My dissertation explored the experiences of elite women’s rugby players during the COVID-19 pandemic to determine if it had exposed and reinforced a gender hierarchy and androcentric culture that marks women in sport as “the other”.
As sport began to return after the first lockdown, I noticed that there were some extreme differences in how the elite men’s and women’s teams were being treated.
The principal example of this was that the men’s premiership rugby was only deemed safe when accompanied by a costly COVID-19 testing programme. This was not provided for the women. Instead to be able to play again, several law variations were introduced to minimise face-to-face contact. This inspired me to want to research how else they were treated differently.