unpolitical.
c.    Through their position within a neoliberal, post-feminist discourse without a structural analysis: They are nice events that neither threat the heteronormative and patriarchal order, nor the male sports norm.
3)    OUR CONCLUSION IS THAT
a.    Everything that deals with the active doing, the accomplishing of the race itself, shows that women-only races can function as an emancipatory free zone.
b.    However, most of the framing of the women-only races reproduce narrow stereotypes about being a woman, which diminishes the importance of the participants’ achievements and counteract a gender equal development.
The project’s contribution to the international body of research is undisputable, as our study is one of very few investigations about adult women’s participation in recreational sports races and the cultural, social, political conditions for women’s exercising.
The study has also generated new research questions about the conditions for women in a field close to recreational sports, i.e. outdoor life/friluftsliv and adventure sports. Lindelöf is collaborating in a forthcoming project about female adventurers and expeditioners, together with Professor of Outdoor Education and Friluftsliv Kirsti Pedersen Gurholt, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Associate Professor of History Helena Tolvhed, Stockholm University, and Associate Professor of Literature Jenny Björklund, Uppsala University. In addition, Lindelöf and Woube continue their collaboration in a forthcoming ethnological project that from a gender and intersectional perspective is going to investigate women’s and men’s participation in extreme races, which is a phenomenon that has grown in Sweden in recent years and where the challenges now are becoming increasingly longer, tougher, darker, colder and muddier.
The new questions that our project on women-only races has generated deal primarily with the conditions (and as becomes visible when scratching on the surface: the obstacles) for women to be self-evident actors in fields that are strongly male-coded (and connected to stereotypical ideals of masculinity, e.g physical strength and a drive to compete and conquer) such as long-distance races, adventure sports, etc. If women who participate in women-only races experience and are described by a certain degree of ’diminishing’ of their achievements due to the framing of the women-only races, how are women and their achievements then viewed in male bravados such as Iron Man triathlons, ultra-marathons, mountaineering, and polar expeditions? And what happen to those masculine arenas when women enter them? Are the conditions being changed also for the men’s presence and activities in these fields? These are urgent issues to investigate in future research.
The international dimensions of the project have developed such that the empirical comparisons primarily have been restricted to secondary literature and some ethnographic fieldwork on the Internet. Participant observation was however conducted at Norway’s now largest women-only race, the KK-mila in Oslo, in September 2015, and in June 2016 we conducted autoethnographic fieldwork at a group journey from Sweden to the New York Mini 10k, which is the world’s oldest women-only race. In addition, Lindelöf has been guest researcher at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NIH) autumn 2015. By presenting papers for discussion in this research milieu, it was possible to make some comparisons with the Norwegian context. During this period, the collaboration with Professor Gurholt on the project about female adventurers was also initiated, and Lindelöf continues to have close contact and collaboration with different researchers at NIH. Lindelöf and Woube are also part of the Scandinavian research network on sport studies, idrottsforum.org, and together they have a broad network of contacts with Nordic and international research colleagues, both within ethnology and gender studies.
The project has had a broad publication strategy. We have participated with papers in national and international conferences and published peer reviewed articles in national and international journals – and more are planned after the project funding ends. We have strived for a mix of ethnological, gender studies and sports studies publication channels. In those few cases where these channels have not been Open Access in themselves, we have published parallelly in DiVA.  We also have a popular research ambition, which has materialized in contributions to anthologies and journals with a broader scope than a mere academic. In addition we will sum up the project with a richly illustrated monograph in Swedish that will be published during 2018. In our ambition to reach out to a broad public, we have also held and arranged several public lectures and panel discussions, and participated regularly in newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. During the project we have also had a close collaboration with Nordiska Museet and the Swedish Sports Museum in Stockholm, as well as with race organizers that have been interested in developing their arrangements in a more gender equal and inclusive direction.