Abstract:

This project aims promote the dual career of women in sport. Concretely, it aims to operationalize the relevant theoretical data obtained in the scientific literature to train women basketball player’s students, as well as parents, coaches and teachers regarding the dual career of athletes. Dual career is the combination of activities of an academic nature (or work), with sport, in order to allow an individual to reach their full potential in life (EU, 2012). Currently, it is estimated that around 120,000 young people are in a dual career situation. However, only 30% of athletes experience high levels and approximately 1 in 6 athletes do not practice elite sport due to their commitment to studies. In the case of women, the situation is even more complicated. Research has shown that there are lower global levels of female participation in sport during adolescence compared to men. In addition, it appears that the age at which women dropout sport is decreasing (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2003). 5-10 years ago, the highest age of dropout for young women was 16; however, recent evidence suggests a 50% reduction in the frequency of sport for women aged 10 to 14 (Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the References Committee for the Arts, 2006). According to the Women's Sports Foundation's report at age 14, women in sport are twice as likely as men to quit sport. Which means that women have less than 1.3 million opportunities to play sports than men (Sallis et al., 2000).

In this sense, we propose to create:
(i) a formative and educational documentary that will present the career trajectories of notable women in Basketball, highlighting positive models of athletes from the world of basketball, thus allowing the construction of career identities of teenagers. Many researchers discuss that women in male-dominated fields (such as sport) can especially benefit from female models, because they convey the message that success in that field is possible (Faucett et al., 2017; Herrmann et al., 2016). Research shows that young athletes benefit from interactions with elite senior athletes who act as potential role models (Henriksen & Stambulova, 2017), fostering intentions to pursue a specific career, as well as adaptability, motivation and career persistence (Austin & Nauta , 2016; (Garcia et al., 2019; Herrmann et al., 2016; Savickas, 2013);
(ii) a website on which guides to support female student basketball players, and their parents, teachers and coaches / illustrative videos, as well as articles of an official and scientific nature;
(iii) a mobile application for the community of female basketball players in Portugal in order to foster a Mentoring program through which professionals with more than 5 years of experience have the possibility of being mentors of young minds, helping the latter to frame and reflect on the issues that arise in the development of a professional career. We believe that this project has great value in terms of social sustainability, as it promotes equal opportunities for the practice of Basketball, presents and exposes athletes to models in career development, contributing to the fight against gender stereotypes and increasing confidence and persistence of female basketball students to realize their interests in basketball.

Keywords:

Dual career, sport dropout, women in sport.