The Death of a Female Boxer: Media, Sport, Nationalism, and Gender

This article examines the “gendered nationalism” and “gendered media sporting nation” theses in relation to female involvement in sport based mainly on a content analysis of media narratives surrounding the death of a young female boxer in Trinidad in 2009. The nature of this reaction disproves a dominant view that female athletes or sports have been either excluded or marginalized from constructions of nation, nationalism, and sport hero for the narratives were constitutive of a broader “narrative of nation” that was invoked by her death. However, at the same time, it was found that Salandy was still subject to “conventional gendered representational techniques” by the media and that female boxing in general still suffers from a lack of legitimacy, sexism, and male domination consistent with the global pattern, which contrasted sharply with the boxer’s celebration as a national icon and underpinned her “multiple imagery and contradictions” as a role model.