Gender And Gender Roles In Sports And Sports

Gender gaps present themselves in all aspects of life, whether it be work, pop culture or even sports. These all play an extremely influential role in people’s lives. Almost every child in America plays soccer or tee ball and many continued to have sports be a part of their lives, either through participating or spectating. I was one of those kids that played a sport all year around starting at age three all the way through high school, so they have always been a major part of my life. Beginning in first grade, I played Little League baseball on a team with all boys. Even at this young age, I felt the divide between genders, especially in athletics and this continued throughout high school. Young children learn that a there is a division between

Plenty of movies portray men as the dominate gender, especially when it comes to sports, but a few movies break this trend, such as She’s the Man. In this movie, a high school age girl, Viola, disguises as her older brother and goes to his boarding school to play for the boys soccer team as a result of the girls’ team at her school was cut from the budget and the boys’ coach wouldn’t let her try out. In this beginning scene, the male coach says, “Girls aren’t as fast as boys, or strong, or athletic. And this isn’t me talking, this is scientific fact” (She’s the Man). The coach just restates what society believes is true, but the movie goes on to prove that wrong. Viola makes the boys’ soccer team and works her way up to first-string before the first game. This demonstrates her and a multitude of other female athlete’s determination and obstacles they face to reach their goal. During the game, the team finally finds out that she is actually female, despite her soccer ability. The shock generated by the reveal demonstrates how people do not believe women are able to perform at the same level as men. There needs to be more movies similar to this one to show society the capabilities of women to compete in sports just like men, and dissolve the gender

This happens when people create a gender for certain occupations or positions, such as “male secretary, women judge” (Messner 58). By doing this, society creates gender norms for certain jobs, which prevents people from pursuing them if they are a minority of that occupation. This also happens countless times in college sports. Often, people refer to the men’s team by simply the name of the sport, whereas the women’s team needs the modifier, which creates a notion that the women’s teams are the minority. Again, this often times goes unnoticed considering it has become the norm in society, but it causes people to think less of women’s sports. Colleges do need to differentiate each gender’s sports teams, but rather than just putting the gender modifier on the women’s teams, they should also put it on the men’s to create a more equitable