FWCW Lit My Passion for Women's Sports Studies

Dong Jinxia [File Photo]

Professor Dong Jinxia, director of the Women and Sports Research Center at Peking University, tells her story about the World Conference on Women in 1995.

Dong said that her interest in women's sports studies began shortly before the 1995 event.

The year previously, in 1994, she was invited by the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) to be a sports representative at a women-related conference in Jordan. This meeting made her see how colorful and unique women's lives were there, and experience the view of women in western Asia. In the meantime, it also made her realize the complexity of women's problems.

Before the conference kicked off in 1995, Dong had another opportunity to get in touch with other female elites outside sporting circles, to discuss women's status and challenges in China when she participated in a training course by the All-China Women's Federation.

These two experiences kindled her enthusiasm for studies on women and sports, and inspired her to focus her doctoral study on the women, society and sports.

Women's Sports Studies Bring Her Success, and Vice Versa

At that time, few scholars in China knew about women's studies in sport, and some people even suspected whether it is necessary to study it at all. Then, she published the translation of the "Brighton Declaration on Women and Sports" in 1995. At the same time, she also finished two theses–"Modern American Feminism and Women's Sports" and "An Overview of Studies on Women's Sports in China and Abroad".

These three articles laid a foundation for her studies. Western scholars' lack of knowledge and great deal of interest in China's sports and gender studies also confirmed her determination to engage in the topic.

Since then, Dong gave speeches on Chinese women's sports at international academic conferences over and over again, and her English monograph "Women, Sports and Society in New China" was also published in London in 2003, which aroused attention from the international community.

After that, Dong was invited by international organizations and foreign universities in Greece, UK, Germany, the U.S. and other countries to give lectures and make reports.

Gradually, she becomes one of the few scholars studying the specialty. In 2007, she was granted the North American Society for Sports History's Max & Reet Howell Award, and she became the youngest and first non-Western woman to receive the prize.

Rectification for Beijing Olympics in International Forums

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was not only a grand sporting gala seen across the globe, but also a rare opportunity for the study of sports and gender. As a physical education teacher, Dong said that it was her duty to make contributions to the grand event.

When she made speeches to illustrate the changes that the Beijing Olympics brought to Chinese women, she also heard of some controversies about the games.

She remembered that a speaker said at a sociology conference in Cuba in 2011 that the Beijing Olympics were not beneficial, even that they had a negative impact on the overall sports community in Beijing. Dong refuted that the Beijing Olympic Games has promoted the development of mass sports, and it helped people know about the importance of participating in sports.
  
Dong said that when foreigners are suspicious of something, we need to use facts to illustrate or directly help them find the truth.

Growth and Challenges of Women's Studies of Sports

Since the 1990s, more researchers have begun to engage in the studies of women's sports, which has become an indispensable part of sports studies overall. In addition, postgraduates' participation and their academic dissertations have improved the quality of women's studies of sports to a certain extent, and more successors have emerged in large numbers at the same time.

Dong believes that although there still have lots of problems about women's studies of sports in China that not been solved yet, she will strive to tackle it all the way.

(Source: cnwomen.com.cn/Translated and edited by Women of China)