Stereotypes In Sports

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Recommended: Gender discrimination in the sports world

Women have always been the minority in the world even today: that is in the work force or even in sports. Title IX, an act that was made by the United States Congress in 1972, said that no one should be denied to play, receive financial aid, or discriminate to any education program or activity that pertains to only one sex (Senne 1). This act was a step towards improving female participation and lessening discrimination, but the stereotypes that most of society believes in still exist. This is one of the main reasons why women are discriminated when it comes to sports; by limited pay roll, limited media coverage, and stereotypes.
One of the issues that stand in women’s way is the limited pay roll they get for competing professionally or …show more content…

There are lots of stereotypes out there but two important phrases stand in the way of these women. Those two main phrases are “like a girl” and “sports are for men.” Both of the phrases made a huge impact on how society views women, especially in sports. In an essay, “Throwing like a girl” by James Fallows, he states that this is a negative remark towards females. Females think that doing anything, “like a girl” means that it’s done imprecisely. In a book about how many “football players” got caught in countless rape towards females. Being practiced to dire the allegation of the action of something, “like a girl”, sports players believe that females are useless and are common victims. The author states that these judgments are an effect of a large number of customs in many people’s vocabulary, that accounts for a particular class of people. This shows that many people in society view women as being weak. The second one is men, this is based on the other stereotype that men are stronger than women making them better at sports. The case study of Richards vs. the United States Tennis Association was about Bobby Riggs who was male then transitioned to a female tried to enter the women’s draw of the U.S Open. At the time, many people complained that she had an advantage over other female players because she had more muscles. So in order for her to participate, the USTA …show more content…

This is because the athlete thinks about failure instead of focusing on the game. A study was conducted on people who had cognitive anxiety (people who believe in the stereotypes) and people who had somatic anxiety (people who don’t believe in stereotypes when shooting basketballs. The data shows that the people who had a low cognitive anxiety shot more accurately than those with a high cognitive anxiety. This study shows that having a negative cognitive anxiety effect there performance rather than people who don’t believe. Another study was done where people indicated if they believe in stereotypes or not as well as what they think about team sports such as soccer, basketball or field hockey. They were asked if they think females or males are better at. The test showed that most people think that all these sports are a man’s sport and that men are better at them than women (Martiny 381). It also shows that many people believe in these stereotypes and there are the main cause of women’s discrimination and probable cause of lowered participation (Martiny 387-388). Both of these studies prove that these stereotypes are affecting athletes whether that is through performance or their social lives. This is what many researchers believe is the cause of limited participation in female sports and the main source of all the

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