DEP. OF EXERCISE > Research > Ongoing research > Sport Politics Welfare > GP projects
Current Projects by Gertrud Pfister
(Un)healthy bodies – health discourses and physical (in)activity among Danish adults
This project had the aim to gain in-depth insight into and an understanding of the factors and processes which support or prevent an active lifestyle of Danish adults. We identified active and matched inactive Danish adults with enough resources to engage in sport or recreational physical activities and searched for similarities and differences in their biographies, life styles and activity patterns. We conducted 30 semi structured interviews with narrative parts.
In addition, we used pictures and scenarios in order to stimulate reflections about their attitudes towards sport (for all). Results of the project, among others, are the significance of gender, time, experiences in PE, sport biographies, partners, social relations, health, and body concepts.
Head of project
Gertrud Pfister and Laila Ottesen
Muslim women and physical activities
This project focuses on physical activities and body projects of female migrants from Turkey living in Copenhagen. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of sports participation as a relationship between the supply of sport and the dispositions of individuals, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews. Their narratives about physical exercise, fitness and health were embedded in their life stories, which tell about their migration, their struggles in a foreign country, their isolation and their confrontation with discrimination.
However, all of them found meaning in their lives in Denmark, through work and/or children and/or religion. Their biographies prove the agency of these women and their influence on social processes but also the heterogeneity of their experiences. Physical activities and sports are experienced as additional benefits and/or as duties in the pursuit of health and slimness. More interview studies are planned.
Head of project
Gertrud Pfister and Turkish PhD students
Doping in Sport – an Issue of Gender and Society
The main aim of this research project is to gain an understanding of the use of performance enhancing means in top-level and fitness sport and to explore gender differences as well as social and cultural dimensions of the body, body modifications and embodied identities. Methods are internet-based surveys and qualitative interviews.
Samples the athletes supported by Team Danmark and users of club based fitness centres (see PhD projects)
- Marie Birch Overbye: Doping, performance enhancement and Gender - perspective of the elite athlete
Head of project
Gender equality in Europe – scientific part of the project “Olympia”
The Olympia Project (headed by UISP, Italy) aims at an increase of gender equality in European sport. Means are awareness raising, campaigns and a chart for gender equality. The project is funded by the sport unit of the European Commission.
This scientific part of the project focuses on an exploration of gender proportions and the situation of women in various areas of sport as well as in various regions and countries.
The information is based on existing data, mostly on internet sources, but also on scientific publications and other material. These data will be analysed and interpreted on the background of gender theories.
Head of project
Physical activity – a project in the context of the UNIK project “Fitness, Food & Pharma”
Aims of the study were to find out how various groups of the population make meaning of the current health discourses, and to identify sport experiences and activity patterns as well as the attitudes towards physical activity (PA) and the reasons for being active or inactive (environment, socialization, biographies, etc.).
Head of project
Gertrud Pfister and Laila Ottesen
Sport and its gendered structures and representations
Underlying research projects:
- Women leaders in sports organizations: An analysis of gender relations and an identification of the factors leading to under representation of women in decision making comities
- "Women at the top". A study of women, sport and management (in cooperation with E. Trangbæk, L. Ottesen and U. Habermann)
- Sport, Gender and the Mass Media: A meta-analysis of existing data combined with a quantitative study of the representation of men and women at the Olympic Games in 2004 and a semiotic analysis of a sample of different medias
