Скачать с ютуб Women's Rights Network - A Different Game - Equality in Women's Sport - Podcast Ep 1 в хорошем качестве

Women's Rights Network - A Different Game - Equality in Women's Sport - Podcast Ep 1

Cathy Devine, expert in sport policy at elite and participatory levels with a special interest in equality for girls and women. Corinne Kielty, cycling coach, ex Breeze Champion for British Cycling and cyclist. Tess McInnes, cycling club Welfare Officer and member of British Cycling. We discuss the UK history of women’s exclusion from sport going back to the stated principle of Pierre De Coubetin: “this feminine semi-Olympiad is impractical, uninteresting, ungainly and improper; it is not in keeping with my concept of the Olympic Games: the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with the applause of women as a reward”. It is extraordinary how widely this attitude prevailed, even into the 21st century. Excluding women from sport is part and parcel of women’s designated roles in the public sphere as handmaidens, not participants; and how sport was (and still is) perceived as ‘unfeminine’ and not for girls or women. Football was one of the first games that welcomed women (during WW1), that women’s football was popular with crowds but that ultimately women were banned due to the perception that men were losing out. Cycling symbolised independence for women. Gradually from the 1960s, women began to enter the professional and amateur arenas and successfully created both their own Olympic governing body and in the UK, a Women’s Sports Council separate from their male counterparts. Up to the 1990s almost all women’s sports were administered separately until the Sports Councils recommended mergers. This proved to be takeovers under which female administrators were forced to cede governance of their sports to male-run bodies whose priority remained men’s sport and that legacy still dominates today. Women continue to experience lack of sponsorship and media coverage, less prize money, fewer opportunities to go professional. Even in 2021 the winner of the World and Olympic BMX gold medals, Beth Shriever, had to work 2 jobs and self-fund to get to the Olympics because UK Sport said in 2017 that it would only fund male riders “based on results” . One has to question the data (and bias) which produced those results. This takeover and deprioritising of women’s sport has resulted in the stunting of girls and women’s sports and how as a result, we have very little by way of a legacy to build on. Creating a positive legacy happens over decades. The lack of a longstanding popular culture of women’s sport continues to discourage the visibility of women coaches and policy makers, which contributes to the lack of thought given to encouraging girls into sport: “you can’t be it if you don’t see it”. Girls and women are expected to fit into the male norms of sports. For some, this is what they are seeking, or they are prepared at least to tolerate it. For others, this will deter them forever. We discuss the problem of this legacy of exclusion in schools, where non-traditional sports that might inspire girls are underinvested in because traditional team sports are cheaper to run and teachers hesitant to teach PE. Some girls enjoy traditional sports such as football, rugby and hockey, but are deterred by the lack of initiatives taken to make these spaces inclusive for girls, who experience a very different social conditioning to boys. We discuss sport culture in general; certain sports seem hostile to atypical males as much as females (why are there few openly gay men in professional football and cycling?) yet lesbians have found sports to be a welcoming, non-judgmental environment. The macho culture of sport is as problematic for some men as for women; women’s sport is not the remedy or the refuge for men fleeing ‘toxic masculinity’. There is the absurd and intolerable situation that trans men, trans women and women are all competing in the women’s category. Men’s sport meanwhile continues unaffected. Why is it not problematic for trans men to compete in women’s sport, but it’s problematic for trans women to compete in men’s sport? The culture of National Governing Bodies and men’s sport in general has much work to do to address this. If you are interested in these issues and want to be a part of the culture of sport for the better, please join the Women’s Rights Network: References: 1. Devine C. 2021. Female Olympians’ voices: Female sports categories and International Olympic Committee Transgender guidelines. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. June. doi:10.1177/10126902211021559 2. Devine C. 2021. Female Sports Participation, Gender Identity and the British 2010 Equality Act, Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, DOI: 10.1080/17511321.2021.1993982 3. Devine C. 2018. Sex, sport and money: voice, choice and distributive justice in England, Scotland and Wales, Sport, Education and Society, 23:9, 824-839, DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2016.1275542 #SaveWomensSports #womensrightsnetwork #fairplayforwomen #womensfootball #cycling #womenscycling #sexnotgender #football #olympics #scienceofsport