School days
Beating the stereotypes in Britain’s Olympic year
JANE GANDEE, headmistress at St Swithun’s School in Winchester, looks ahead to this summer’s Olympic Games to call for a more positive attitude to girls and sport
W
hat could be more natural and straightforward for girls in the 21st century than to play sport? And
yet unhelpful stereotypes, pressures and preconceptions continue to make it surprisingly complicated for girls simply to enjoy exercise. Babies have a biological sex when they
are born but no ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ identity. However, they rapidly acquire one because the world has expectations as to how boys and girls should behave and how they should be treated. There is a widespread assumption that all girls and women have a set of characteristics which is common to them as females and that these characteristics are different to those of boys and men. Research has shown that the behaviour of parents and other adults towards babies differs according to the sex of the child: girls tend to be handled more gently and boys more vigorously; girls are given dolls and boys action toys. This is the start of a process that will result in girls and boys having set ideas about how they should behave. This process is accelerated by the images so prevalent in books, in the
press and on TV or the internet. Without ever receiving explicit teaching girls and boys simply absorb the ‘fact’ that some activities are more appropriate for boys and some for girls. In Canada, for example, parents send their sons to play ice-hockey and daughters to learn to figure-skate. In England boys tend to play football while girls go to gymnastics or dance classes. Coverage of women’s sport in the media does little to encourage girls to get involved. Indeed, the average newspaper sports pages might as well be called ‘men’s sport’ for the paucity of articles about women. However, girls (and indeed boys) who
reject stereotypes and who enjoy atypical sports are now more common and schools are to be congratulated on taking the lead by offering football or cricket to girls or offering High 5 netball or pop lacrosse, both of which allow boys to play traditionally ‘female’ games. Nevertheless the existence of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sports is still accepted by many and so too are ideas such as that girls and women are ‘naturally’ less competitive or less aggressive than boys or men. Yet four in ten girls say winning is important to them when they play sport, compared to around half of boys.
“It is still accepted that girls are ‘naturally’ less competitive than boys”
Competing on the lacrosse pitch
Jane Gandee calls for an end to gender stereotypes
As a sports enthusiast and headmistress
of a girls’ school, I am determined that girls will see sport and exercise as a fundamental part of their lives by the time they leave us, whether this is performing to a national level, enjoying competitive sport or simply leading a healthy and active life. Girls’ schools are particularly well placed
to do this as we are free from the type of stereotyping which not only decrees that being competitive is somehow unfeminine but which also suggests that women who play sport are by definition unattractive. I find that girls at St Swithun’s simply do not waste time worrying about what they look like in sports kit; they just get on with playing and enjoying sport. Nor in general do they waste time and
energy obsessing about their weight. Research has shown that girls who play sport have a healthier body image than those who do not, as they see their bodies as a means to an end – a healthy body runs fast, performs efficiently and recovers quickly. A body that is just decoratively thin is a lost opportunity. SL
From an article on sport and femininity in physical education and sport in independent schools, to be published shortly by J
ohn Catt Educational Ltd.
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www.mediaclash.co.uk Salisbury Life 69
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