So today we're going to talk about
gender & sports. Growing up I loved
playing sports and I still do, but I
remember being called a tomboy which
didn't faze me. I wasn't what we would
call a girly girl and the only doll I ever
had was a Barbie that came with a horse,
because I love horses too. As a female
athlete in the 80s, I had no idea what
title 9 was or that I was fortunate to
have the opportunities to play sports
that I did compared to women in my
parents generation. As a woman who has
entered the male domain of coaching and
specifically coaching baseball, however,
the differences in experiences and
expectations of males and females in
sports has become very evident. Now you
may be thinking there are lots of women
coaches and there are but the reality, as
we'll discuss in a little bit, is that
since the passage of title 9 fewer women
are head coaches than before its passage.
Women are still the rarity in youth
sports. My niece, who's 10, told her mom a
few weeks ago that she didn't know girls
could coach baseball. They were visiting
for the weekend and I had to leave to go
to the field. That same weekend our
travel team, our travel baseball team, was
in a tournament and in between innings I
went out to warm up our pitcher. The
second time I did that, a coach from the
other team came over and offered to
catch for me. I did a double take and
said what, I know real intelligent. He
said he didn't mind quote helping out. I
said no thanks I'm good, however I wasn't
good I was actually really offended I
wasn't struggling I was catching all the
pitches. What was different? What
warranted this comment? Would he have
made the same offer to a male coach. Now
this discussion is not about bashing men
or boys in sports. We will however draw
a lot of attention to the differences in
access to sport, experiences in sport, and
pay in sport between men and women,
because those differences exist. Despite
all the progress made over the last 40
years, there is still gender inequality
in sports. Gender inequality is a project
of our society and one of my goals with
this material is to draw our attention
to these inequalities, because I firmly
believe that change must
follow awareness and I believe that many
people still lack awareness of the
current status of sports, so let's begin.
We're going to talk about changes in
sports over the past two generations and
the single most dramatic change in
sports is the increase in participation
among girls and women. This is due to
five factors. We're going to discuss each
of these factors. The first one is new
opportunities. Prior to the 1970s teams
and programs for women did not exist. We
see disparity in the history of the
Olympic Games. In 1908 there were no
women's events in the Olympics and
although that gap has decreased over
time, a gap still exists. One such gap was
with the sport of ski jumping. There are
several sources that are great overviews
of the battle to include women ski
jumping in the Olympic Games. Ski jumping
was believed to be detrimental to a
woman's help, specifically, ski jumping
would damage a woman's ovaries. Yes, we
may laugh at this now but this was an
argument that was used up until 10 years
ago as a way to keep women out of ski
jumping, despite the fact that ski
jumping, women were doing ski jumping
since 1862. So it's really interesting
to see that throughout history a lot of
reasons that women were excluded from
sport was to prevent them from injury,
specifically, injury to their ovaries,
injuries to the reproductive system as a
whole. It was thought that too much
exertion might weaken the muscles
keeping the uterus in place. Here's an
interesting quote from a German doctor
in 1926. Because of the unanswered
medical question as to whether ski
jumping agrees with the female organism,
this would be a very daring experiment
and should be strongly advised against.
That didn't stop women jumpers. As I said
earlier, the first recorded female jump
was by Norwegian athlete Ingrid
Olavsdottir Vestby back in 1862. Not
only does she not lose her ovaries, but
as one eyewitness wrote,
she quote flew until she landed firmly
planted on her skis past the point where
many a brave lad had lost his balance
earlier in the competition. A few women
were jumping into the 20th century, some
of them surely making a conscious act of
gender protest, but as the top athletes
in the sport note they were
regarded more as sideshows than as
athletic competitors. As ski jumping
formalized into an organized sport,
organized by men of course, women found
themselves even more on the margins.
Raised eyebrows were codified into
technical regulations. In the first
Winter Olympics of 1924, every discipline
was restricted to men competitors and
even as women's sports were added
women's jumping was not. The second
factor that's led to increased
participation is government legislation
mandating equal rights, specifically
title nine. Title nine has tremendously
impacted the sports opportunities of
women. We're going to be talking about
title nine and also having a discussion
paper on it as well and I'll have links
posted where you can reference some
historical materials related to title
nine. Title nine is very interesting
it was legislation that was not geared
specifically towards sports, it was
geared towards educational institutions
receiving federal funds, but it was
quickly adapted to apply towards equal
opportunities in sports and so we see
that at the high school level and we see
that at the college level as well. So
when we talk about title nine it's
important to look at its history and
also the way that it has changed sports
opportunities for women and again we'll
discuss this more in depth later in this
section. The third factor is the global
women's rights movement, this emphasized
that females are enhanced as human
beings when they develop their
intellectual and physical abilities. This
has led to political action and lobbyists
for change. We now have, for example,
international conferences discussing
gender equity. For example, the United
Nations fourth world conference on women
was in Beijing in 1996. Billie Jean King,
many of you are familiar with her,
tennis player, recently launched her
leadership institute in part to promote
equality and there's another
organization called international
working group on women in sport. A fourth
factor that has led to increase
participation of women and girls in
sports is the health and fitness
movement. Research has made people more
aware of the health benefits of physical
activities so now we have an emphasis on
the development of physical strength and
competence. Muscles have become
increasingly accepted as desirable
attributes for women of all ages.
Interestingly though that's as long as
we don't go too far. There's a really
good quote that i'm going to give you
here it says, "women still don't have
total freedom in the pursuit of sport,
because of the societal emphasis placed
on attractiveness which regulates
physical strength." So some research has
called this a culturally produced glass
ceiling that restricts the amount of
musculature acceptable for women. So, a
prime example of that is the
stigmatization faced by Serena Williams.
Serena and her sister Venus really
revolutionized women's tennis by making
it a more power based sport, but along
with that they became very muscular and
Serena Williams was actually criticized
repeatedly by the media or in the media
for her more masculine physique and
people question whether she was really
feminine. So women faced this idea that
they have to be both feminine and strong
and how do they balance that and if they
don't balance it correctly oftentimes
they're called out in the media for not
looking like a girl. So it is an
interesting double standard that women
face that men are not exposed to. Now
there is an organization called the
women's Sports Foundation and in 2009
they published the second edition of her
life depends on it and this edition
provides a comprehensive review of the
existing research on the links between
sports and physical activity
and the health and well-being of
American girls and women. The report
affirms the following: that engaging in
moderate and consistent levels of
physical activity and sport for girls
and women is essential to good health
and well-being. Second, sports opportunity
is not equal females from lower
socioeconomic status and females of
color engage less in physical activity
and have less access to sport and
physical fitness programs. This results in
negative health consequences. Third, there
are health benefits. Physical activity
programs lead to a reduction in breast
cancer, osteoporosis, smoking, illicit drug
use, sexual risk, depression, suicide and
leads to an increased likelihood of
completing college. There's a fifth
factor that's led to increase
participation of women and girls and this
is increased media coverage of women in
sports and this is great because it
publicly legitimizes their participation.
It helps girls envision possibilities
for developing their athletic skills. The
media influences the images that all of
us associate with women's sports and the
achievements of female athletes. still, a
grain of salt. A recent study based on
2014 data found that women still receive
only two percent of all media coverage.
It looked at coverage of sports center
in prime time, and again women's stories
women sports stories only received two
percent of all the coverage. So as an
example to illustrate that in one
segment, no women's sports were covered
yet they broadcast a narrative about how
bees invaded the dugout of the boston
red sox during a red sox-yankees game. So
again, there is time to cover women
sports, but that time is not made, but
that's a discussion for another day. So
let's look about some reasons though to
be cautious. Yes, women have made great
strides in sports and that cannot be
ignored, but we can't be
so enthusiastic that we say okay we're
done yeah things are good. We need to
look at some reasons to be cautious and
one of those is since title 9, the number
of female coaches in women's sports has
declined. Quote, as women sports changed
and became more important in high
schools and colleges, men replaced female
coaches and administrators and that's an
interesting dilemma prior to title mine
women's teams were run by women. There
were women athletic directors but as
women's sports became more of a viable
option and a more profitable option, more
men took interest and assumed those
positions of leadership. So there's an
article that gives stats on this and it
says prior to title nine over ninety
percent of all head coaching positions
in women's sports were occupied by
females. Today, that is forty-three
percent. At the NCAA division one level
only five out of 120 athletic directors
are female. So this one author concludes
that for employment opportunities title
nine has actually been far more
beneficial for men than for women. So
what are the problems with this under
representation. Well first, unless female
role models are present girls will be
reluctant to define sports and sports
participation as important in their
futures. They will and do see that
women's abilities and contributions in
sports are less valued than men's, but
this isn't true for just girls and women.
It will impact boys as well. So after my
incident at the baseball tournament with
the other coach offering to help me out
by catching our pitcher I was curious
and so I asked the boys on my team about
it. I got them gathered around the next
day and first I asked them if they had
ever seen a female coach in baseball
besides myself, none of them had. Then, I
asked them how I should interpret the
other coaches actions? One boy said, hey
the other coach he's just being nice,,
while the other said it was kind of
insulting. To the boy who
said the other coach was being nice, I
agreed with him but I also asked him if
he thought that coach would have offered
to catch for another male coach and he
said no. So that's an interesting dilemma
that women are facing in sports. So
here's another question, why is it okay
for men to coach women, but not for women
to coach men? You know, what do we do
about that? Changes, we are seeing some
changes in terms of more openness at the
professional level. There are more female
coaches in some of the professional
sports. Nancy Lieberman and Becky Hammon
are both assistant and BA coaches.
Lieberman has actually tipped to be the
first female head coach in a major men's
pro league. Andy Murray, a tennis player
is coached by a female and she's the
first female to coach a top player on
the men's tour. Jen welter an intern
coach with the Arizona Cardinals was the
first female to hold a coaching position
of any kind in the NFL. Catherine smith
was hired by the bills as the
NFL's first female full-time coach a
year ago January 21st 2016. She's not a
coach, but Sarah Thomas is the first
female referee in the NFL. Amanda Hopkins
an area scout for the Mariners, she was
the first woman hired as a full-time
scout by major league team since the
1950s. FIFA had an all-female referee
crew for the World Cup and female
umpires are going to be calling the
women's world cricket competition. It's
definitely progress that women are
becoming coaches at the professional
level however going back to the comment
from my niece who said she didn't know a
woman could coach baseball. Sports
leaders and officials need to help
facilitate opportunities for female
coaches at the recreational and youth
levels. If kids are exposed to coaches of
both sexes at young ages this will
become the norm for them and they will
become more accepting of female coaches
as
they become hopefully more prevalent in
sports. There's a second reason to have
caution and this is continued emphasis
on what's called cosmetic fitness. Sports
audiences as well as athletes experience
competing images of female bodies in
many cultures today, despite cultural
messages that promote athletic
performance these messages are
outnumbered and out hyped by cultural
messages promoting appearance and beauty.
The u.s. women's soccer team, for example,
was described as babe city and soccer
mamas. The international amateur boxing
association wanted to have the female
boxers wear skirt so they could be
differentiated from the male boxers.
Here's a link for a brief article about
young women who fear that sports
training will make them unattractive it
comes out of Scotland. A third reason to
be cautious is women's sports continue
to be trivialized. Women play sports but
they don't do them as men do and they
don't do them well enough to receive
equal support. In 2004 the president of
FIFA told international women players
that more spectators would watch them if
they would wear tighter shorts. Sex
appeal would make the game more
fan-friendly but hey that was 12 years
ago, right, things have changed. Well as I
mentioned in 2010 the international
amateur boxing association provided
female boxers with athletic skirts to
box in, and again it was primarily
because they were having difficulty
telling the male and female athletes
apart while they were boxing. There's a
really interesting article this is a
link from BuzzFeed and it looks at
instances around the world where women
have faith trivialization and/or
emphasis on cosmetic fitness so make
sure you check this out. There's one
where the broadcaster's say the German
goalkeeper didn't stop a goal because
she was worried about messing up her
hair. There's also a really interesting
link called cover the athlete and it's a
public service announcement that
highlights the differences between
coverage of male and female athletes.
You'll get a laugh out of it but it's a
really
great article or a clip that looks at
how we treat male and female athletes
when we're covering them postgame.