Keeping girls in sport
Could a move towards alternative sports be a new answer to an old problem? Over 80% of British women aren’t active enough to stay healthy and PE classes put over half of our girls off sport. It’s apparent that changes need to be made in order to stop this trend.
The above figures come from research conducted by Loughborough University and the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation. Tim Woodhouse, head of policy and external affairs at WSFF, explains the issue:
Tim has been working at the WSFF since 2008 Several myths about why teenage girls drop out of sport are disproven in a WSFF report, including the myth that girls are put off by a lack of opportunities to play with boys. A ‘the more the merrier’ attitude adopted by many alternative sports means that mixed gender participation is often strongly encouraged and in some cases mandatory. Tim says this might be off putting to some women, but warns against over generalising what is obviously a very diverse group of people:
Ultimate Frisbee is popular with women but there is only one division, compared to three men’s divisions.
Most alternative sports are team sports or at least involve meeting with others to participate fully. Through some clear and simple analysis of participation figures, the WSFF show that team sports aren’t that popular with women. The three most popular sports (by a long way) are all solo activities and women are much less likely than men to play sport as a member of a club.
One female Ultimate Frisbee player said: “It’s crazy. Girls are really sociable, yet it’s so hard to get them together to play sport.” Tim points out that as long as a sport is flexible, the team element needn’t be a negative:
Mainstream sports often have strong gender associations, for example football is very much seen as a male sport. Can such associations discourage women and girls from taking part? The hidden nature of alternative sports could free them from such connotations, after all it’s hard to have any preconceived gender associations about a sport you’ve never even heard of. Tim shares his thoughts on who is responsible for encouraging potentially gender-neutral sports:
First image provided by Tim Woodhouse. Second image courtesy of Andrew moss, Blockstack TV.
Hey there, interesting site. This section on women in sport resonates with me. I’m a keen Ultimate Frisbee player and have been playing regularly for 9 years at a reasonably high level. My love of Ultimate has also got me interested in other sports and fitness. What my Ultimate friends maybe wouldn’t believe is that, as a teenager, I hated sports and was a standard unfit teenage girl. I went to quite a sporty secondary school, I’d never played their sports of hockey or netball at primary school so was always at a disadvantage and felt like I just couldn’t do it. Couple that with unsympathetic PE teachers who seemed to concentrate on those who were good at sport, rather than those struggling, meant that PE lessons were something I gave up as soon as I could. Fast forward a couple of years, and at freshers fair in my first year at uni, a sport where nearly everyone started as a complete beginner, was encouraged for just having a go (no matter how untalented they were) really appealed. Within a couple of weeks I was at a beginners tournament playing my first competitive sports match ever! Along with the social side and generally a mix of really friendly people, it’s exactly what I’d been looking for. I was hooked, and still playing 9 years later.
This is a really interesting page, the interviews raise issues that I experienced when I was at school however like the above comment, I am now a regular Ultimate Frisbee player, which has led me to generally increase the amount of exercise I do so that I am fit enough to play at a good level. At school I did PE lessons, and one year of extra curricular tennis, but generally wasn’t in the ‘clique’ of really sporty players, so even though I was of a fairly good standard at netball, rounders and lacrosse I was never seen as someone to coach on and encourage.
I wholeheartedly support raising the profile of alternate sports, and reducing the bias some sports have towards a particular gender; at school we had a womens football team, made up of non-cliquey girls, who didn’t look as stereotypically ‘sporty’ as the netball girls, but they did really well!
A very interesting page. Like both the above comments I am a regular Ultimate Frisbee player and have been for about 5 years, having picked it up at Uni. I was never good at sport at school, nor did i enjoy it. Because of my short stature, I was never one to be picked for team sports (I recently found a letter to a PE teacher from my mother when I was at primary school asking why I hadn’t been allowed to play in a netball match, despite having been more committed to the training sessions than any of the other girls – they then put me in a match as a goal keeper. I promptly gave up netball!). I also went to an all girls school, which was, like one of the comments, really cliquey. I wasn’t in a social group who actively tried being sporty and the PE teachers just didn’t encourage us (in fact, we made a joke out of being really terrible at sport!). I ended up doing a lot of Ballet instead. At university, one of the things that attracted me to Ultimate was the friendly social aspect and the apparent desperate need to have girls on the team! Being a total beginner was expected, I was encouraged to participate in the sport more than I had ever been at school, and I wasn’t being forced to compete with other girls for a team place (which i think can also be really off putting if you’re not ‘naturally’ sporty). What kept me hooked was its social aspects, being mixed and its slightly quirky nature as a ‘hidden’ sport – there was no pressure to be really good right away. I agree that sport in general needs to be marketed in a way that encourages more women to play. With Ultimate (in my case) that was self fulfilling – the nature of the sport itself is so completely different to other more mainstream sports that it was more compelling.