SDP and Gender - Women-focused projects in the Arabian Gulf

The relationship between sport and international development is plagued by a lack of conceptual and theoretical advancements (Schulenkorf, Edwards, and Hergesell, 2020; Svensson and Levine, 2017). Crucially, there are many unanswered questions as to the processes that contribute to effective delivery and design of programming (Coalter, 2007, 2013; Whitley et al., 2019). For gender-focused programs and initiatives, these desired understandings have been complicated by diverse approaches to research and fragmented narratives on the uses of sport for women’s development (McDonald, 2019). This chapter introduces one avenue that can be pursued to achieve such called-for advances through a context-sensitive critical-managerial methodological approach that leads to a better understanding of the sport-development relationship for women. Using a Theory of Change approach informed by transnational feminism and presenting findings of a study conducted in the Arabian Gulf region, this chapter argues for the importance of acknowledging the linkages between context-based research and making universalising conclusions for better conceptualising the relationship between gender, sport and international development.