Gender In Sports Essay Research Paper Gender

Gender In Sports Essay, Research Paper

Gender in Sports

December 4, 1996

In high schools and junior high schools across the country the importance of

interscholastic sports competitions is strongly demonstrated to the students.

They see the rewards and accolades given to the accomplished athletes, not only

at these levels, but at the collegiate and professional levels as well. While

most of these teams are formed and exist for both men and women, it is

interesting how different each team tends to be treated. At High school

football games, for example, the students and faculty show up in record numbers

to prove their loyalty to the team and to the school itself. This football team

is always comprised of men who use the sport to demonstrate their masculinity

through the smashing and bashing of each other’s skulls. Occasionally, one may

find a select number of women who had to fight their way onto the team only to

sit on the sidelines and watch. It is quite probable that such girls are only

able to get onto the teams on the basis that most schools simply do not have a

football team dedicated solely to the women football athletes. This lack of

recognition for female athletes only becomes more frequent as one progresses

through the levels of competition in virtually any sport. The games of women’s

teams, where they do exist, tend to draw only limited crowds at most levels of

competition, scholastic or otherwise. In the realm of athletic activities, the

American society has chosen not to offer the same opportunities to its women as

it traditionally has to its men. For centuries, it seems, it has generally been

accepted that sports and other activities relying upon physical performance

have been left for the men to participate in and enjoy. The women were

generally left with the “traditional” duties of managing the household for their

amusement. Just as many things have come to be drastically altered over the

course of the last century or so, so has this old fashioned idea. Women have

shown an interest of their own when it comes to sports. They have demonstrated

that they, too, want to be able to prove their physical ability and talent

through competition in a variety of athletic activities. While most of these

activities are adapted versions of the same sports that were originally played

by the men, women have shown that they can play them just as hard and as dirty

against each other as the men have been doing for as long as one can recall.

They have shown that they can be conditioned and up to the physical challenge

that most sports demand, despite their being female and traditionally seen as

“delicate creatures” by society. With few exceptions, women have proven that

they really are no different than men when it comes to their abilities to

participate in activities that used to be reserved for the masculine and the

“strong” as opposed to the feminine and the “weak.” Only recently have

activities, such as football, begun to present themselves as attractive sports

for young girls wishing to participate in something athletic. Previously, the

participation of the “weaker sex” in such a “harsh game” has been discouraged

for a variety of reasons. Some site the “frailty” of women as the exclusion

factor, relying on the assumption that all members of the female sex possess

this inhibiting characteristic This idea can be proven wrong by any young girl

who has had to grow up surrounded either by a group of rowdy, older brothers or

has lived in a neighborhood consisting primarily of male companions. In this

environment, especially, she has been forced to identify with those around her

by taking part in the same activities and play as roughly as any one of the guys

do with each other. She has demonstrated that she does not let her sex dictate

who she is or who she wants to be. It is in part for this reason , perhaps,

that girls have started to come out of their traditional roles as demure

females and desire to step onto the playing fields with those with whom they

may have grown up. Where teams do not exist specifically for women in some

sports, some have taken it upon themselves to try and play with the guys. These

girls tend to find opposition to this type of change within their schools and

communities. Why should society tell her that she may not participate because

it is not a sport designed for her? Since all women do not possess this

assumed quality of innate frailty any more than all men possess the ability to

fix cars and belch, they should not be treated as if they do. Since

professional sports teams were first developed years ago, women have not

received their share of recognition for athletic ability by the establishment

of leagues and teams within which they may play professionally. What makes a

man playing a sport more interesting to watch than a woman playing the same

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