Girls, sport and becoming active

Jim Denison continues his series on sport and the university by examining what researchers are learning about women's participation in sport

From disheartened sideline spectators – or worse uninvited intruders - to frontline participants, girls and women have entered sport in record numbers over the last two decades. Women's sport sponsorship is on the rise, the nation lost hours of sleep supporting our "Curling Queens" at the last winter Olympics in Salt lake City, Utah in 2002 and Paula Radcliffe is one of world athletics' biggest stars. Many feminists working in sports science departments in universities around the world argue that gender in sport is irrelevant now. Athletes are athletes, they cheer, and women's sport is here to stay.

Clearly, an increased focus on women's sport is hopeful and encouraging, and in many ways represents real progress regarding women's rights. Professor C. L. Cole, a sports sociologist from the University of Illinois, USA and also the editor of the journal of Sport & Social Issues claims, "Women athletes today have opportunities that were unthinkable ten years ago. Without question, elite women athletes provide meaningful role models for young girls who testify to the inspiration that they provide. These women athletes also provide models for adult women who will, perhaps, continue to be physically active."

But Professor Cole is quick to offer a contrasting message. The celebratory rhetoric surrounding women's sport, she believes, masks the everyday struggles facing ordinary women such as health care, child care and poverty that make it almost impossible to participate in sport. And the source of this rhetoric, according to Dr Cole? "A growing number of multinational corporations - Nike, Fila, Hyundai, McDonalds - are announcing their allegiances to girls and to women. Using sports, these corporations have found new arenas for profit. And they've made consuming women's sport a progressive practice for those select few who can afford their products and the time to enjoy them."

Meaning, how is a single mother of three supposed to access the resources to go running for an hour after work? Or more to the point, is sport participation for girls and women really on the rise, or is it simply some feel-good commodity activism? What are the actual gains for physically active girls and women today?

According to Professor David Kirk from Loughborough University's Department of Physical Education, Sport Science and Recreation Management: "The idea of a 'physical emancipation' for girls and women is exaggerated. When we study women from working class backgrounds or various racial and ethnic groups we see almost no changes in physical activity patterns. That is, they are still very, very low."

Such a finding is problematic, of course, because of the known psychological, social and health benefits associated with appropriate physical activity. Equally problematic, however, has been solving the inactivity problem facing women, with many interventions directed at girls' physical education (PE). "For too long," Professor Kirk continued, "we blamed girls and later women for not caring about sport because they weren't motivated enough. This 'blame the victim' emphasis has shifted in recent years and now we are beginning to take a hard look at the
PE curriculum and what we offer in the name of PE. For example, is a sport based, team game curriculum going to encourage girls and subsequently women to be active? For that matter, is it going to encourage boys?"

When reduced to a curriculum debate, the problems associated with PE and declining physical activity levels among women and other populations certainly do become non-gender specific as Professor Kirk suggests. It's not as simple as saying PE serves boys' needs but not girls' hence the reason girls don't enjoy sport. A growing body of research, in fact, suggests that not all boys are advantaged by traditional PE and its heavy masculine biases that emphasise and reward speed and strength most of all. Furthermore, if PE is intended to foster lifetime fitness, why is the curriculum so team game based when we know that adults almost never engage in team games in their leisure time? Sadly, the answer points to tradition only.

For well over one-hundred years, the practices that have made up PE in Britain have been strongly associated with girls being "feminine" and boys being "masculine." Accordingly, sport in schools has served to emphasise differences between men and women by celebrating one type of sport prowess: a stereotypical masculine one. Or what Professor Robert Connell has referred to as, "masculine hegemony." As a consequence, according to sport historian Patricia Vertinsky, "PE tends to serve only a select few, with the most disadvantaged being girls."

Professor Sheila Scraton, the author of Shaping up to Womanhood: Gender and Girls' Physical Education (Open University Press), thinks there's nothing mysterious about girls' disinterest in PE and sport. "For starters, they're required to wear uncomfortable uniforms, remove their jewellery and tie back their hair, all of which conflict with their emerging sense of femininity."

Professor Scraton goes on to suggest that expanding PE and broadening girls' notions of what it means to be active requires an explicit pedagogy that looks beyond the school to understand how sport is understood in society by girls and women. Dr Nicola Manson reached a similar conclusion after completing an eight month study in a central London girls school where she examined the priority of sport in girls' lives. "For the girls in my study," she commented, "PE, sport and more broadly physical activity carried absolutely no relevance. It just wasn't a discussion point in their day to day lives - never. And unless "being physical" can be marketed to them as a commodity they desire, either by overhauling the PE curriculum or other means, this won't change."

Dr Barbara Humberstone from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College offers an identical point of view. "In girls' minds, physical activities that are 'cool' aren't offered in PE." This led Dr Humberstone to experiment with an outdoor adventure unit, that unsurprisingly most girls found challenging, exciting and rewarding. "They could wear trendy outdoor clothes and see their skills improving; and because the boys weren't necessarily better at these activities the girls began to rethink their definitions of masculinity, femininity and physical competence."

Other novel PE offerings that have tried to make girls' experiences more relevant to the curriculum have included units on aerobics, dance and weight training. Ken Fox, Professor of Exercise and Health Sciences at the University of Bristol, believes there's real merit in these activities because of the importance girls' place on their appearance. He makes the further point that girls aren't as free as they once were to walk, bike and run. "Parents are more protective today, and wary of unsupervised activities. As a result, we've seen a dramatic decline in girls' everyday movement patterns. And this is likely to increase if we don't make sport safe for girls, or something that they perceive to be fun and interesting."

But Dr Pirkko Markula, a sport sociologist from the University of Bath, forecasts trouble if PE is sold to girls as a weight loss regime. "It's preying on their body image insecurities -and what kind of health message does that send to girls at a time in their lives when they should be growing not dieting?"

Of course, for any innovations in the PE curriculum to take hold firmer partnerships between PE researchers and PE teachers need to form. At present, ask a PE teacher to introduce an experimental unit on non-competitive qames and he or she is likely to confront deafening moans and groans. Team games continue to be served up because they offer the easiest path for over worked, exhausted PE teachers to control their classrooms. But kids complain about these activities, too. So what's one to do with the PE curriculum? Straightaway, it has to be said that more decisive and contemporary interventions based on what researchers know about girls', boys' and sport are desperately needed. For until such programmes are designed and implemented, there is little hope that PE will change with the times and begin to serve anyone's needs.

In the next instalment in this series, I take a look at issues related to masculinity and what research being done at the university has to say about men and sport.
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