Gender stereotypes in the practice of physical exercise and sport in university students of Physical Education Pedagogy in Chile

The objective of this study is to design a valid and reliable instrument for measuring gender stereotypes in the practice of physical exercise and sport that will allow us to analyze the levels of sexism in this area in university students of Physical Education Pedagogy in Chile. For this purpose, the scale was applied to 321 students from seven universities between 18 and 40 years of age. To determine the validity and reliability indexes of the scale, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were applied using the statistical program IBM SPSS version 25.0 for Windows. As a result, the Scale for measuring gender stereotypes in the practice of physical exercise and sport represents a valid instrument, since it presents adequate saturation indexes, communalities, explained variances and is reliable (with an alpha=.887), as for the confirmatory factor analysis it showed a significant x2 (x2=490.860; p=.000), as the RMSEA=.049, the CFI=.935 and the TLI=.925 values indicate to be adequate. Regarding the analysis, the students who present more sexist beliefs identify with the male gender; on the other hand, the female students seek to break the binarism established in professional sports. However, they hold stereotypes of beauty in terms of thinness and a tendency to normalize the dominance of men in decision-making. The need to educate trainee teachers in gender perspective is supported.