Doctoral Thesis Defense by Marina Garcia on Female Athletes' Career Paths
On July 23, 2025, Marina Garcia defended her doctoral thesis titled “Female Athletes, Dual Careers and Professionalization: From Invisibility to Situated Models”, supervised by Miquel Torregrossa, Yago Ramis, and Marta Borrueco.
The thesis focuses on analysing the career paths of female athletes from a contextualized perspective, aiming to build knowledge by, for, and with them. Marina Garcia explores three main areas: models of sport careers in relation to women’s sports; a literature review on dual careers among female athletes; and a qualitative study with players from the Liga Femenina Endesa, focused on their professional status and strategies for balancing sports with education and/or employment.
Among the key contributions is a proposal to expand the Holistic Career Model (Wylleman, 2019), integrating specific features of female career trajectories. The research also highlights the need to broaden the scope of dual careers beyond the sport-education binary, including the triple balance with work activities. The study concludes by showing that, despite progress in the professionalization of women’s sports, many athletes still need to combine sport with other occupations due to precarious working conditions.
Marina Garcia holds a PhD in Sport Psychology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). She earned her degree in Psychology and a master’s in Sport and Physical Activity Psychology from the same university. Her research career has developed within the Sport Psychology Research Group (GEPE) and the Sport Research Institute (IRE-UAB). She has worked at the High Performance Sports Centre in Sant Cugat and the Joaquim Blume Sports Training Centre, focusing her professional efforts on supporting athletes in balancing elite sport with their studies or work.