I'll continue to hope that the rising tide of women's pro sports would also lift up a broader understanding of athletics and athleticism - and also hope that i can someone that is able to maintain this research beyond a dissertation

but i also feel sad, because I know when I was a kid in a soccer uniform, my athleticism was never questioned, but in a leotard it was...

on this site if you search for women's sport researchers/writers, most have "woso" or "wnba" in their bio. I'm so glad those sports and athletes and researchers are getting their due (i BEGGED my parents to go to washington spirit opener at rfk in the first iteration of what is now the nwsl)

so i get the impression that these feminized sport topics are fine for your first/only solo research project, but not appropriate/fundable/realistic for a career.

some additional searching showed that many of these writers are not in academia (no huge shock there), but those that are don't continue to publish on these feminized sports.

which i feel some way(s) about. my dissy was focused on WAG because that was what drew me to the research in the first place - i assume many others come to their dissy topic for similar reasons - all social science is at least a bit "me-search"

2. SO MUCH of this scholarship is in masters theses and doc dissertations.

1. cheer had a bit of an academic boom in the '00s & '10s, but much less scholarship coming out about in the past 10ish years