Dubai
She ties her shoelaces, picks up her bag and heads off to school. The school bell rings, it’s time for the physical education class. But, just as she steps onto the football field, she is told, “you cannot play”.
According to the US-based National Federation of State High School Associations, out of the 1.08 million students who played football for their high school teams in 2015, only 1,561 were girls. This is despite the fact that there is no research that shows that boys are more interested in sports than girls, as stated by the US-based Women’s Sports Foundation. Then why the gender bias when it comes to games and sport for youngsters?
“Many people might think girls are weaker players,” said Priyanka Nair, a 12-year-old pupil based in Dubai.
At her school, there are a lot of sports teams and students can join based on their interest. However, boys have a wider range of games and sports to choose from, including cricket and chess. The girls are not allowed to join in and while the boys are participating in cricket and football tournaments, the girls are given other options, like dancing and singing.
Nair said: “The girls weren’t allowed to play football, but many of the female students spoke to the supervisors and they recently approved a girls-only team. They just assumed that many girls wouldn’t be interested. But, it’s not that we’re not interested, we have no choice.”
In her community, when children gather to play a game, the “girls are usually the last ones to be chosen” for a team. However, the competitive spirit is always high, she said, and most of the time, the teams get divided based on gender. “It just saves time,” she added.
According to another study conducted by the US-based Women’s Sports Foundation, girls have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play high school sports than boys. Male athletes receive $176 million (Dh646 million) more in scholarships than female athletes in the US every year.
The study goes on to state that despite recent progress, the social stigma continues and many people may still not be accepting of women participating in sports.
Mohit Talreja, a 17-year-old student based in Sharjah, has noticed this amongst some parents, who encourage their daughters to participate in certain “feminine” sports.
He said: “Most children who play in my community are boys. Badminton is the only popular sport amongst girls and it seems like their parents might be telling them to focus on specific sports only. Football, on the other hand, is a game that requires a lot of exertion and boys are thus considered superior in such sports.”
Football ranks as one of the most dangerous high school sports, as stated in a study published by US-based Pennsylvania State University, with 1.96 injuries per 100,000 players. But, cheerleading, which is a female-dominated sport, has a worse record with 2.68 injuries per 100,000 competitors. Girls are sometimes flung up to four metres in the air and there is a chance they may fall, causing head and spinal trauma, occasionally leading to death.
This mentality of girls being the weaker gender seems to start early on, according to Qudsiya Shafi, a homemaker based in Dubai. The mother of a three-year-old has come across categorisation at her daughter’s nursery. While the boys are given time to play with their remote-controlled vehicles, the girls are “sitting and chatting”.
She said: “We always make sure she is encouraged to play more action-oriented games and I would even send her for self-defence classes when she is older. Girls shouldn’t be lesser than boys. But, the difference has been there as long as I can remember.”
When she was younger, the boys in her school would participate in basketball and cricket tournaments, “whereas the girls would have a lemon and spoon race”. She is convinced that people have not “grown out of the mentality”.
Her concerns are not hers alone, considering the United Nations (UN) has published a paper on how many women are frequently segregated into different types of sports, events and competitions specifically targeted to women. These are constantly fuelled by continuing stereotypes of women’s physical abilities and social roles.
Rupert Lewis, a services engineer based in Dubai, is also of the opinion that these stereotypes still exist in the 21st Century and though “you cannot generalise”, many countries still don’t want their girls to be involved in any physical sport or games.
“I watch the Olympics and I don’t see any difference. Men and women are given equal opporunities. But, some countries and rural areas have a more narrow mentality,” he said.
Dr Amy Bailey, a clinical psychologist in Dubai, explains that these gender-stereotypical parenting practices arise because people have a desire for their children to fit in and be accepted in society. However, it preserves “the dominant social position of males in sport”.
She said: “Research has shown that when parents engage in gender stereotyped beliefs about their children, they make assumptions about their abilities. This impacts a parent and child’s perception about the child’s skills in this area. It has a long-term impact on decisions that a child makes about what activities to pursue. A girl may have the qualities to be a star football player, but if her parents hold gender stereotypical beliefs, the girl may not feel confident and may choose not to pursue it.”
In her opinion, children who do not conform to stereotypical patterns “may be ridiculed”. All these stereotypes are formed through the process of socialisation, she explains, which means that people form ideas of how they are supposed to act to be accepted in society. In majority of countries, sports is still seen as a “male domain” and so gender bias still exists.
Bailey said: “It is important that as a society we try to move away from gender stereotypes to allow children equal opportunities to develop and enjoy engaging in a variety of activities.”
