Intersections of Development, Gender, and Sports

The concept of Sport for Development (SfD) was developed in the late 20th century. In Japan, the discussion about the contribution of sports to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) began along with the planning for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. This discussion is important considering the new role of sports in the post-COVID-19 society. Although it is said that sports can play various roles in the context of SfD, more rigorous verifi cation is needed to understand the signifi cance of sports at the societal, community, organizational, and individual levels. The involvement of women in international development has been growing in many sectors. The former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in 2015: "We cannot achieve our 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development without full and equal rights for half of the world's population, in law and in practice." However, the author has not previously paid attention to grasping SfD matters from gender perspectives, which may be related to the identity crisis or the excessive attention to the other social minorities related to ethnicity, economic poverty, victims of disaster or famine. Although I have ignored my lack of attention to gender perspectives, at the same time, both in fi eld activities and in research, I have questioned why most of my colleagues were cheerful, confident, and male sports persons or male development workers. In the meantime, as my research progressed, I wondered about the necessity of "exposing some of the racialized, classed and gendered silences and invisibilities evident in SDP scholarship and practice" (Hayhurst et al. 2018). The thematic areas of "international development and gender" and "sports and gender" have received significant attention in research during the past 20 years. However, looking back at the research in sociology of sports, gender studies, and development studies, the inclusion of gender perspectives in SfD research is still uncommon. This study examines the conjunction of international development, sports, and gender by evaluating several related hypotheses, setting the Hayhurst et al. (2018) discussion as a focal point, to clarify the vision for an upcoming analysis of field data. Another focus is the inherent power of sports as a tool for development from a gender perspective.