1. Childhood Image result for girls doing sports
If this all seems conspiratorial, rest, there is no covert patriarchal plot to oppress women via athletics–we do it on our own, through the gender role training we reinforce beginning with toddlers, and continuing throughout their lives.
One of the primary reasons female athletes are more prone to injury, is that we tend to provide them less early coaching and correction in sports operations. “Throw like a girl” or “run like a girl” are actual occurrences, but only because females are so commonly excluded from these activities early on, and are supplied with less clear role modeling to overcome this exclusion.
Because we’ve raised the stakes of sports across the spectrum, attaching every level of competition into a continuum leading to college scholarships and expensive pay-to-play barriers, girls are compelled to train harder, do more to overcome their female bodies–which are a handicap when they haven’t been taught proper form or had sufficient reinforcement as they gravitated into athletics.
Parents, regrettably are part of the issue. The hefty expense of sports involvement means parents have to decide early on whether they are going to support their child’s enthusiasm or not. If parents are confused, that dual message might emerge as training their daughters to be both feminine, and athletic, without helping them reconcile the anti-feminine aspect of male-dominated sports.
Just by observation, females learn to comport themselves differently than guys, even before their bodies begin to dramatically alter. This, by the way, is the difference between sex and gender: the former is physiological, the latter is societal. We create a practise of confusing the two, which is why girls receive such inconsistent signals about what is or isn’t appropriate conduct, and if they are being feminine enough anytime they wander past the arbitrary boundary defining gender, and linking it to sex.
Since we decided early on that war-making, sports, and competition were all inherently masculine activities–aided by the gentlest of nudges by biology in the form of testosterone–we’ve wound up with an entire unconscious social conditioning machine that makes it harder for girls to take an interest in sports, identify female role models, and safely participate at any age.
Girls who desire to play sports are confronted with an identity crisis–one which they will have to continually confront as long as they play, since the only way society can reconcile a talented non-male athlete is to frame everything they do with preconceptions about their sexuality.
2. Celebrities
The relative newness of women’s professional and college sports means they have had less possibilities for top athletes to shine out. Sports are about hero-worship, after all, and fans need superstars they can obsessively analyse, criticise, and whose obscure memorabilia–like “before they were famous” yearbook photos–they can gather.
You don’t have to watch basketball to recognize Michael Jordan’s name, or know anything about baseball for Babe Ruth to ring a bell. While males have a genuine pantheon of stand-outs for every sport dating back centuries, women haven’t had much opportunity to earn widespread recognition and appeal.
Pretty much every single item on this list feeds into this one: the incidence of injury–especially career-ending–prevents talented female athletes from fulfilling their potential, both as competitors and as role models. The unwillingness of the public to allow women to behave as gladiatorial avatars means we disregard the numbers they put up as athletes, their performance less genuine since they aren’t playing a “pure” version of the sport.
Because we don’t anticipate a huge audience, we don’t spend as much time crafting storylines for broadcast about rivalries, Cinderella tales, or controversial characters.
For those who do manage to attain some renown and fame, the lens of sexualization usually goes up, so that rather than luring sports fans to their games, they garner applause or condemnation depending on what extracurriculars they can be enticed into.
3. Hot or Not Image result for women sexualized in sports
Even when they reach the major leagues, women aren’t recognised seriously as athletes. Whatever else they may be, female athletes are still female, and are either expected to hide or enhance that fact.
A prevalent notion is that if women in sport dressed more provocatively, they would attract more spectators, supporters, and money. After all, the rules are different for women–it isn’t as if they are actual athletes, so they may as well take advantage of the fact that everyone is already sexualizing them, and play to their strengths.
In fact, since female athletes aren’t rail-thin like models, but manage to marry beautiful looks with good health (thanks to all that training), some consider it progress for them to be included in fashion publications and held up as beauty idols. Playing to the (male) audience, again, is regarded as their greatest hope at fame, money, and exposure for other females who are pursuing an athletic career.
For some spectators, overly gendered sports attire reduces the stature of female athletes, and by extension, women in general. If function were the main factor, men and women would appear lot more similar sport to sport, and have a higher chance of being treated seriously and equitably.
But regardless of the uniforms they wear to compete, female athletes still have to struggle with a highly sexualized public image, and both a media and a fandom that expects them to continuously explain and defend which identity comes first: woman or athlete? Whatever explanation they offer, of course, the public has already made its own judgement, and as per usual, consent has nothing to do with it.
4. Missing from the Sidelines
The scope of Title IX is very small, compared to the broad range of vocations in sports that aren’t “athlete.”
As the seas of visors and headsets lining the sidelines of every football game illustrate, contemporary teams depend on a vast support staff: coaches, physical trainers, coordinators, medics, promoters, managers–not to mention the team-agnostic professions like commentators, sports journalists, or referees. Just like the military, sports are a microcosm of society, and have their own specialized version of practically any career you can think of.
Title IX focuses solely providing women an opportunity to participate, but doesn’t establish a road to enter any of these comparable roles. That implies women are significantly underrepresented even in non-athletic occupations. This tendency remains whether the squad is college, youth, or even in a women’s league.
This lack of visibility both on the field and the sidelines inevitably echoes the challenges in every other business that is controlled by men: women are hesitant to go where they don’t perceive themselves as welcome. The sense of inequity becomes self-fulfilling, as competent women are diverted from pursuing industries they don’t anticipate to accept them.