By: Rachael Brink
This seminar features a panel of women discussing how women in sports are perceived very differently than men. Harriet Minter, editor for the Guardian, ran the panel by asking questions and easing audience participation. The panel included Felicity Ward, an Australian comedian, Katherine Bohart, a stand up comedian, and Sally Kettle, a TV presenter, author, and competitive rower who has rowed across the Atlantic Ocean twice.
One of the first topics that the panel covered was the association of sporty women with masculinity. For a woman to be as good as a man in any sport, she is assumed to look like a man and therefore be unattractive. This creates an aversion for females to play sports, because no girl wants to be told she looks unattractive due to her physique from playing sports. Felicity Ward brought up the point that it is commonly thought that Serena Williams could not possibly be as good as she is without being compared to male tennis players. Her statistics are lined up with male tennis players for her to seem good at tennis. This promotes the idea that women are incapable of being as good as men in sports, and when women do reach a level that rivals men, the media turns on their physical appearance.
Another topic presented, that I feel relates more to the U.K. than the U.S., was equality being on the agenda for sports. Instead of trying endlessly to be one of the few sports players who make it onto a professional team, women should be active and play sports because they think it is fun. There is a huge media concentration on super star athletes, who make up only a small percentage of athletes in the world. This contrasts with the U.S., because the U.K. does not have a law similar to Title IX. Title IX ensures that both female and male sports are given equal funding in the universities. In the U.K., the funding is far more skewed toward men’s sports.
Lastly, the panel discussed the misconception that people are either good at sports or not good at sports. Harriet Minter confessed to the audience that she had only just realized this was a myth. The idea perpetrates that if one is not inherently good at sports, one should not play sports. I believe this keeps females from playing sports, because the misconception lowers morale and self-esteem.
All in all, this seminar was probably my favorite one so far. I really enjoyed openly discussing the inequalities that women face. Sports is one of the areas where women face inequality the most, and I think the more we create a discussion about it, the closer we are to changing the current circumstances.
This seminar features a panel of women discussing how women in sports are perceived very differently than men. Harriet Minter, editor for the Guardian, ran the panel by asking questions and easing audience participation. The panel included Felicity Ward, an Australian comedian, Katherine Bohart, a stand up comedian, and Sally Kettle, a TV presenter, author, and competitive rower who has rowed across the Atlantic Ocean twice.
One of the first topics that the panel covered was the association of sporty women with masculinity. For a woman to be as good as a man in any sport, she is assumed to look like a man and therefore be unattractive. This creates an aversion for females to play sports, because no girl wants to be told she looks unattractive due to her physique from playing sports. Felicity Ward brought up the point that it is commonly thought that Serena Williams could not possibly be as good as she is without being compared to male tennis players. Her statistics are lined up with male tennis players for her to seem good at tennis. This promotes the idea that women are incapable of being as good as men in sports, and when women do reach a level that rivals men, the media turns on their physical appearance.
Another topic presented, that I feel relates more to the U.K. than the U.S., was equality being on the agenda for sports. Instead of trying endlessly to be one of the few sports players who make it onto a professional team, women should be active and play sports because they think it is fun. There is a huge media concentration on super star athletes, who make up only a small percentage of athletes in the world. This contrasts with the U.S., because the U.K. does not have a law similar to Title IX. Title IX ensures that both female and male sports are given equal funding in the universities. In the U.K., the funding is far more skewed toward men’s sports.
Lastly, the panel discussed the misconception that people are either good at sports or not good at sports. Harriet Minter confessed to the audience that she had only just realized this was a myth. The idea perpetrates that if one is not inherently good at sports, one should not play sports. I believe this keeps females from playing sports, because the misconception lowers morale and self-esteem.
All in all, this seminar was probably my favorite one so far. I really enjoyed openly discussing the inequalities that women face. Sports is one of the areas where women face inequality the most, and I think the more we create a discussion about it, the closer we are to changing the current circumstances.