Rethinking Sport and Exercise Psychology Research by Peter Hassmén Richard Keegan & David Piggott

Author:Peter Hassmén, Richard Keegan & David Piggott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

Table 6.1Composition of editorial boards of main four sport and exercise psychology journals (May 2016)

Journal

Editor

Associate eds.

Board

JSEP

Male

3M, 2F

29M, 8F

PSE

Male × 2

7M, 4F

28M, 12F

JASP

Male

5M, 2F

16M, 13F

TSP

Male

5M, 1F

21M, 12F

TOTAL

5 male

20 male, 9 female

94 male, 45 female

Typically, sport and exercise psychology has failed to recognise and promote the contribution—concrete and/or potential—that women make to the field. Even now, despite typically training high proportions of women to PhD level and beyond, the editorial boards of our leading journals are largely male dominated, with 69 % males and 74 % male at the editorial/associate editor level (see Table 6.1). Of course, there is nothing inherently better about males that makes them more suitable for refereeing and editing journal papers, so we do need to question this situation, while not necessarily blaming those at the helm: the issues are systemic. As discussed above, the issue is largely insidious, unconscious and not a deliberate ‘conspiracy’. Every so often, however, people do seem to assimilate the values of the system they inhabit, and the ugliness inherent in the system is explicitly expressed. Consider the following example, fortunately from an area outside of sport and exercise psychology (remember the questionable reviewer comments we raised earlier). In May 2015, a reviewer for the journal PlosOne provided the following comment to authors of a manuscript: ‘It would probably also be beneficial to find one or two male biologists to work with (or at least receive internal peer review from, but better yet as active co-authors), in order to serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically based assumptions.’ The rest of the review contained further sexist claims. Is it possible that certain influential figures within each scientific field presume males to be more objective, more hard-working, more productive and so on and make important decisions based on this assumption? Is it possible that women in a scientific field could perceive this bias, and unfairness, and be upset, disillusioned and angered by it? Roper et al.’s (2005) interviews certainly suggest that it can be perceived, understood and articulated for discussion. Two of the participants on Roper et al.’s study explicitly recognised this bias and rejected it, clearly expressing that they had more to offer academia than publications, citations and grants:I don’t think of those things… and the reason I don’t is that I fear that when one starts to think about those things like status and prestige and how many publications you have, that may lead to losing sight of why I got into this in the first place.

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