As a female athlete, I find myself sometimes taking sports for granted and the opportunities that are accessible to me. Although female sports have come a long way, some improvements still need to be made when compared to our male counterparts. Hence, I did not completely understand that less than a hundred years ago, women were not even allowed to play sports for fear of it damaging their reproductive organs. Today, society has accepted women's individual and team sports in many settings and different levels such as collegiate and international. The historical context that this book offers and its authentic references of the origins of women's sport in Canada and the United States enlightened my vision on the development that has transpired.…
Throughout the past 100 years, gender roles of men and women have started to change greatly in our society, and especially in the world of sports. Recently, female athletes have made great strides in gaining equal representation, and media coverage, in comparison to the past, where there was little coverage of female athletics. In addition, women have begun to participate in many sports that have previously been male dominated. Some of these sports such as MMA, and hockey have been perceived as “manly” sports, and many feel that women should not participate in them due to their physically demanding nature. However, even though many female athletes have been discouraged from participating in male dominated sports, women have continued to break…
All the way from pewee leagues to professional sports women are stereotyped by society. These stereotypes occur in many different ways, across a wide variety of sports. Between being valued on physical appearance of the body, and less on performance, gender stereotypes clearly exist in sports. In the article “Stereotype threat affects the learning of sport motor skills”, by Caroline Heidrich and Suzete Chiviacowsky, the authors explain that the purpose of their study was to discover if women in sports are effected in anyway by sterotypes. They gathered a group of 24 women and divided them into two groups.…
According to the article, “I won. I’m sorry”, Author Mariah Burton Nelson discuss that females are being pressured to act a certain way in society. As states in the first few paragraphs, she explains how athletes are going by the ‘final rule’. Mariah states, “Beauty and vulnerability seem to be as important to today’s female athlete as brawn and gold medals.” Although a female athlete is playing sports that make them look a bit masculine, at the end, all they regard to be gaining the males approval of their femininity.…
Third, many women may be much smaller and weaker than men, and not be able to lift as much weight or run as fast as men (Wood). Many women are very fast and strong, and play the sports better than some males that are playing these sports that the women play. Even if these women are slower or not as strong, they can still play the sports they love and excellent. Many women are always overlooked for being weak and slow when they really are not and they can still compete at these levels. With women being strong and fast they should not be over looked because they are better than many other players, but their hearts and dedication.…
The topic of unequal prize money being awarded to male and female athletes, specifically pertaining to female athletes being awarded a significantly lesser amount than their male counterparts, is relevant to the idea that the body is a social construction. The notion that female athletes are not as strong, powerful, or entertaining as male athletes are concepts that society has socially constructed over time; they were not innate ideas. Not one individual was born with the belief of these stereotypes. Female athletes are anything but these ideas, and work just as hard to perform essentially the same skills as male athletes.…
However, women are also pinned with the same stereotypes as men when it comes to athletics. “African-American women athletes, like their male counterparts, are often seen as “natural athletes.” This stereotype depicts African American athletes as biologically and physically superior while the while the white athletes’ success is attributed to their “hard work” (Withycombe 479). In a discussion we had in class, it was stated that most people describe African American women as loud, aggressive and strong-willed. A lot of people would associate this description with men and not a woman.…
Men produce thirty percent more muscle mass than women (Totallyarb 1). However women perform their best regardless of their physical differences, and should be paid as much as men based on their talent, not their gender (Flynn 1). Excitement in female sports should not be less just because females generally carry more fat and less muscle than males, which result in performance, disadvantages (Flynn 1). Men benefit from high-carbohydrate diets more than women and are known to perform better which excites the fans. Women still have the ability, determination, and discipline to perform as well as men regardless of these…
The Problem In the 2016 Rio Olympic Games there were "264 men and 294 women"(Meet Team USA) who competed for the U.S. Olympic Team. The number of women competing in athletics at every level is increasing, therefore it is important to note how women are portrayed and perceived in the media. There are issues to be brought up about the sexualization of female athletes particularly when compared to their male counterparts who are usually not sexualized.…
Looking particularly at how the gender ideology around femininity is currently being played out in women’s weightlifting raises many ethical questions and speaks loudly to the difficult “bodywork” issues that women are facing. First, it is important to understand that gender is culturally constructed through different forms of emphasized femininity and masculinity in culture. Sex is the actual biological make up of men and women. What is masculine is not feminine, and what is feminine is not masculine according to our cultural norms. Our society has deemed it appropriate that gender should reflect sex; masculinity is aggressive and strong, while femininity is nurturing and poised.…
In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to leave the issue of gender identification in an athletic setting untouched and unaddressed. Gender verification in sports is the issue of verifying the eligibility of an athlete to compete in a sporting event that is limited to a single gender. The issue has arisen multiple times in the Olympic games and other sporting competitions where it has been suspected that male athletes attempted to compete as women and that women have attempted competition as males, creating the possibility of unfair advantage. It was originally thought unfair for a hormonally enhanced female to compete in a female sporting event given the evident unfair advantage. The word “enhanced” would, in this case, describe the introduction of synthetic androgens into the body of a woman undergoing transition into the male sex.…
The sports world also needs to start recognizing the talent women have and not just the appearance of them. In most of the sports women play the uniforms reveal much more skin than in male sports. Women’s talents are often over looked more than their natural talents to play specific sports. Another reason women have a hard time playing male dominated sports is because people feel the women will be a distraction to the men. Women are often considered that they must look beautiful in order to play certain sports.…
Even though not an injury, another and very common health problem with female gymnasts can face is amenorrhea, which is the lack of menstrual period. Primary and secondary are the two types of amenorrhea a women can experience. Both of these types, are sometimes referred as exercise-associated amenorrhea and occurs when a women doesn’t have a regular period because she exercises too much and/or eats too few calories. “In order to have regular periods women need to consume a certain number of calories and maintain around sixteen percent body fat or more. If a woman has too little body fat the ovaries stop producing estrogen and the woman stops menstruating” (About Health).…
In their works, Woolum (1998) and Sherrow (1996) trace this pattern and highlight how sports have over time evolved for women. They point out that for centuries, competition, strength, and team sportsmanship have been deemed appropriate traits within the “masculine domain”. As a result, many girls and women avoided taking part in sports. It was not until the mid 1800’s that women began to accompany their male relatives to specific sporting events such as horse races and baseball games and participate in exercise such as dancing and…
The goal for men to increase their fitness and performance is usually accomplished by finding legal ways to increase their testosterone levels, in order to get bigger, go faster, become stronger. Female athletes however, are forced to fit a social stigma of what a female should look like, act like, and perform like. Why are there two distinct genders that compete in sport, so far away from each other on the spectrum of masculinity and femininity? Certainly, some athletes fall somewhere between the petite, relatively slower, females, and the large, muscular, faster males, right? Those individuals that fall in the middle of the spectrum may be intersex, or having both male and female characteristics, and are causing unnecessary controversy…