Why and How Are Women Recruited for Rugby? The Case in Japan
Why and How Are Women Recruited for Rugby? The Case in Japan

Summary/Abstract: When a woman says that she likes to play sports, what kind of sports do people think of? Tennis? Archery? Considering sports, we recognize that there is discrimination in what we expect between men’s sports and women’s sports. Rugby football is supposed to be exclusively played by men. However, in fact men and women play rugby. Why do we connect rugby with men only? I argue that rugby football games have developed among public schools in England. In that setting, football was played by boys. The Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 changed this image since they adopted men’s and women’s rugby football games. Therefore, many women’s rugby teams were established for Olympic Games in Japan. I interviewed several women rugby football teams and I realized many teams have the same problems. The biggest one is that it is not so easy to gather female members to make a women’s rugby team. In this situation, Nomi-Koma rugby school (primary school children) has succeeded in gathering female members at Komatsu city, Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan. They said half of the members were girls. Why and how can they recruit girls for members? I recognize this case also concerns why and how a girl begins to play rugby in Japan. I will report on the results of this research and discuss the cases of female rugby players in Japan.

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