Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

What if we told you that the texts collected in this project (Women and Sport) might serve to maintain stereotypical views about women in sport? What if we told you that scientifi c knowledge often cannot meet or fulfill the expectations placed on it of being able to support and promote women’s participation and performance in elite competitive sports? What if we told you that sports science is, in fact, not equipped to deal with sports practice on a practical and individual level? our aim in saying this is not to disavow the impact of sports science on the development of women’s sport, but rather to warn against an overly simplistic approach to research. Both of us are researchers; that makes us confident in confronting the most obvious problems arising from the use of scientific knowledge in the promotion of women’s sport during the past decades. In this chapter, we highlight the significance of the ‘practical knowledge’ of coaches and its sometimes ambiguous relation with scientific knowledge about sex and gender differences.