Looking for an easy way to earn respect? I would recommend joining a varsity team.
As a still relatively unsuccessful member of the U of T track and field team, I consistently receive outpourings of respect and admiration for merely being a part of the roster. That is, at least from my female friends. In truth, most men are not as impressed by team membership alone and they will tend to inquire about my success (or lack thereof), the caliber of competition within the event, and other such relevant topics.
This sort of imbalance in praise has led me to wonder-why is it that while men focus on performance in sport, women view mere membership on a sports team with unquestioning respect, as though it is an achievement about which they have never dared to dream?
I am not the only person musing about this question. In fact, it is just the sort of issue that the Girls In/Action interdisciplinary research symposium – hosted this Friday, June 27 by the Centre for Girls’ and Women’s Health and Physical Activity here at U of T-is looking to explore. Speakers at the symposium will discuss the health implications of an inactive lifestyle, the increasing inactivity of Canadian youth, the proper indicators of a healthy body, nutrition needs for girls and discrimination against girls in sports.
In fact, the symposium will address something that my own personal observations suggest-women do not participate in sports nearly as much as men. And I am not strictly talking about highly competitive, time-consuming activities. For example, U of T offers intramural sports for all ability levels within a broad spectrum of competitiveness. But approximately two in every three intramural participants at the university last year were men.
Margery Holman of the University of Windsor’s Faculty of Kinesiology and one of the speakers at the symposium, is in the process of conducting a research project designed to address this very issue. The project aims to increase the participation of women in sports by working with young women to create a functioning sports league. In this case, her brainchild is a volleyball league.
A key aspect of the program is the introduction of workshops designed to educate the participants in order to give them confidence in their abilities to be both leaders and athletes. “The results of these workshops have been very positive,” says Holman, “leading to demonstrable increases in the participants’ self-esteem.”
Many men will happily criticize professional athletes and coaches, will play a quick game of pick-up without a second thought and rarely hesitate to offer suggestions about how to improve any athletic performance. Yet many women seem too intimidated to do these things about which men think so little. The workshops did seem to lend them the confidence that they needed, however.
Ken Allison, director of the activity program in the Department of Public Health Sciences at U of T, and another speaker at the symposium, reveals similar findings. His research focused on a national survey of 13- to 18-year-olds conducted last year. Adolescence is an area of interest for researchers because it is at this age many children fall into inactivity, especially women. His survey identified barriers that women perceive to their participation in athletic activity, and then attempted to identify the underlying social reasons for these perceived barriers.
His findings connect well with Holman’s. Many girls said their families or boyfriends discouraged them from being active, while others noted their parents were much more concerned for their safety than that of their brothers. Other barriers to the girls’ athletic involvement included less access to school and community facilities, and worse hours at these facilities allocated for the girls’ sports teams.
At U of T we have a daily women’s hour in the Athletic Centre weight room. While it is a drag to many men, the rationale behind its inception is well supported by the comments made by Allison’s 13- to 18-year-olds. When surveyed, many of these girls acknowledged being intimidated and “uncomfortably looked at” in weight rooms.
Hopefully, Girls In/Action and its host of learned speakers will be able to hack away at some of the more nagging cultural barriers that plague would-be female athletes. Unfortunately, with the debunked myths will probably go my title as athlete extraordinaire. So, for the next little while I’m going to enjoy basking in the undeserved glory that comes with being a track and field varsity athlete. My friend who runs for 30 minutes daily? I’ll let her continue to think I can out-run her…even though I’m a pole-vaulter.
