An Educational Program Pattern in Sports to Achieve Gender Equality and Violence Prevention against Women

The aim of this qualitative research was to present an educational program pattern to achieve gender equality and violence prevention against women in sports and using grounded theory based on the Strauss-Corbin approach. The participants consisted of women sports experts including professors of sports management, researchers in the field of women's sports, managers and authorities of sports organizations, coaches, athletes, sociologists and psychologists (N=21) who were selected by using judgement sampling method and participated in the interview. Open, axial and selective coding methods were used to analyze the data. In a semi-structured interview with experts, a set of basic themes was collected during the coding process, and categories were extracted from them. In the axial coding stage, relationships between categories under the heading of causal conditions including motivational skills, the main phenomenon including gender awareness, strategies including anger management skills and environmental education, intervening conditions including gender and culture, contextual factors including participatory learning, and outcomes including cognitive skills and social skills were identified in the coding paradigm. In the selective coding stage, all components of the coding paradigm were described; the model was drawn and the theory was formulated and presented. The research results extracted 8 main components and 21 sub-components presented in the form of a theoretical frame based on the grounded theory. Results indicates that the factor of training coaches and athletes is an essential factor to achieve gender equality and prevent violence against women.