Bookish Spinsters is a weekly link-up where we discuss feminism based on a topic/question/prompt, and other feminist book bloggers and book tubers join in with their response. Feel free to join in at any time, I just ask that you link back to Bookish Spinsters. For more info and the list of future Bookish Spinsters topics, go to the Bookish Spinsters page.
This week's topic is Equality in Sport.
I have very little interest in sport. I don't play sports, and I very rarely watch it. But there are a lot of women and girls who are really interested in sport, and yet we very rarely see anything on TV for women's teams competiting. The only thing I can think of where we often see women taking part is in tennis, especially when Wimbledon comes around, yet the focus is still mostly on the male tennis players. And a lot of the talk about the female tennis players I hear is focused on the grunts they make or masculine people perceive their bodies to be. Because obviously we can't just concentrate on the match when women are involved. We also see more women when it comes to the Olympics, but in general, we hardly see any coverage of women in sports.
Is this down to the fact that athleticism and being sporty are seen as male traits? Or it's mostly guys who enjoy sport (which obviously isn't true if women are playing sport), and they won't be interested in watching women's matches, competitions etc.? Whatever the reason, it's screwed up. If we see more women in sport, so will young girls. And if young girls can see these role models, maybe they'll be more inclined to try out sports, especially if they can see that sport isn't "for boys".
As I said, I have very little interest in sport, so this isn't a topic I can really talk about in depth because it's not something I know about. So I will point you in the direction of some really awesome articles, posts and website to check out.
- In August this year, in their inaugural list, The Independent listed The 50 Most Influential Women in Sport.
- The Atlantic has an article, Where Girls Are Missing Out on High School Sports.
- Sport England discusses how they're trying to persuade more women to take part in sports.
- Inequality.org talks about how even female athletes suffer from the gender pay gap.
- Rife talks about the Four Awful Truths About Gender Inequality in Sport.
- Feminist Majority Foundation talks about the Gender Equity in Athletics and Sports.
- Women in Sport - "Transforming sport for the benefit of every woman and girl in the UK."
- Women's Sport Trust - "Raising the visibility and increasing the impact of women's sport."
And now it's time for you to share your responses to this week's topic! Join the link-up below with the URL to your Bookish Spinsters post/video, along with your name and your email address. Then check out other people's posts and lets get talking!
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