In class on April 12, the question was brought up on if we thought opportunities for girls and women in sport were equitable to the opportunities men get. We learned that everything starts when a person is young. The way a family raises a girl is much different than how they raise a boy. Girls are given barbies, and easy bake ovens, and pink clothes and basically "girly" stuff. On the other hand, boys are given masculine stuff such as trucks, balls, blue clothes, etc. Also, school tends to steer girls and boys in different directions. It reinforces differential expectations and gives boys certain masculine activities while giving girls feminine activities. Also the media kind of sets expectations for how women and men should act and look like. Students watch 100,000 commercials by the time they graduate and probably a good bit of them show what roles men should have and what roles women should have.
As you can see, girls are given a disadvantage right from the start. They have to overcome the typical stereotypes of being a girl. I have a few girls that I am really good friends with that can hold their own with any guy when it comes to sports. I know growing up people were kind of shocked that they were so good at sports because people do not really expect that from women. It is a little better now with Title IX however because it is supposed to give women more of an equal opportunity in sport.
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/sports.shtml
I really enjoyed this article because it gave a history of women and sport including what it is like today. Many of the same women that were mentioned in class were also mentioned on this website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAIjdb18Uhc&feature=fvst
This is just a video of women participating in sport in the 1920s which I thought was really interesting.
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