Background: Historically, female sports have been something strange and different from men's sports, and it has mainly been physical team sports that were considered most inappropriate for women to participate in because of its masculinized effects. Ice hockey is such a team sport that is described as tough and hard with much close contact, and it is still very male dominated today. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate which notions and norms linked to gender that surround female ice hockey players within the masculine coded sport of ice hockey, and also how they handle and are affected by these. Method: This has been studied through qualitative method and through six semi-structured interviews with female ice hockey players who play or have played at a high level in Sweden. Result: In my result I can distinguish two beliefs linked to gender that surround female ice hockey players, those are that everyone is lesbian and masculine. The notion of the female ice hockey player as a lesbian and masculine can be described as a stereotyping. This stereotyping further strengthens the image of female ice hockey players as aberrant in relation to the normative men's hockey, but also in relation to normative femininity. When it comes to body and ideals, all informants agree that the normative and ideal female body is a slim but trained body, but also that it differs from the strong and muscular ice hockey body.

The purpose of this study is to enlighten and discuss if there is any possible differences of how female ice-hockey players experienced norms and the masculine culture within ice-hockey. By asking women from three generations, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, this study wants to find out what these differences might be. Six female ice-hockey players, two born in each decade are interviewed in this study. The study have examined what norms were apparent and how these were dealt with as female ice-hockey players. During what conditions could young girls play ice-hockey and how were they met by people in that environment. Furthermore, the study examines the differences of these experiences.    The primary result of the study shows that it´s a bigger difference between the experiences of the women born in the 1970s and 1980s than the difference between the ones born 1980s and 1990s. Primarily the differences are of how they were met and what others thought of women playing ice-hockey. The conditions of playing ice-hockey have, throughout the generations, stayed the same as well as the norms within the sport.