| Summary: | The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the role of physical activity in the lives of
three Indian women living in Canada, specifically in the Lower Mainland, and to examine
some of the more prominent issues they are facing in today's physical activity context by giving
voice to their experiences and stories. This is a vital area to investigate because of the
tendency to universalize and stereotype Indo-Canadian women without properly understanding
their cultural backgrounds and the content and context of their physical activity experiences.
I wish to understand what has motivated Indo-Canadian women to get involved with
and continue with physical activity pursuits; and to what degree have social support structures
(family, school, community, peers) influenced their decisions. Women in this particular age
bracket (25-35) will hopefully be able to articulate not only their sporting experiences, but also
their opportunities, constraints, dissatisfactions and accomplishments as they relate to physical
activity.
Social support structures such as family, community and school, physicality and the
body, leadership and mentoring and self-promotion and marketing are some of the more
prominent themes. The methodology chosen to extract the data is that of life story interviews.
A series of in-depth interviews conducted with each of the individual participants reveals their
own unique, complex and selective life and physical activity experiences.
Each woman seemed to view, and construct the issue of participation in physical
activity as a personal responsibility for community development. For example, one woman
struggled to create and find support for an all-Indian dragon boat team and define a space for
Indian women, while another desired to promote alternatives and encourage women to dance and maintain culture at a community level. The third participant's goals included increasing the
participation rates of younger Indian women, by providing positive leadership.
The participants are teaching Indian women and girls to un-learn an exclusion of self.
Solutions proposed and implemented by them included: female-only environments, minimal or
no-cost sessions, training and employing South Asians, daycare, accommodation of religious
calendar, transportation, education in community and family, choice of attire, use of ethnic
language, and redefinition of common images. === Education, Faculty of === Kinesiology, School of === Graduate
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