Women cricketers and a level playing field January 24, 2013

Those readers who don’t habitually haunt the sports pages may have missed the news that Sarah Taylor, the very talented English wicketkeeper-batter, is involved in discussions that may result in her playing second XI county cricket for a men’s team in the coming summer (roughly: reserve-team at the highest level below international). She and other leading female players already play as a matter of course for men’s teams somewhat below this level.

The response among cricket followers and commentators has been by and large positive. Indeed, both the women’s game and individual women are generally treated (relatively) well by media and fans. And because of the nature of cricket, there’s no obvious reason why women with adequate opportunities, support and training couldn’t be successful at the highest level, at least in the longer forms (the shorter formats, especially T20, rely more on brute power).

However, this raises the question of whether integration is in fact desirable. Selma James seems to argue that, if the best players leave the women’s game to play for men’s teams, the women’s game will suffer. And implicit in this argument is the notion that, for one reason or another, there will never be full integration of the two.

I’ve been wondering about this sort of thing off and on for ages, and I really do not know what to think about it all. I think what I think is this. It seems that, in principle, sports that don’t rely (much) on physical strength, or in which skill can compensate for its lack, can and should be integrated at all levels. Sports that do might have to stay segregated, at least post-pubescence (assuming that we don’t just change the rules of sports such that strength isn’t a factor any more).

It also seems that, in practice, there would have to be a massive cultural change for women to get the opportunities necessary for integration at any level above the most amateur to occur. But I’d like to get straight on the principles before considering the practicals. And so far as principles go, I’m pretty muddled. Thoughts welcome.

 

Stop the Presses: Dude Person Wearing Pink Shoes (Get the Fainting Couches & Smelling Salts Ready!) January 19, 2013

From Sociological Images:

News Outlet Startled by [Male] Professional Athlete Wearing Pink

Honestly, if you ask me it’s a little matchey-matchey.
/snark

 

Now on a more serious line, I thought this was a noteworthy point:

 

Now this isn’t a big deal, but it is a particularly striking example of the little ways in which rules around gender are enforced.  Federer took a risk by wearing even a little bit of pink; the Daily Mail goes to great lengths to point this out.  He also gets away with it, in the sense that the article doesn’t castigate or attempt to humiliate him for doing so. [...] Research shows that men who otherwise embody high-status characteristics — which includes being light-skinned, ostensibly straight, attractive, athletic, and wealthy — can break gender rules with fewer consequences

Reader query: women and sport November 8, 2012

A reader writes:

I’m teaching a “Sport and Gender” course for Women’s and Gender Studies in the spring semester and am gathering suggestions for readings. Any help you could offer would be great.

Hurdling, sexism, and pretty virgins August 8, 2012

In Olympic sports, you draw criticism if you don’t look girly enough. But you can also cause a stir if you’re, well, just a little too pretty. A recent article in the NY Times has been generating a lot of discussion recently after claiming that the media are fascinated with 100m hurdler Lolo Jones because she’s pretty (and famously claims to be a virgin), not because she’s particularly good at her sport:

Jones has received far greater publicity than any other American track and field athlete competing in the London Games. This was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign. Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

Comparisons are drawn to tennis player Anna Kournikova – another female athlete with mediocre (at best) credentials but widespread fame derived mostly from her non-athletic. . .talents. Other, more successful women are ignored, it’s argued, because they don’t meet media standards of physical attractiveness.

Reactions to this article have been mixed, to say the least. (See, for example, the discussion thread over at Jezebel). Some praise the NY Times for calling out an entrenched area of sexism in coverage of female athletes. Surely we should cover the athletes who are the most successful, not the ones who are the prettiest! Others accuse the the Times of, ironically, falling victim to sexism in the article itself. Why assume the interest in Jones is only due to her looks? Why assume that if we care about a beautiful athlete, we only care about her because she’s beautiful? Yet others think the article misses the main source of the media frenzy over Jones – it isn’t her beauty, it’s her skin color. Track and field (especially the sprint events) is dominated by dark-skinned athletes. The US media is desperate to find a successful light-skinned athlete who will be “more relatable” to white folks. They’ve found her in Lolo Jones.

For those who don’t follow track and field: the final of the women’s 110m hurdles was last night, and Jones finished 4th (behind teammates Dawn Harper and Kellie Wells, as well as Australian Sally Pearson, who set a new Olympic record.)

[Speaking of gender and the Olympics: our friend John Protevi has another great post on the topic up at NewAPPS.]

UPDATE: Whatever your thoughts on the virtues and vices of the NY Times piece, I think we can all agree that this is a real bummer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But, um, it also seems like Lolo Jones’ more successful, medal-winning, dark-skinned, non-virginal teammates are not that happy with how they’ve been ignored in her favor.

Sport, gender testing, race and the policing of femininity August 7, 2012

One of the most problematic aspects of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) new gender testing policy was relegated to a single sentence in the Los Angeles Times’ article on this controversial issue.

According to the new IOC rules, the test won’t be administered to all female athletes and instead will be given only when “the chief medical officer of a national Olympic committee or a member of the IOC’s medical commission requests it.” While this may have been designed to make the process less onerous, it creates an entirely new problem that will disadvantage any woman who is perceived as not being sufficiently feminine.

The test itself will disqualify women from competing if they have testosterone levels in the range of 7 to 30 nanomoles per liter of blood, which is the range typically seen in males. However, the decision to test an athlete will be entirely subjective. There are no “objective” indicators of which women may have heightened levels of testosterone. Under the new policy, only women who raise a specter of doubt in the minds of members of the IOC will be asked to prove their gender. In practice, this means that whether a woman will have her eligibility called into account and be forced to undergo testing will be based on stereotypes about gender. If past history is any indication, this will have a devastating impact on gender-nonconforming women and will disproportionately affect women of color.

For more, go here. (Thanks, A!)

Photographed like beach volleyball August 4, 2012

What if every Olympic sort was photographed like beach volleyball?

Thanks, Mr Jender!

Zoe Smith, awesome weightlifter, puts it very well August 2, 2012

One particularly harsh critic said she “looked like a bloke” and that most guys would agree. (Fortunately, the offender in question had the good sense to at least delete the tweets.)

So, Zoe took to her blog and wrote out one of the most empowering, You-Go-Girl smackdowns we’ve ever read. She says:

“…We don’t lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.

“Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and feeble.”

For more, go here. (Thanks, N!)

Blatant Sexism and Misogyny in Olympic Advertising: Proudly Brought to You By GoDaddy July 26, 2012

The SF Chronicle recently declared the 2012 Olympics “The Year of the Woman.”  The domain registrar GoDaddy appears to agree but seems to have a very different interpretation of women’s most impressive strengths and talents.  As Americans tune in to watch and support all the athletes in the 2012 Olympics, they will be also treated to GoDaddy’s sexist advertising.  These ads could be worse, though; they could feature Olympians instead of the nameless female bodies they do feature.  Wait, that might be better, for then viewers might at least recognize that the women depicted are subjects as well as objects, active as well as passive.

Thanks For the Dadflys June 24, 2012

This weekend marks the 40^th anniversary of Title IX, which was signed into law by then-President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate break-in.

 

The law is an astoundingly simple 37 words:

 

 “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

 

Note that this says nothing about sports.

 

And yet the world of sports is the arena in which the Title IX political game has been played – with an overwhelming victory for female athletes. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, about 294,000 girls competed in high school sports the year before Title IX became law. Last year, the number was nearly 3.2 million, an increase of about 980%.

 

One of the great ironies of the Nixon administration might be the fact that the Watergate week marked a watershed moment for the future of, literally, hundreds of millions of American women.

 

Things seem to be so solid for women’s sports as Title IX reaches the four decade mark that it is tempting to say the job is done. Every girl who wants to play a sport, or two or five, is playing them. Title IX, schmitle IX, who cares? Let’s say thanks, and move on.

 

 

We should say our thank yous, but I don’t think it’s time to move on. In fact, I think the struggle to enforce Title IX is more relevant than ever.

 

(Again: who ever said it was about SPORTS? Why are we content with giving our daughters balls and bats, without also using looking for ways to use Title IX to wage a political war against the other forms of discrimination that are apparently rampant at U.S. educational institutions – all of which receive Federal financial assistance, through Pell grants, Stafford loans, and so forth?)

 

But since the 40^th anniversary should be a time for celebration, and not for griping, let me say thanks.

 

Respect and thanks are of course due to the early pioneers: to Bernice Sandler, who used President Johnson’s Executive Order 11375 to wage a legal battle for her job at the University of Maryland in 1969, and then joined Representative Edith Green in the congressional hearings where the idea for Title IX was born; to Representative Patsy Mink, who prepared an early draft of the legislation; to Senator Birch Bayh, who was the author and chief sponsor of Title IX, etc.

 

But I think thanks are also due to the legions of gadfly fathers – “dadflys” is the term Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff recently coined – who took the legislation to heart and pushed for change in sports programs and stadiums across the country.

 

One of my favorite dadflys is a retiree named Herb Dempsey, a 75-year-old grandfather from Battle Ground, Washington, who is a self-proclaimed “nasty old man”, and has spent the past 20 years making Title IX enforcement his full-time hobby. He uses Google Earth to identify possible shoddy sports facilities – and, if his investigation turns up an underfunded girls’ program, he uses Title IX to force change.

 

Dempsey has filed more than 1000 complaints with the Office of Civil Rights challenging inequities in high school athletics. One example was a case in Castle Rock, Washington, where girls’ soccer games had to be shortened to 32 minutes from 80 minutes because there were no lights on the field—even though a football field with lights was available not far away.

 

“It’s hard to believe how bad it still is,” Dempsey told Sports Illustrated, “because people want to celebrate how good it has become.”

Turkish FA to ban men from stadiums September 21, 2011

seriously!

The Turkish football association has come up with a radical solution for tackling hooliganism – by banning men from stadiums. Teams sanctioned for unruly behaviour by fans are instead only allowed to admit women and children aged under 12 to watch games.

…

On Tuesday, more than 41,000 women and children attended Fenerbahce’s match against Manisaspor in Istanbul.

Fenerbahce’s 1-1 draw with Manisapor kicked off after players from both teams hurled flowers at the fans, while the visitors were greeted with applause instead of the more customary loud jeers.

The home side’s captain, Alex de Sousa, said: “This memory will stay with me forever. It’s not always that you see so many women and children in one game.”

Maybe if they hurled flowers at the men, the men would be nice, too. Just a thought…

Read more here. (Thanks RW!)