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Talking to Mina Amini who is 52 years old helped me more to realize how the women’s sport was about 40 years ago. She is a midwife and worked for more than 30 years in a hospital. She married once and has two daughters. One of them is a professional soccer player. Mina has never been a member of a professional sport team and she has never thought about being an athlete as a carrier but she finds Yoga very relaxing and interesting. She enjoys doing yoga because she believes that her job is very stressful and makes her nervous. So this sport can help her to manage and deal with the stress. Also her job required some good physical body. Natalie Nevins explains, “Yoga is a healing system of theory and practice. The purpose of yoga is to create strength, awareness and harmony …show more content…
When Mina was a kid biking was her favorite sport and she used to bike for more than five hours per day but she had to stop biking during her teenage ages. Because her parents did not let her to ride in the street any more since they thought biking is a boys’ sport. There were many barriers during her teenage ages. At that time women did not play soccer, karate or ride a bike in public. Mina mentioned that she and other girls did not even think about playing these sports because as kids they have always been told that these sports are just for boys and girls should not play these. Now a days she does not believe that there is any difference between boys’ and girls’ sports. One of her daughters is in a soccer team, and Mina has always encouraged and supported her to follow her dream of becoming a famous athlete. I was born and raised in Iran where there is a lot of barriers for women in sports. Back in my country there are many “boys’ sport”, such as Boxing, Wrestling, weight lifting. Not only women are not permitted to do these sports, they are not even allow to go to stadium and watch
The existence of hegemonic power related to gender roles in sport limits the participation of students in Sport Aerobics. This hypothesis is supported by the data gathered from a survey that 24 Nambour High students took (Appendix 1). The survey included 2 female and male students from each year level. This survey revealed that only 16% of students have participated in Sport Aerobics and the majority of the students were from the senior year levels. When the students were asked what gender Sport Aerobics is for over half the students said both male and female. However, 37% of the students said that Sport Aerobics is for women only and 6 out the 9 students that answered women were male meaning that the majority of male students believe that Sport Aerobics is a feminine sport. None of the students believed that Sport Aerobics is an only male sport. Seventy percent of students throughout all the year levels believe that men are stronger than women. The only students that said women were female themselves. It is fixed in to student’s minds that men are stronger than women because of the lack of recognition to female athletes on the media. Students only see strong male athletes such as rugby league players presented on the media. This accounts for the 70% of students that do not watch any women’s sport and the only students that do were female. This result is due to the lack of women role models in the
Ever since sports has been introduced into our society it has always been gender specific. Today, sports are still gender specific but not as much as before due to the change in social norms. Many people enjoy playing sports. For some it may be the competition, for others it may be for the love of the game. It has been difficult for individuals who enter non-traditional sports for their gender. Women have especially struggled with this matter until the Title 9 was issued. Before Title 9, many women were not allowed to participate in track and other sports that were not considered feminine. During the Victorian Times, women were only allowed to play sports that didn't make them look sweaty, tired or just messy. They had to stick to the norm of being conservative and looking proper. Can you imagine, they had to even wear skirts for baseball and other sports? How can you be comfortable and play well in that kind of an outfit? When it came to tennis, they had to look graceful like a ballerina. The main concern in playing a sport is enjoying it and playing it well. It never had to do anything with being part of a beauty contest. Women were given limitations into what sports they could participate in. However, realistically women were just as good as their counterpart when it came to playing sports in which they were not allowed to play.
There are kids and students, even from a young age, who are told by their parents that they have to play a sport. These parents find it important that their kids be involved in some type of physical activity, and it is. So a little girl thinks taking a dance class would be interesting and that she would be able to please her parents by this choice of sport. But when she comes to tell them what sport she would like to take up, they tell her dance is not a sport. Even after explaining to them that if someone is good enough they can compete, which is just like any other sport, this little girl’s dream of being a competitive dancer is crushed by her parents jaded view of what is considered a sport. The word “sport” is defined in the dictionary
In 1970 only 1 in 27 girls participated in high school sports, today that ratio is 1 in 3. Sports are a very important part of the American society. Within sports heroes are made, goals are set and dreams are lived. The media makes all these things possible by creating publicity for the rising stars of today. Within society today, the media has downplayed the role of the woman within sports. When the American people think of women in sports, they think of ice skating, field hockey and diving. People don’t recognize that women have the potential to play any sport that a Man can play, with equal skill, if not better.
Throughout history, women have had to struggle for equality in all elements of our society, but no where have they had a more difficult time than in the area of athletics. Sports is a right of passage that has always been grafted to boys and men. The time has come for our society to accept women athletes and give them the attention they deserve.
Pertaining to images of women and women athletes, this same type of cyclical pattern of change occurred. As notions of women's roles and perceptions of women change, so too did the portrayal of female athletes, and the acceptance of female athleticism into cultural norms. There are still many barriers to break in society as well as in athletics, but we have come a lone way from worrying about damage to our reproductive organs, and as women keep challenging the gender barriers in sport, the perceptions of women's roles too shall change.
The discrepancies in media coverage in coverage of female and children athletics have large gaps, but are gaining momentum in sharing equality. Major athletic leagues such as the NBA and FIFA World Cup have wide gaps in marketing and ratings for their male and female athletes. Children are future athletes and superstars, but as funding and coverage in athletics catering to the males, women are breaking the barriers to be in the spotlight of sport. Both gender contribute equally to athletics, and challenge the each other to accept new ideas and change. The sports world that has a single gender dominating the media is unjust. Society does not want to bored, we need change in sports entertainment to cater to all. Not all parents and teachers are available to educate our children about the concepts of sharing and teamwork, our children are growing up learning key concepts through media. I will discuss these concepts and how they intertwine.
Within todays sporting community, certain aspects of sport and its practices promote and construct ideas that sport in general is a male dominated. Sports media often provides an unequal representation of genders. Women athletes are regularly perceived as mediocre in comparison to their male equivalents (Lenskyj, 1998). Achievement in sport is generally established through displays of strength, speed and endurance, men usually set the standards in these areas, consequently woman rarely reach the level set by top male athletes. Due to this, the media significantly shows bias towards male sports while we are ill-informed about the achievements in the female sporting community. On the occasion that a female athlete does make some form of an appearance in the media, images and videos used will usually portray the female in sexually objectified ways (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). This depiction of female athletes can cause males to take focus solely on the sexual assets of the athlete in preference to to their sporting abilities (Daniels & Wartena, 2011). Sexualisation of sportswoman in the media is a prevalent issue in today’s society, it can cause physical, social and mental problems among women of all ages (Lenskyj, 1998).
Krane, V. (2001). We can be athletic and feminine, but do we want to? Challenging hegemonic femininity in women's sport. Quest, 53,115-133.
Women and men play various sports because they as Americans want to experience the excitement of playing for fun, and doing something they love. The idea of what men and women can do for fun in sports has been shaped by the American society in many different ways through the media, schooling and education, and professional sports organizations. America portrays women playing field hockey and doing synchronized swimming while men do boxing, and body building. If a woman chooses to do boxing because to her it is fun and if a man chooses synchronized swimming because he likes it, they face many cultural costs and benefits of choosing this sport. Society does not like change and holds female athletes up to ideals such as being beautiful, graceful, and healthy. Male athletes are held to ideals such as strong, aggressive, and powerful. People who choose to play non-traditional sports risk being judged by society as unnatural and homosexual, instead of being viewed as an athlete who is special and unique, they are often subjected to unwanted sexual advances and assumptions. The benefit of doing an untraditional sport is that you are able to do something you love. As a result of people who do non-traditional sports, they open the doors for future generations of women and men who might want do play an non-traditional sport.
Gender in sports has been a controversial issue ever since sports were invented. In the early years, sports were played only by the men, and the women were to sit on the sidelines and watch. This was another area of life exemplifying the sexism of people in which women were not allowed to do something that men could. However, over the last century in particular, things have begun to change.
female athlete was still considered to be passive and weak, some would say women’s sports is a waste of time because women aren’t supposed to be playing sports because of the original stereotypes that woman are too feminine and too easy going to actually be a dominate figure in their sport.
Whether its baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, or tennis, sports is seen all over the world as a representation of one’s pride for their city, country, and even continent. Sports is something that is valued world-wide which has the ability to bring communities together and create different meanings, beliefs and practices between individuals. Although many people may perceive sports to have a significant meaning within our lives, it can also have the ability to separate people through gender inequalities which can also be represented negatively throughout the media. This essay will attempt to prove how gender is constructed in the sports culture while focusing on female athletes and their acceptance in today’s society.
Women in Sports Challenges appear to be part of the human experience. In the course of history, very little has come easily. The progress that women have made in sport in the United States over the course of the last 100 years seems remarkable for the amount achieved in so little time. In relation to the other advances made in this century, including men's sport, that achievement dims. While women have made great advances, they haven't, in comparison, come that far.
It is in our society’s fake make up that does not give the importance to female athletes and their sports. So it is very important to understand that what is gender, to know what is the pressure of athletics on women of our country.