Women and Sport

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Women and Sport

Turn on your TV screen and there’s a high probability that a sports

game will be on at one channel. Unless it’s a special sports channel

such as ‘sky sports’ etc. you will easily realise it is men playing

the relevant sport. Ever wondered why? Why aren’t women’s sports as

amazingly popular as the large market of men’s sports? Millions are

spent on men’s sports and men sports’ propaganda but why aren’t

women’s sports as popular? They are physically and mentally able to

play the same type of sports and there are as many talented women as

there is men, but for reasons unknown to many, they are just not as

well recognised.

My parents brought me up to think that girls could play sports just as

well as boys and from a very young age I have represented the school

and other extra curricular clubs in all of the sports that were

available to us. In primary school we played in mixed teams and both

girls and boys had similar abilities and enjoyed working together as

team, regardless of our gender. As I got older, boys’ and girls’ teams

were split up as our abilities in sports differentiated quite

drastically. Boys were always stronger in sports such as football and

rugby, but we girls were still able to easily beat them in games of

basketball as we grew up much quicker, so we were taller than them.

When I was in year 5 through to year 7 we had an amazing girls’

basketball team that went undefeated for those three years. Sports

were very important and well recognised in my school and the whole

town came and watched our matches, which made the girls’ basketball

team undoubtedly much more popular than the boys’ and I am able ...

... middle of paper ...

...ps, salaries, airtime , operating and recruiting expenses

have left athletes encouraged, even thought they still do no compare

to those of the male athlete.

If sports are good for half the population, they must be good for the

other half. We are a different gender but not a different species. I

don’t want men to have less but I just don’t understand why so many

doors are closed to us. Women should be treated as equals to men when

it comes to sports. Will it ever happen? I do not know, but I hope so.

‘The stoy of women in sports is a personal story because nothing is

more personal than a woman’s bone, sweat, sinew and desire, and a

political story, because nothing is more powerful than a woman’s

struggle to run free’

Mariah Burton Nelson, introduction to ‘Nike is a Goddess: The History

of Women in Sports’ 1988

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