Abstract
Taking into account the changing gender norms surrounding leadership, we examine the discursive constitution of sports leadership identities in Finland. Drawing on a sample of 49 interviews with men and women senior elite sports leaders and using postfeminism as a critical concept we examine how these high-ranking leaders involve themselves in gender manoeuvring when calibrating masculinity and femininity in the discursive constitution of their leadership identity. While there are a small number of studies which utilise postfeminism as an analytic device to interrogate and understand women’s leadership, there are no comparative studies of women and men leaders which draw on postfeminism. Based on a discourse analysis, we identified three different gender manoeuvring discursive practices that both women and men engaged with themselves. The discursive practices were 1) Women demanding – men repelling, 2) Women choosing to retreat home to care for children, and 3) Women and men are different, and men are more passionate. Taken together, we discuss the complexity and challenges faced when women and men are called to take up the contradictory gender-marked attributes and behaviors in sports leadership.