New forms of neoliberal femininity create demanding horizons of expectation for young women. For talented athletes, these pressures are intensified by the establishment of dual-career discourses that construct the combination of high-performance sport and education as a normative, ‘ideal’ pathway. The pressed time perspective inherent in dual-careers requires athletes to employ a variety of time-related skills, especially for young women who aim to live up to ‘superwoman’ ideals that valorise ‘success’ in all walks of life. Drawing on existential phenomenology, and in-depth interviews with 10 talented Finnish sportswomen (aged 19–22), we explored their experiences of lived time when pursuing dual-careers in upper secondary sport schools. Exploring participants’ bodily experiences of inhabiting the achievement life-world, we analyse how these sportswomen either learned ways of living up to this ambitious script or came to understand the detrimental effects of the script, necessitating other ways of being. For those who experience a disjuncture between the ‘perfect’ and their embodied experience, self-care practices are needed to restore life-world harmony, and orient to alternative futures.

新形式的新自由主义女性气质为年轻女性带来了苛刻的期望视野。对于才华横溢的运动员，双重压力的话语会加剧这些压力，这种话语将高性能运动与教育结合起来，构成规范的“理想”途径。双重职业所固有的紧迫的时间观要求运动员运用各种与时间有关的技能，特别是对于那些致力于实现在各行各业中重视“成功”的“女超人”理想的年轻女性而言。利用存在的现象学，并与10名才华横溢的芬兰女运动员进行深入访谈，我们探究了他们在高中体育学校追求双重职业时的生活经历。探索参与者体验成就生活世界的身体体验，我们分析了这些女运动员如何学习如何适应这种雄心勃勃的剧本，或者如何理解剧本的有害影响，从而需要其他的生存方式。对于那些经历过“完美”和他们的具体经历之间脱节的人，需要进行自我护理以恢复生活世界的和谐，并适应另类的未来。