Liverpool Hope University
Posthumanism in Power Football: Interpersonal and intrapersonal factors in the development of the athletic identity for female players
Power Football, a popular disability sport, has shown exponential growth in participation over the past decade. It is one of two sports exclusively for powered wheelchair users and the sport’s intrinsic rules set it apart from non-disabled football and many disability sports.
The sport is mixed-gendered and eligibility requires players to have a high level of physical impairment. Using semi-structured interviews with female players, this research study examined how Power Football’s competitive environment may promote barriers for disabled females yet, how the intimate connection with a Power Football chair promotes a positive athletic identity.
Conceptualising a sporting identity for females with high levels of physical impairment within the Power Football environment has authorised a deeper personal understanding of their embodiment, used as a means of challenging medicalised perceptions of disability sport. However, some discussions concerning the sporting identity that Power Football enforces indicated that gender inequity and impairment effects had more of an impact on female players compared to male players, especially around leadership roles and classification regulations. Participants in a male-dominated environment shared intrinsic barriers and how it may become necessary to challenge ableist and sexist preconceptions of disability identity within the sport itself to prove their ability and authority within their clubs. Understanding how society may exclude disabled females is vital in changing dominant stereotypes surrounding females and disability sports.