GENDER AND SPORT CORRUPTION

This chapter addresses a critical gap in sport scholarship by exploring the gendered dimensions of corruption in elite sports systems—an area largely overlooked in existing literature. While prior research has examined corruption and gender inequality separately, this chapter explains how gendered social norms and informal networks sustain corrupt practices within sport organizations. By employing a theory of gendered organizations, the chapter develops a theoretical framework to illuminate the mechanisms through which three different types of corruption (match fixing, clientelism, and sextortion) are both shaped by and reinforced through gendered processes in different sports contexts. This approach reveals how specific norms and organizational conditions enable and perpetuate gendered experiences of corruption, offering new insights into the resilience of such corrupt sports practices. The analysis contributes to broader discussions on power, governance, and reform in sport by situating corruption within the social structures of gender, ultimately advancing the understanding of how organizational dynamics in elite sports are deeply gendered and structurally embedded.