Category Archives: Gender

‘This girl can…’ with the right balance of inspiration and support

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By Jessica Pinchbeck

‘I used to love playing netball at school’ is the standard response I get when I happen to mention to a female friend or colleague that at the age of 34 I still play netball. This response is typically followed by a few minutes of reminiscing about their school experiences and what position they enjoyed playing. However when it is suggested that they join a local club or come to a training session, among the all too familiar barriers of time and family commitments, I have frequently observed a lack of confidence and even fear of taking the plunge to return to sport . For many women I talk to there appears to be something scary and intimidating about playing competitive sport and it is possible that this mind-set is contributing to the current figures and insight on female participation in sport. However, where does this ‘mind-set’ come from and what else might hinder a woman’s involvement?

It is quite well known that there are fewer women participating in sport in the UK. Indeed, the latest Sport England (2015) research shows that 40.9% of men play sport at least once a week, compared to 30.3% of women, but 75% of women would like to participate more, so what might the barriers be and how can we increase the number of women playing sport?

Campaigning and role models
Sport England are investing £10 million in national campaigns such as ‘This Girl Can’ and £2 million to extend local campaigns such as ‘I Will if You Will’ to attempt to close the gender gap that exists in sport participation. Close to my own heart is the ‘Back to Netball’ campaign where over 60,000 women have taken part since 2010. Netball has seen increases in participation in England each year in all age groups of the Sport England Active People Survey, showing a more positive outlook moving in the right direction. The weekly TV coverage of the Netball Superleague on Sky Sports has helped to raise the profile of our top netballers such as Pamela Cookey and sisters Kadeen and Sasha Corbin to provide positive role models for women, but its reach is limited to those who subscribe to Sky. With the growth of netball and England’s recent Europe Championship win more media attention needs to be given to women’s sport to promote these positive female role models more widely.

Not only do national campaigns and media coverage need more development and attention to raise the profile of women’s sport to inspire participation, there is also a need to address the logistical, financial and emotional support required for many women to play sport at any level. Family responsibilities can often take precedence because women are still typically regarded as the main caregivers.

The importance of family
Parents provide the early opportunities for children to be active and a child’s experiences of sport and their enjoyment of it are often shaped by the family influences which determine participation later in life. In a research project on 1507 pupils aged 8-16 years the influence of the family played a central role in the children’s attitudes towards sport and physical activity. There are also certain stages in life where participation is most vulnerable. For teenagers family support is essential to maintaining participation at what are termed ‘key transition phases’ with the transition from childhood to adulthood being a crucial risk time for dropout. In a study investigating girls and young women’s participation in physical activity the majority of participants who always played sport lived in households where parents and siblings also regularly participated in sport, with many examples of family members acting as role models. Therefore the importance of the family in encouraging and supporting girls to play sport is a key strategy to ensure the future generation of women continue to participate into adulthood.

Similarly at certain phases during adulthood participation is ‘at risk’ such as moving into full time work and having children. At times such as this encouragement and support from family to help balance work and life commitments is essential to being able to maintain participation. Playing competitive sport is less flexible than other fitness pursuits such as going to the gym and so an extra layer of organisation and commitment is often required. This is where a good support network is invaluable to maintaining participation.

So for me encouraging more women to play sport requires two key strategies in addition to the national campaigns and media hype. The first is to educate parents on the importance of providing opportunities and positive sports experiences for their daughters growing up to ensure continued participation later on in life. This will ensure that women’s sport plays a key part in future generations. The second is to inspire and empower women to seek much needed support to help overcome the barriers of work and life commitments that often prevent competitive sport participation. If we get both of these right then surely more women will feel inspired and supported to play competitive sport throughout all of life’s more difficult transitions.

England women’s football to make memories at FIFA15

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More controversy surrounding FIFA include the responses about women being featured in the next EA Sports video game FIFA16. Whilst this is great news for women’s football, it’s amazing that this is another ‘first time’ event for women and it’s not as progressive as everyone might think. The EA Sports game was first released in 1993 and it is only now, over 20years later that women are going to be featured in the next edition. It’s about time women were included with 4.1 million women playing within organised structures worldwide.

A Sexist Backlash

However, there has been a huge sexist backlash towards this inclusion of the 12 new teams which is evident on twitter. Many of the sexist remarks were defended by them being ‘just jokes’ but that is not acceptable. There are fine lines between ‘banter’, bullying, harassment and abuse and in light of the history and the ongoing oppression that some women continue to experience all over the world – it’s not funny! These are yet more ways to trivialise the seriousness of derogatory jokes towards women and to trivialise women’s football. Amelia Butterly argued that not only are these remarks unfunny, they are inaccurate and addressed these comments. The twitter feeds included comments about female players having a bad game ‘because she’s on her period’, being unable to play for 9 months ‘because she’s pregnant’, blaming feminism for ‘ruining everything’ and one man asked ‘Why would you want to include them unless they’re going to exchange shirts on the pitch!’

It is good news that these ‘jokes’ are finally being reprimanded because these negative, sexualising, derogatory and out of date comments get splashed over twitter whenever women’s football is on TV and attitudes need to change. Evidently, whilst the inclusion of women in EA Sports is a positive move forward for women’s football, it is not enough to just include women in a new console game; attitudes need to be changed so that women are respected and valued not only in sport but in society. These attitudes are unlikely to just be evident in football; they are likely to leak into public working life which is why it is so important not to let these disrespectful comments pass without reprimand.

It is difficult to see how things will change as long as sexist reputations remain in football and whilst FIFA is under investigation for corruption whilst simultaneously withholding funds from investing in the women’s game. Whilst Heather Rabbatts’ resignation is the latest attempt to try and bring reform to Fifa, let’s also use this opportunity to put sexism alongside other priorities (e.g. kicking out racism, homophobia, and corruption) in football.

Whilst all this is going on though, the England Women’s Team don’t seem to have let these news stories affect their focus. After their 10-day training camp at St George’s Park, assistant coach, Marieanne Spacey, urged her team to ‘make some memories’. They’ve certainly made a start on that; they have had a warm-up game against Canada which gave them the opportunity to practice on the artificial turf. Despite England conceding one goal, Karen Bardsley had her work cut out and denied quite a few goals and Fara Williams with a phenomenal long shot which unfortunately hit the bar; an exciting game with great coverage. With England qualifying for the 2015 Women’s World Cup with 100% record that is worth supporting!

Women’s World Cup primes for kick-off a mind corruption allegations at FIFA

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By Helen Owton

With the breaking news of allegations of corruption at FIFA, everybody seems to be talking about what impact it will have on the upcoming World Cups in Russia and Qatar.

But the next World Cup isn’t in Russia or Qatar, it’s in Canada. The FIFA Women’s World Cup kicks off on June 6 and the complete lack of discussion of how the crisis at the top of football will affect the competition further trivialises the women’s game. Corruption needs to be eliminated from FIFA, and we must remember in doing so that the organisation is not just responsible for the men’s game, but for women’s football too.

It’s worth noting that while FIFA been accused of receiving bribes totalling US$150m, the body has been simultaneously starving the women’s game of funding and investment.

Achieving against the odds

The seventh women’s World Cup takes place in the same year FIFA celebrates its 111th birthday, although I doubt there will be much celebrating going on in light of the recent arrests. It’s actually quite surprising to realise that the first men’s World Cup was staged in 1930, which means that in 85 years there have been just seven women’s competitions.

This is perhaps no surprise, given that in 1921, Britain’s Football Association banned women’s football altogether “in light of complaints made” about the problems they could experience as a result of playing.

In this century, FIFA has shown its blasé attitude towards women footballers by making them play on artificial turf for all their World Cup games, despite the face that no one would dream of making male players do the same. As US footballer Megan Rapinoe has argued:

FIFA made a $338m profit on the 2014 Men’s World Cup. To say that it’s not logistically possible to install real grass at all the stadiums is not acceptable.

There is no doubt that this will have an impact on the the games played, which could play into pre-established prejudices against the quality of women’s football. How are women supposed to prove that they can play just as well as the men (if not better) if it’s literally not a level playing field?

Winnipeg stadium: not-so-hallowed turf.
Krazytea, CC BY-SA

Despite all this, members of the English women’s team certainly seems to be campaigning successfully to receive the attention they deserve. It’s also encouraging that the Canadian Soccer Association and Canada’s sports minister have already responded to the allegations made against FIFA and are making attempts to prevent this news negatively affecting the Women’s World Cup. Indeed, Canada is a world leader in the promotion and protection of women’s rights and gender equality.

Women’s football is still an arena that highlights women’s quest for equality. As the UN says, “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”. That applies as much on the football field as is does anywhere else.

Once again, women are forced to achieve against adversity to prove to the world that they can achieve success no matter what barriers – be they artificial turf, a breaking news story about corruption, lack of investment or negative public perception – are imposed on them.

The Conversation

Helen Owton is Lecturer in Sport & Fitness at The Open University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

The Big Fight!: Sports stardom vs. domestic violence and a question of moral character

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By Helen Owton

* The following blog includes material of a sensitive nature and may not be suitable for all readers

Despite my interest in boxing as both a spectator and a participant and the typical pre-fight hype dominating the media I made a conscious decision not to watch the Mayweather v Pacquiao contest. I was disappointed that a sportsperson lacking in such moral character was able to receive such exposure and all I thought about was what it must be like for Mayweather’s victims of domestic violence (DV) to watch him receive so much media attention and admiration. Unlike some reporters, I was not banned from watching it; mine was a defiant choice. Mayweather served 2 months of a 3 month sentence when he pleaded guilty for 2 cases of DV, so the question remains after such a conviction as to why he was allowed to come back to the sport and compete on the world stage. Whilst Mayweather is undoubtedly a skilled fighter and a talented sports person, is it fair that this ability supersedes the welfare of his victims and allows him to remain a sporting hero in the public eye and a role model?

So often though, the victim’s perspective does not get considered so it’s important to understand the consequences of domestic violence and to recognise its severity. Victims of domestic violence can experience significant and prolonged psychological trauma (PTSD) and severe stress-related symptoms even years after the abuse.1 Much research1-7 has reported the psychological consequences of abused victims (depression, suicidal ideation, posttraumatic stress disorder, and alcohol and drug abuse). Furthermore, victims of DV have higher levels of health problems (gynecological, chronic stress related, central nervous system) with symptoms including abdominal, pelvic, back pain, appetite loss, urinary tract infections, vaginal bleeding, infections, painful intercourse, and digestive problems.8 Considering these traumatic symptoms I can only imagine the lengths these women would go to in order to avoid the hype surrounding this fight so as not to trigger any further trauma and stress. With boxing promoting at its best this would have been an immensely difficult task. However, Josie Harris had the courage to speak out about her experience which reinforces the need for everyone in the community to speak out and recognise the severity of DV because it affects so many people around them; it must have taken incredible strength for her to talk about it. To be honest, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more dialogue about this issue.

This is not the first case to question whether certain sportspeople should deserve the privileged position of ‘sports star’ following convictions involving violence against women. Most recently, in the UK, was the case of footballer Ched Evans in 2014 as to whether he should have been allowed to return to Sheffield United to train after being convicted of rape and serving 2 years of a 5 year sentence; after much deliberation he was not allowed back. This might have something to do with Evans remaining on the Violent and Sex Offender Register indefinitely which could be why he’s trying to prove his innocence now. As Charlie Webster stated in her interview, after she resigned from Sheffield United as Patron, “Rape is not a trivial subject”, and should be taken very seriously, particularly given the psychological and physical consequences of these crimes. Her argument was that whilst she believes in rehabilitation, she does not believe that it is right to put him back into exactly the same very privileged position where young boys and girls look up to footballers like David Beckham; all well-known sportspeople have that responsibility, including Floyd Mayweather.

What sort of messages do we give the younger generation or indeed any generation, if we allow people who have been physically (emotionally and/or sexually) abusive to continue to compete and be positioned on a godly pedestal where they continue to hold power and be glorified? A role model is “a person whose behaviour, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by young people” so a sportsperson cannot be judged only on their sporting success because young people who choose their role models judge them on their moral character as well. Any abuse is too much abuse and for any victims of abuse it is the responsibility of those in power to safeguard them from the exposure of re-traumatisation and flashbacks. It is hard enough for the victims to process what has happened to them let alone shove their abuser in their face and expose them to others’ admiration and glorify their violent tendencies in an event that lead to much opportunity to trivialise domestic violence (e.g. twitter jokes about Mayweather and DV). The ethos of boxing involves an opportunity for redemption not an opportunity to exploit sexist power to their advantage and be worshiped for displaced aggression.

As a convicted rapist, Ched Evans wouldn’t be allowed to coach so why should he be allowed to play professional men’s football? As journalist Lucy Hunter Johnston stated, “A convicted rapist couldn’t be a teacher, doctor or police officer, for example”. So shouldn’t ‘sports star’ be among this list as well, given that ‘boys look up to footballers, not their Dads’ and the link between major football tournaments and an increase in domestic abuse.9  However, if some sport stars are uniting to support Violence Against Women campaign then this seems to be a valuable argument to include ‘sports star’ among this list to recognise that any violence against women is not tolerated in sport. Mayweather may have won his big fight but he’s no winner in the big fight against domestic violence.

 

References

  1. Ghani et al. (2014). Psychological Impacts on Victims of Domestic Violence: A Qualitative Approach. Australian Journal of Basic & Applied Sciences, 8(20), 5-10. Available: http://ajbasweb.com/old/ajbas/2014/Special%2014/5-10.pdf
  2. Dorahy, M.J., Lewis, C.A. and Wolfe, F. (2007). Psychological distress associated with domestic violence in Northern Ireland. Current Psychology, 25(4), 295-305
  3. Kelly, E. (1988). Surviving Sexual Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  4. Levendosky, A.A., and Graham-Bermann, S.A. (2001). Parenting in battered women: The effects of domestic violence on women and their children. Journal of Family Violence, 16(2): 171-192
  5. Phillips. K.E., Rosen, G.M., Zoellner, L.A. and Feeny, N.C. (2006). A cross-cultural assessment of posttrauma reactions among Malaysian and US women reporting partner abuse. Journal of Family Violence, 21, 259-262
  6. Pilar Matud, M. (2005). The psychological impact of domestic violence on Spanish women. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35(11), 2310-2322
  7. Rodgers, S. (1996). ‘Guilty knowledge: The Sports Consultant’s Perspective’. Paper presented at Workshop on Guilty Knowledge, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education.
  8. Campbell, J., Jones, A.S., Dienemann, J., Kub, J., Schollenberger, J., Campo, P.O., Gielen, A.C., and Wynne, C. (2002). Intimate partner violence and physical health consequences. Archives of Internal Medicine, 162(10), 1157-1163.
  9. Kirby, S., Francis, B., & O’Flaherty, R. (2013). Can the FIFA World Cup Football (Soccer) Tournament be associated with an increase in domestic abuse? Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 00(0), 1-18. Available: http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/07/02/0022427813494843.abstract

It’s all about women: an all-female line up on The Clare Balding show

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By Helen Owton

As a woman boxer who spends most of my training time in male dominated boxing gyms, gender equality is on the forefront of my mind and particularly so when I sit down to watch a TV program, despite David Bunker’s (BBC’s head of audience research) assertion that it is not. So when the all-female line up on The Clare Balding Show was aired on 8th May 2015 it was liberating and a joy to watch; a reprieve from the typically male dominated distribution of sports guests. Previously to this all-female episode, gender was not distributed equally on the show with just 28% of guests being female and an overriding 72% of guests being male. This was a disheartening statistic given Clare Balding’s historical efforts to raise the profile of women’s sports and a trailblazer as her time as a jockey.

Nonetheless, we have seen a shift to a more gender equal focus on sportswomen in some of the episodes including Charlotte Edwards (CBE, England Cricket Captain and the only woman cricketer to score 2000 runs in T20 Internationals), Anna Watkins (MBE, Olympic rowing gold and bronze medallist, 2 x World Champion), Victoria Pendleton (CBE, Track cyclist, GB’s most successful female Olympian with 2 x Olympic Gold and 1 x silver medals, 9 x World Champion, 2 x European Champion, Commonwealth Games Gold medallist), Charlotte Dujardin (OBE, Dressage Olympic 2 x gold medallist, 2 x World Champion, 3 x European Champion, 2 x World Cup Champion), Martina Navratilova (greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who’s ever lived and human rights campaigner), Judy Murray (Scottish tennis coach, captain of British Fed Cup Team), Toni Duggan (England women’s footballer, Manchester City player), Eniola Aluko (England women’s footballer, Chelsea player) and Susie Wolff (British racing driver, first woman to compete in a Formula One race in 2014 and ambassador for women in sport). Phew, quite an impressive list and not all their sporting achievements are listed here!

Whilst there appears to be a growing acceptance by men (and women) of female presenters (e.g. Sue Barker (MBE), Gabby Logan, Jacqui Oatley and Clare Balding (OBE)) who are respected in sports, there still needs to be more visibility given to women’s sports. Not only does there need to be a greater representation of sportswomen across the sector, but also greater acknowledgement of the prestige and high esteem associated with the achievements of sportswomen. It’s not just that women are appearing more on TV and receiving the much deserved limelight after all their worldly achievements and dedication in their sports, the discussions on TV are starting to open up dialogue about women’s under-valued position in leadership in sport as well. For example, in the last Clare Balding Show, Martina Navratilova commented on Andy Murray’s decision to collaborate with female tennis coach, Amelie Mauresmo, saying, “The ball doesn’t care whether it is a man or a woman coaching the player” (08/05/15). Andy Murray’s recent article shows how this decision has ‘opened his mind’. Let’s just hope this all-female line up was a sign of progression and not a ‘one off’ given next week’s all-male line up again. Women are clearly interested in viewing sportswomen’s achievements together with being represented equally and valued on TV – this show proves that. Although, we have still got a long way to go… next time this all-female line up deserves a whole hour!