BBC News was running an article today in regard to girls and sport; in particular new sports being introduced in schools to make PE (physical education) more attractive to girls. This is in response to research suggesting the gap between the amount of exercise girls and boys do widens during their time at school. There is already not enough female televised sports. Every channel is dominated by the men. Is this new appraoch going to help, or make matters worse? We may get more young women exercising, which of course if good, but will it be at the expense of more mainstream sports, and will women's sports ever get the recognition it deserves? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17873519
My personal opinion is that regardless of gender, you either do the sport or not. I've seen plenty of girls who are really into sports, a lot of guys who aren't into sports, and vice versa. I can appreciate the thought of trying to encourage more female participation in the sport, but have a specifically gender tailored sport seems somewhat odd to me. Also, Ain't that the point of exercise?
I would like to see more sports where men and women compete together. Mixed soccer teams for instance
I would like to see more sports where men and women compete together. Mixed soccer teams for instance
I did an essay on traditionally male dominated sports and female participation. the most disgusting thing i found was the sexualisation of athletes and lack of appreciation of female athletic and competitive ability of athletes. theres was even a study showing that the main female olympic events shown were considered "feminine" and often were things like figure skating rather than wrestling or weightlifting. if you like i could post the essay and references.
I will readily admit I am not a fan of watching female only sports, tennis and athletics as examples. Maybe that is an age thing. I am, or was bought up watching male dominated sports and would hate to see the next generation only see male sports on television. I would also guess that attendance at live sporting events will go down, as will subscriptions to local sports clubs.
+1. i was always amused and a little displeased at the olympic gymnastics disciplines being so different for men and women, such as there being no ringwork category for women. then again, i am of the opinion that all women should weightlift
I read the article this morning and I find it interesting that they say PE in school puts a lot of girls off sport. Now, I know it's been a wee while since I was last in school, but speaking as a woman who loves sport and always has, I loathed PE in school. I hated netball and was crap at athletics, I quite liked hockey (I'm good at hitting people with sticks) but my PE teacher always put her favourites in the team and so (because I didn't toady to her) I got replaced by a girl who always ran away from the ball in case she got hurt. I was lucky, I did a lot of sport outside of school (kayaking, horse riding, swimming, went walking with friends and family etc), so I had an active childhood, however, if I'd had to rely on school sports I probably would have given up sport as something that really wasn't fun. Getting sweaty or mucky never bothered me, but I do think we need a culture change and a major effort to educate girls (and women) about the benefits of sports and dispell the myths surrounding females and sports (you'll get bulky overnight, sweating is bad, only do cardio etc).
as a young man i loathed PE in school also. PE at school sucks. wasnt till high school were one teacher decided to take us to a MT gym (one Slip has worked at in fact!) that i actually started to enjoy PE. they need to offer more varied sports for ALL kids than just football and basketball. i think one of the large problems is that even if girls enjoy a sport, unless its a mainstream sport for females, there's little support for them. in fact one of the girls at my wrestling club was interviewed by a local newspaper and said that she didnt take the sport back up (she did it for 6 months previously but stopped) until they made an olympic and commonwealth event for females, there was no goals for her before. luckily she took in back up and is now british champ for her weight and age class as well as second best in europe. shes also a commonwealth hopeful now. female athletes dont get half as much respect or support as their male counterparts
heh, when i was in school PE was giving the boys a soccer ball, not saying anything to the girls, and then completely ignoring the class until it was done...
I had as similar upbringing. There was always the impression given that women's sports weren't as important as the male version and that women doing them weren't as good. It was never pointed out that the differences are mainly due to anatomical and physiological issues, not a lack of talent. There was also the view (and still is to a certain extent) that women doing sport weren't as feminine or were gay (the lesbian PE teacher myth that goes round all schools). NB I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being gay, but when you go to an all girls catholic convent school there is a stigma attached to it. I also think that teenage girls in general can be pretty sensitive to accusations of being gay, so that it was associated with being sporty didn't help with the image of women's sport. There was also the portrayal of women in sport issue, jokes about female shot putters, the steroid use of the East German team etc. Heck, when I was at school, women's football wasn't even an option! As I said previously, I was lucky, my parents encouraged me to do sport but even so, when I bought my first weights set (I went halves with my dad when I was around 14), my mum was all 'Oooh, be careful, you don't want to get big and bulky' (and to a certain extent she still is. She said to me recently, 'I think you've lost weight' followed by 'I think you should stop weight lifting, your shoulders are getting too broad' - I hadn't lost weight, but my 'too broad' shoulders were making my waist seem narrower, hence giving the impression that I was slimming down (plus muscle gain and associated weight redistribution is probably masking fat lost). As I've aged, I've gained a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for female versions of sports and the women who take part in them. However, there were some female athletes I really admired when I was younger - Florence Griffiths Joyner was one (I know there is a lot of controversy surrounding her now, but as a teenager this wasn't an issue I was aware of). I've always had the impression that in the UK women who do well in sport often do it in sports that aren't necessarily done at school and usually require a fair degree of parental support to do well in (we've always had strong female participation and achievement in equestrian events, for example).
it's funny thats its always outsiders to the sport that make the comments and for some reason athletes believe them. you'll never hear a coach say that it makes females bulky or that females arent as good and most will acknowledge that in many skill based sports females tend to be better. bur i agree, family support tends to be the biggest factor. my younger cousins do well at sports days and it's no doubt due to the whole family (even grandparents) getting involved in their training and keeping them active and actually attending and taking them to sport events. i guess it helps that there dad has a sport and military background and often includes them when he's training and does things like father-daughter triathlons. his 8 year old sneakily deadlifted 1.1x her bodyweight with perfect form when we went in to get some water.
this is not that uncommon in youth football, due to lack of female interest girls at certain age groups often find themselves in boy teams. As for doing this with adults, thats about as good an idea as having mixed gender boxing really. The fact that diving and acting out to make every tackle seem worse than it is now a very integrated part of the professional game leads allot of people to forget football is pretty rough as sports go.
I really don't rate how we approach education in the modern era. our system for educating our young is irrelevant to almost everything in life, P.E is no exception, it has about as relevant to developing interest in sports and fitness as home economics.
I'm with Frodocious. There's a lot of myths flying around that are needlessly harmful. I suspect more girls would do sports if they were set right on the 'you'll gain 50 kgs of muscle overnight' nonsense.
Or go one better and get them set straight on that women having muscular development and being physically strong and durable is a positive trait NOT a negative trait.
I grew up playing tennis as my main sport, as well as surf life saving so girls playing sport was normal to me. There were plenty of girls who didn't play sport but I could say the same about the guys. I generally hung around with the athletically minded people so that wasn't an issue. As for sporty women being gay that wasn't an issue growing up as most of the girls good at sport were really good looking. I may have been lucky in that we had several national level female athletes in my year (or close to my year), especially in soccer and beach sprinting so they were pretty highly admired. Rugby League and Aussie Rules are the main sports on free to air tv so that is male only, but tennis and ironman (surf life saving) are shown quite often at certain times of the year so I frequently watch womens sport. I think in general having female oriented sports would probably help in schools as most girls don't want to play footy or basketball. In primary school skipping was a common activity due to the Jump Rope for Heart scheme and the girls were probably more interested in doing this than the guys.
I think this is the big thing, the media has portrayed skinny models as the epitime beauty so any sign of muscles on a woman and people start talking about how manly the women look. It's hard to get women to want to lift weights when this image is the rule.
It's not just about the myths regarding muscular women, it's the perception and portrayal of women by the media and the fashion industry. Clothes are designed for women with figures like anorexic stick insects, up until recently, media portrayal (advertising) of well known female athletes has often focused on provocative poses with their chests front and centre and perfect make up, rather than shots of them doing sports and sweating and photos like the one Slip posted above were rare. I think there is a change starting to happen, I was very impressed recently that JJB Sports are using UK Weightlifter Zoe Smith in their Olympics ad campaign and their photo of her shows her crouching down to start a snatch. As much as I have issues with some of the 'female' activities (Zumba, cheerleading, cardio focused classes etc), I think that may be there is an argument for including them in the school curriculum (along with more traditional activities) to get girls interested in sport. I do think that school sport in this country needs to be brought up to date to include strength exercises, prehab and rehab and healthy lifestyle advice, but to do that it would require funding for equipment and more training for PE staff. I don't know how it works in schools at the moment, but I would suggest separate PE classes for males and females, because I suspect many teenage girls probably don't want to do PE in front of boys. With so many kids having an online presences these days, sites like Fitocracy and the personal sites of females who train hard and properly, can help to counteract the myths - the opposite is also true as there is still so much misinformation out there and so many clueless crappy personal trainers giving out completely incorrect advice.
