The purpose of this paper is to examine the gender structure, especially “differences among women” of a lifestyle sport　which is popular these days. The fieldwork of the social world of players of surfing in Japan, the United States and Australia was conducted. It includes formal and informal interviews, participant observations, and visiting related organizations. The interview was conducted in the lifehistory method and the snow ball sampling. The time spent in each field was both three months in the United States and in Australia. The research in Japan has been continued intermittently since 1995. I classified and analyzed their experiences into five terms from the interview data: access to surfing, livelihood and sponsors, balance with school education, participation of contests, and training. The results I reached are that if the lifestyle sport roots as the lifestyle influence the players environment of competitions. Players in Japan are in disadvantage because they have to make the environment by themselves when they become grown up comparing players in the United States and Australia. Though it is already said that surfing culture is white male dominated, I could not find the“clear” racism or sexism from the real interviews. It is rather experienced that they are marginalized in invisible way by the physical, mental, and cultural distances from the center of the culture. At the same time players in Japan have more chance to make a living by surfing, as the equal environment of competition is getting developing to some degree inside Japan.

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Women professional wrestlers do not express their femininity by enduring injury or pain when wrestling. Nevertheless, especially between the late 80s and the early 90s, they tended to wrestle even though they were injured and/or felt pains. Both organizational factors and wrestlers’ factors have contributed to this tradition. After the early 90s, while the tradition has remained strong, some wrestlers come to regard the tradition as wrong and decide not to wrestle until their injuries are completely healed. The reason, in part, was because of a structural change after 1995 that professional wrestling organizations have reduced the number of yearly promotions. This generated more time-off for wrestlers when they were injured and/or felt pains. Since women wrestlers are different from male athletes studied in the previous research in that women wrestlers did not connect wrestling with injuries and/or pains in the construction of their femininity, it is easier for them that they can stay away from the ring when they are injured and/or feel pains. Especially two women wrestlers, who have been suffered from various injuries since their debuts, seem to accept this structural change more easily because they have anxiety that injuries might negatively affect their physical power for childbirth and childrearing. As a result, they come to take better care of their bodies. Such attitudes are not found among both male and female athletes in the previous studies. Future research is needed to consider how both male and female athletes view their injuries and pains in relation with their reproductive abilities.

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Even as barriers impeding participation in sports by women are eliminated, differences between male and female including gender-segregated competitions and different rules still exist. Mixed martial arts (MMA) competitions, which have been gaining popularity since the 1990s in both Japan and the United States, are held under different rules for the different genders. There are more restrictions (prohibitions) in the rules for female than those for male. MMA is dangerous in the sense that the objective is to knock out the opponent or to force the opponent to give up. The author examined the types of conduct that are prohibited in MMA, which entails these risks, because they are dangerous, and whether there are any differences between competitions for male and female. For this research, the author analyzed the rules of MMA, clarified the background on how the rules for female were adopted and their purposes through surveys of those who were involved in establishing the rules, and verified the validity of adopting rules that differentiate between the genders. Through an analysis of the results, it became clear that different rules by gender were adopted based on the following considerations: (1) the skill level needed to overcome the danger; and (2) physical and social disadvantages that women suffer as a result of injuries. Nonetheless, there is no denying the existence of a certain gender bias when there is an assumption that women suffer more social disadvantage than men as a result of facial injuries. The fact is, however, that these disadvantages are recognized in courts cases and other situations, and event organizers and rule developers have no choice but to take them into consideration.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of such life events as marriage, childbirth and child-rearing on the continuance of the competitive careers of top female athletes. The investigation was conducted by means of interviews and a questionnaire survey with 23 former Olympians (12 males and 11 females). In this research, the following two points are clarified: 1) The influence of marriage, childbirth and child-rearing on the continuance of competitive careers. 2) The influence of the life events including marriage, childbirth and child-rearing on the retirement opportunities of athletic. The results of this study are summarized as follows: Gender role attitudes especially cause female athletes to hesitate in continuing their competitive careers. However, from the in-depth data of the interviews of this study, a lot athletes of both sexes were alternatively to choose between their continuance of competitive career or life events concerning to the gender role attitude. In many cases, marriage, childbirth and child-rearing led to female athletes stopping their competitive careers. However, In the process in their life choosing, those women did not recognize marriage, childbirth and child-rearing as general“ disincentive factors” of competitive career. Because they recognized housework and childcare as the proper work that a woman should accomplish. In the case of male athletes, such life events as marriage or becoming father were not direct causes for abandoning their competitive careers. For male athletes, the most important reason why they abandon their competitive careers is a waning of physical ability. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that an athlete’s choices in life and the construction of the athlete’s gender role recognition were under the influence of coaches.

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