European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science ISSN: 2501 - 1235 ISSN-L: 2501 - 1235 Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu Volume 3 │ Issue 12 │ 2017 doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1140099 ATTITUDES OF SPORTS EMPLOYEES RELATED TO GENDER ROLES Gülsüm Baştuğ1, Ilker Günel2i, Erkan Bingöl1 Mugla Sitki Kocman University, 1 Faculty of Sports Sciences, Turkey Mugla Sitki Kocman University, 2 Health Sciences Institute, Turkey Abstract: Gender is an ongoing classification of an individual starting from infancy to adulthood. In the Turkish society, the roles of women and men are clearly distinguished by cultural, tradition, custom, beliefs, educational, income and family norms. It is thought that girls in Turkish society can overcome restrictive over-traditionalist attitudes by doing sports. One of the relatively favorable environments for equality between men and women in social life is the sports environment. It is important that the participation of the athletes, coaches, managers and sports specialists in sport environments as well as men and women whose gender role attitudes are favored by all gender role attitudes of all sports employees, will increase the number of sports people in the society as well as increase the number of physically and psychologically healthy individuals, It is thought. The aim of the study based on this idea is to examine the attitudes of sports employees regarding gender roles. The average age of the survey is 30.45 ± 8.41 and 244 sportsmen working in “ntalya. Muğla and ”itlis Youth Services and Sports Provincial Directorate constitute the sportsmen. developed by Zeyneloglu and Terzioğlu “ttitude Scale Related to Gender Roles was applied to determine the gender perception of sports employees participating in the survey. In the evaluation of data, SPSS 23.0 statistical package program was used frequency analysis KolmogorovSmirnov and Shapiro Wilk normality test Mann-Whitney U test Kruskal Wallis test Chisquare test Pearson correlation test statistic was used. As a result, gender role attitudes Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. © 2015 – 2017 Open Access Publishing Group 563 G(ls(m ”aştuğ, Ilker Günel, Erkan Bingöl ATTITUDES OF SPORTS EMPLOYEES RELATED TO GENDER ROLES of sports employees were found to be significantly different between gender, education, mother, and father education variables. It is noteworthy that the traditional attitudes of female sports employees and the equality attitudes of male sports employees are high. The low level of gender role in marriage according to the level of education of the mother shows that the employees' mothers have traditional holdings in marriage. The high level of egalitarian gender role attitudes in sports employees according to their educational status indicates that they have a traditionalist position in the egalitarian gender role. Keywords: gender role, sports, sports employees 1. Introduction Gender was initially introduced as a term that emphasized social construction, as opposed to sex as a biological concept. In time, sex and sexuality have also come to be understood as socially constructed (Lykke, 2010). While the concept of gender expresses extreme cultural and psychological differences from the biological differences between men and women, social roles and responsibilities expected from women and men based on these differences are defined by the concept of gender role. In this context, femininity and masculinity represent the gender roles seen by the society as appropriate for women and men (Koca, 2006). Gender roles are the expression of women and men in social settings. The gender role manifests itself as personality traits and behaviors appropriate to women and men and expresses cultural expectations. Behavior that is thought to be appropriate for a man is called masculine, while behaviors that are considered appropriate for women are called feminine gender roles (Rice, 1996). In the past, the sport was used as an area where men showed their height and test their masculinity. At that time, the acceptance of women as spores could be a threat to the manhood of men. (Hall, 1988). According to Theberge (1993), the high level of body and physical performance in the sports experience makes the sporting environment a strong environment for the construction and validation of gender ideologies. Relationships and discourses between sport, physical performance and masculinity influence the cultures of sports institutions. For this reason, sports institutions are often seen as places that reproduce traditional gender roles and male domination (Claringbould and Knoppers, 2008; Shaw, 2006; Shawve Hoeber, 2003). According to the Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum, there are four critical inequalities among men and women in 130 countries; Economic participation and economic opportunities, political empowerment, access to education and health (World Economic Forum, 2008). Turkey ranks 123th in the gender gap, while in the area of economic participation and European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science - Volume 3 │ Issue 12 │ 2017 564 G(ls(m ”aştuğ, Ilker Günel, Erkan Bingöl ATTITUDES OF SPORTS EMPLOYEES RELATED TO GENDER ROLES opportunities it ranks 124th among 130 countries (Koca, 2012). In the past 30 years, the international women's movement has been a pioneer in the intellectual and physical development of women, and the role of women in the family and working life has been redefined. Women who have free time and material resources have participated more in the sport. (Martin et al. 2004) Social norms negatively affect the attitudes and attitudes of women and men towards sports and physical activity. One of the factors that can help to achieve gender equality is ensuring spore participation of women and girls (Koca, Öztürk and Aslan, 2012). The roles of women and men in society are influenced by cultural norms, traditional attitudes, beliefs, education, income, family and environmental factors. One of the environments where excessive traditionalist gender attitudes, which is comparatively provided by equality between men and women in social life, is the sports environment. In short, it is important for sportsmen, coaches, managers, sports specialists in sports environments to ensure that the gender role attitudes of all sports employees are equitable and that women also participate in sports environments as much as men. Thus, it is thought that it is important to increase the number of individuals doing sports in the society, increase the number of physically and psychologically healthy individuals and establish a healthy society. For viewing / downloading the full article, please access the following link: https://oapub.org/edu/index.php/ejep/article/view/1362 European Journal of Physical Education and Sport Science - Volume 3 │ Issue 12 │ 2017 565