Gender in Sports

My kids and I attend both the girls’ basketball games and the boys’ basketball games at Roy High. Roy High’s community supports the football team better than the basketball teams. Ranking attendance the football team has the most, then the boys’ basketball team and last is the girls’ basketball team. When the girls play they only open one side of the gym for spectators. This often means that we have the opposing team’s family sitting in the middle with Royal fans.   The room feels fuller when the facility manager does this, and I usually meet someone from the other teams’ family.  Both Mountain Crest and Syracuse High School families have commented on how many students are here supporting the girls’ basketball program. Which leads me to believe that our Lady Royals draw a higher attendance that most schools. After the last game we attended my daughter asked me why there were more people cheering for the boys than the girls. I didn’t have a good answer so I didn’t give her one. Reading this week about gender in sports I looked to see if I could give my daughter a better answer.

My son is in Junior Jazz basketball this season and he loves watching the Lady Royals play because he can clearly see when the girls are playing zone defense, man to man defense and pressure defense. The girls also trust each other by throwing more blind passes and clearly executing the plays. With less people in attendance he is focused on the game, not what game the sports announcer is playing with the audience during the sporting event. I feel like we are attending a more pure version of basketball.

When googling gender in sports the word inequality came up on the first page without me typing the word in. Inequality didn’t occur to me. In an ever changing world about what men and women can do, I felt as women we have created the first step, we have comparable teams available to both genders.

Alice Sanders believes that “For a start, history tells us that improvements in sports science and technology are more likely to close the gap, not widen it. Right now, top-level training is becoming more and more specific, for example — not just to the sport, not just to the general gender of an athlete, but tailored to each individual person.” This made me excited for the future of sports. If we are all doing our best the gap will close.

With both women and men improving and the competitive nature of sports, the women are being questioned about their gender. Women are not being trusted to report their true gender and gender testing is taking place. It’s come down to science, to prove masculinity and femininity. This is taking sports too far. People should be trusted to play the best possible game, and give the other team the respect that is needed for a fair match.

Although, I still can’t give my daughter a better answer about fan support for ladies sports, I can encourage her to do her best, break her personal records and be an instrument of change for women’s athletics.