Sports and women Essay Example for Free

Sports and women Essay Gender Bias in American Sports: Lack of Opportunity, Lack of Administrative Positions and Lack of Coverage in Womens Sports Submitted by: Erik F. Person, CSCS, Doctoral Candidate, USSA â€Å"In the early days, female volleyball players were cautioned not to expose too much . A hundred years later, they were encouraged to expose more†. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Women’s Sports. pg. 281. â€Å"If people want to come check us out because they’re scoping our bodies, I don’t have a problem with that, because I guarantee they’ll go home talking about our athleticism†. pg. 283. â€Å"These women are as deft at handling the ball as they are lipstick†. pg. 262. â€Å"Let’s face facts here. Lesbians in the sport hurt women’s golf†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..Laura Davies is built like a tank†. pg. 66 â€Å"The reason for this [media frenzy dubbed Annamania] is simple: She’s blond, she’s flirtatious and she’s pretty. Never, ever, underestimate the power of a male sports editor smitten.† pg. 52. â€Å"The Olympic Games should be a solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, arts for its setting, and female applause as reward.† Pierre de Coubertin. Idiot’s Guide. pg. 31. â€Å"If there are two people the same, would I prefer to see women coaching women? As role models, I think it’s important. But not to sacrifice a program.† Pat Babcock. N.Y. Times. 2002 Copyright (c) 2002 2010 United States Sports Academy. All rights reserved. All submitted material, once approved by the Editorial Board and published, becomes the prop HomeGender Bias in American Sports: Lack of Opportunity, Lack of Administrative Positions and Lack of Coverage in Womens Sports Submitted by: Erik F. Person, CSCS, Doctoral Candidate, USSA â€Å"In the early days, female volleyball players were cautioned not to expose too much . A hundred years later, they were encouraged to expose more†. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Women’s Sports. pg. 281. â€Å"If people want to come check us out because they’re scoping our bodies, I don’t have a problem with that, because I guarantee they’ll go home talking about our athleticism†. pg. 283. â€Å"These women are as deft at handling the ball as they are lipstick†. pg. 262. â€Å"Let’s face facts here. Lesbians in the sport hurt women’s golf†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..Laura Davies is built like a tank†. pg. 66 â€Å"The reason for this [media frenzy dubbed Annamania] is simple: She’s blond, she’s flirtatious and she’s pretty. Never, ever, underestimate the power of a male sports editor smitten.† pg. 52. â€Å"The Olympic Games should be a solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, arts for its setting, and female applause as reward.† Pierre de Coubertin. Idiot’s Guide. pg. 31. â€Å"If there are two people the same, would I prefer to see women coaching women? As role models, I think it’s important. But not to sacrifice a program.† Pat Babcock. N.Y. Times. 2002 Introduction Women in America have made tremendous strides in the last 100 years of American history. Politically, women gained the right to vote in 1920, through the 19th amendment. In the workforce, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 allowed women the right to equal pay for the same job as their male counterparts. In the sports world, women gained the right to play in 1972 by way of Title IX of the Educational Amendments. In spite of these strides however, gender bias continues to exist. It is difficult to think of a greater injustice which effects the majority of people in the United States. According to the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau, just over half of the U.S. Population is female, (50.7%), yet bias against women, the majority, persists. Due to the strong traditions of our patriarchal society, women continue to face an uphill climb. Gender is the neutral term for the two sexes, male and female. Bias is defined as unreasoned judgment, a bent or tendency, prejudicial. (Merriman’s Collegiate Dictionary, 1993). Gender bias then, is to show favor or partiality, toward one of the sexes exclusively because of gender. Or said in the negative, to not show impartiality based upon gender. In spite of these gender neutral definitions, it is clear in American culture, that gender bias has been and continues to be highly slanted against women. From the academic setting of classrooms (Bailey 1992) and college admissions, to the workplace with lower salaries, (AAWU report, 2008) lack of job opportunities and bleak forecasts for advancement, women continue to be discriminated against. The hegemonic male culture, consciously or not, creates an antagonistic environment for females. Nowhere is this more true than the environment of sports. Opportunity Bias One of the three prongs of the Title IX law has to do with equal participation opportunity in proportion to student enrollment as it pertains to federally funded centers of education. While millions of girls have benefited from the implementation of Title IX, there are still playing fields where females are still unwelcome. Traditional wisdom, that girls are only suited for activities which emulate the aesthetic side of sports such as gymnastics, ice skating, cheer leading, etc., persists, along with the notion that females should not engage in high physical contact activities such as wrestling, football or rugby. While TitleIX mandates equal opportunity, it does not mandate equal opportunity in specific sports. American football for example does not have an exact feminine equivalent, so girls are given other options besides football. (Volleyball, field Hockey). Options do not always mean equal. Gender bias occurs not only because there is no football team for women to play on, but rather that is only the outcome of the larger problem. The real gender bias has to do with the male, and sometimes female, attitudes of what defines masculinity and what defines femininity. Due to the pervading male influence, gender typing occurs early during a girl’s development. Gender typing is attributing qualities, characteristics, attributes, temperaments, demeanor and behavior due to a gender. That is, making generalizations about a person, and how they act or should act, based upon preconceived notions and definitions of their gender. Through the power of suggestion, gender socialization begins at a very early age. Subtly, or not so subtly, a girl hears messages throughout her life that females aren’t good at math and science, and proficiency in math and science are needed to become, for example, a space traveler, so the logical conclusion for her is that she can not go into space. The argument that, â€Å"if girls had the ability to become astronauts we would see more of them†, is self defeating when we have not given them the opportunity to do so in the first place. More plausibly, is that a self fulfilling prophecy has occurred. Expectations have shaped a behavior, which in turn shapes future expectations. This cycle usually conforms to the dominant cultural theme, and in our example, the dominant theme is male supremacy. Interestingly however, not all female athletes share the feminist view. McClung and Blind, (2002) found in the vast majority of their interviews with female college athletes, a desensitized attitude toward women’s sport issues. In their study, women said things such as â€Å"we feel privileged to play college sports†, as opposed to a right, and â€Å"gender equity issues are not important to me†. The main reason sighted for the lack of passion was due to lack of time, and other obligations. The sports world is biased against women in terms of opportunity in the professional ranks as well. Title IX has helped women with participation opportunity but only in educational settings, and speaks nothing of post college athletics. With the relative success of the WNBA more women basketball players have the opportunity to make a living playing a professional sport. Relative to the men’s opportunities however, economically it pales in comparison, $55,000 versus $4,000,000 (the average salary). Without the potential prospect of playing professionally, girls devote less time to the sport, focusing rather on other pursuits such as relationships, and academics, further establishing thegender logic in American culture that women are not interested in sports for the long term, or that they do not have the commitment needed to pursue athletics as a vocation. Again, this is a self defeating argument, as the WNBA has shown. Several franchises have been able to maintain healthy fan bases in the short 12 years history of the league. Part of the issue with lack of professional opportunity for women is linked to sponsorship bias. Companies looking to use sports to market their product do not look to women’s sport first. Companies are concerned with getting a return on their advertising dollar. The perception is that their return will not be as great if they invest in women sport teams. Whether it be through product endorsement contracts with specific athletes, facility or venue sponsorship, or capital investment in a specific team, corporations view the WNBA as a second rate, at best, investment. Justified as a reasonable business decision, the purse holders have a profound negative affect upon a team, the league in general, and women’s sports as a whole. Understandably, companies have a responsibility to be prudent investors for their constituents. However, at the same time, they may be missing an opportunity to pair their product with a market they have yet to completely associate it with, say 51% of the population. This liquidity issue in women’s sports is closely tied with the bias of the media. Even with the advancements of the LPGA and the USWTA, Greendorfer suggests that women â€Å"are still confined within ideological structures of patriarchy†. Media Bias Arguably, the media creates fans. Several men’s professional and collegiate teams have national audiences. Notre Dame football, New York Yankees, Penn State football, Dallas Cowboys, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, to name a few. The reasons for each of these teams captivating a large and diverse audience are many and as varied as their fan base. The media, along with many other variables (such as the location of the team, franchise or team history and legacy, colorful characters, and team success), play a role as to how that team is perceived by the public. Within the greater public are potential fans. Television coverage, magazine articles, radio broadcasts etc., all influence whether a team will garner a national fan base. Men’s sports have known that â€Å"exposure pays† for a long time, and with the increasing technological ability to feed fans the sport information they want, it would seem to be a relatively easy task for the networks to maneuver women’s sports coverage more toward the front web and paper pages. The very important 1996 work of Messner et al. details the shortcomings of media coverage of women’s sports, and the bias they exude. Messner and his colleagues analyzed and compared the 1993 NCAA basketball championship coverage for both men and women. Their conclusion, in part, was that â€Å"the television industry actively builds audiences for men’s games while failing to do so for women’s games†. (Yiannakis. p.330). This is no small point. Potential sponsors look at viewer ratings to determine potential investments. If ratings are lower than they deem necessary, the event will not be a target. However, without the media covering the event adequately, that is to say, billing it with the same hype, energy, enthusiasm and professionalism as the men’s games, fewer viewers are most certainly likely. Without the national exposure, women’s sports will continue to be a second rate investment because that is what the networks have created. Messner says that the network’s position is â€Å"we’re just giving the fans what they want†. The counter to that is, â€Å"they want that because you have made it more inviting to want that. The circus is more fun when there’s three rings instead of two. The media also appears to be bias against women’s sports by the way the events are covered. The shear quantity of coverage is a fraction of the men’s coverage. Messner found during the 1993 basketball tournaments, for example, that 41 stories ran for the men, and only 10 for the women, the men’s stories ran longer than the women’s, were more in depth, and had more video footage. In short, the media was telling the viewing audiences which of the two events they wanted you to watch, which was of better quality, and in the long run, building an audience of viewers so they can charge future sponsors top dollar. Television networks have the ability to build audiences, and they choose to with men’s sports. Another way media is bias against women and proliferates gender typing is by the way women athletes are spoken of. Messner points out, that even collegiate mascot names for women’s teams, con notate a feminine, softer version of the male equivalent. The Lions as compared to the Lionesses. Or the Lady Bear Cats, emphasizing the female version of the game as opposed to just the game. Messner makes the jump that this is a type of gender marking, reminding the audience that they are watching something other than a basketball game. In fact the very name of the the two basketball tournaments is very telling, from â€Å"The Final Four† to â€Å"The Women’s Final Four†. Making this distinction, Messner argues, gives the women’s tournament a patronizing tone. Messner makes many other salient points regarding coverage differences between the men’s and the women’s tournaments, all indicating that women’s sports are a niche, and men’s is mainstream. One of those differences is how women are portrayed in the media. Tradition holds that women are weak, or at best, not as strong as men, that they are the softer sex, the more emotional, the more aesthetically pleasing, beautiful. In other words, if society was going to accept the new members on their playing fields it was going to be done on their terms. Their terms included the sexualization of women’s sports. From the quotes on the first page of this paper we can see the varied opinions within the women’s sports movement. Those varying opinions have caused controversy and confusion. On the one hand, women want nothing more than to be given equal opportunity to play and equal coverage from the media. Further they wish to be respected for their physical abilities and skills. They wish to be rewarded for their sporting achievements. On the other hand, some women athletes believe they they can not get the exposure needed to win over large numbers of fans unless they give the fans another reason for coming to their events besides observing athletic ability. In the modern women sports media market this â€Å"neanderthal mentality† (as Mariah Burt Nelson once quipped) has translated into women being regarded, identified and valued more for how they look than how they perform. Recent stories of tennis stars Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova and the Williams sisters attests to this fact. While added â€Å"exposure† has given women’s sports more exposure in the media, perhaps it is not the exposure they had hoped for, and further it does send mixed messages to younger women athletes who are the future of the movement. In effect the male hegemony has won again, trivializing women’s sports. Unable to stop the cultural freight train they saw coming with Billie Jean King, a man’s world has set the switches and the tracks so as to control the train’s next stop reducing women’s sports to a public peep show, the impact of the social order is preserved. Ironically, this media bias is also rampant among female reporters who don’t know which cause to fight for, their career or the social injustice that is gender inequality. Female football sideline reporters of the major television networks, are asked to be both sexy and competent. When ABC was asked why they hired a female the response was, â€Å"we know that 40% of our viewing audience for these games are females. They need someone on the screen they can relate to†. I’m sure the other 60% of the viewing audience didn’t object. Monday Night Football hired a new sideline reporter to replace Melissa Stark. As Randy Sandomir reported in the N.Y. Times on the story of the new hire, Clearly there are conflicting agendas within the movement to curb gender bias. Purists of the movement may be getting a queasy feeling in their stomach, while the new generation of women liberals subscribe to the old entertainment adage that â€Å"even bad press is good press†. Administration Bias Briefly I will conclude with the third area of gender bias in women’s sports. Prior to the implementation of Title IX in 1978, 90% of women collegiate sports were being coached by women. According to the 2007 Knight Commission on Sports, the NCAA watchdog, 42% of women collegiate teams are being coached by women, an all time low. Further only 18 % of all college athletic directors, 12% of all college sport information directors, and 27% of head athletic trainers, are women. (2% of men’s collegiate programs were being coached by women in 2004.) Coakley considers part of the reason for this change to be the more lucrative contracts for women’s coaching positions. Geno Auriemma, the head coach of the University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team will earn over 2 million dollars this year in salary and endorsements. Once the big money started coming in to Women’s basketball in the early 1990’s, men started vying for the positions with more determination. Whereas before the success of basketball powerhouses such as Connecticut, Tennessee, LSU and Stanford, women’s jobs were generally not considered as serious positions. Money changed all that. Women’s sports is caught between a rock and a hard place. If they advocate for stronger pay, men come in and take over the coaching positions. If they ask the public to look at their athletic skills, there will be no fan base. If they ask us to look at other parts of their bodies, they are thought to be prostituting themselves to the highest bidder, all in the name of recognition. When women accept this role it reinforces the traditional male / female value system which they have tried to distance themselves from. The proverbial glass ceiling for women in the sports work place is illustrated when we consider that 80% of sport communication positions are held by men. Women will continue to face an uphill battle for equal opportunity to play, equal representation in the coaching ranks, and equal media attention due to the male culture of superiority, but the women’s sport movement is doing no favors for themselves when they send mixed messages to both sides of the tracks. The freight train has arrived, now it just needs a conductor.

Raising kids :: essays research papers

The object of this study is to carry out a small scale investigation, based on the Hess et al (1980) study which was development expectations of children on of mothers in different countries. Factors that I shall be taking into consideration whilst carrying out the interviews include the participants’ race, cultural background and their socio-economic status. I will also address the significance of aspects such as child having siblings, being raised by a single parent or a first time parent(s). All the areas covered in this study may to some extent affect how a child is raised and also lend some explanation to the different views the parent has acquired about the relationship with their child A child may often learn from others around them, by copying or engaging themselves in similar behavioural patterns. Parents often tend to set boundaries of what is acceptable to them. Some of their views may be typical to others; others may be formed by a certain cultural demand. A child may discover the ability to carry out certain tasks at a particular age yet the parent may feel that their child should be doing that task before or after a certain age; indeed these aspects of parenting can cause great anxieties. Taking a look back at Hess et al’s study it can be seen by the statement cards that many parents often have different opinions or expectations on when their child should be able to do something, possibly in comparison to the behaviour of other parents with their children, or how they themselves have been raised. Parental influence on children is very important in the early stages of child development and as the children grow they will start to deal with things in the ir own way, compiling what they have been taught by parents with their own experiences and understanding of their background and social environment. In addition children’s own observations from their environment as well as their engagement with older and closer age children can often contribute to their learning from others for example in feeding and dressing themselves and other such activities, in doing so they are getting to grasps with different emotions and ultimately the art of human interaction. Children have the ability to resolve issues by learning to balance initiative against the demand of others. Development involves change and this goes for any of the stages in child development, but more crucial are the issues that affect the rate of a child’s development.

Should the Congress Raised the Driving Limited to 21?

should the congress raised the driving limited to 21? The legal driving age has been a constant debate and every few years another log is thrown onto the fire. Should we really raise the legal age to drive? Would it save lives? Today the driving age is 17 or ever younger . In my opinion is should be raise at least to 21 it could be a good idea to rise the driving age because young driver are the main cause of road death and injuries. Also young drivers drink and drive at the same time. If the driving age is 21 deaths would happen and roads would be safer.What do you think should it be raised in this essay I would tell you why it should be raised to age 21. The Highest death rate for driver is among the age 17. Although 4. 4% of drivers are under the age of 25, but they will cause 13% of fatal crashes People aged 16-19 holding a license was at 41% then went down to 26% Also 16-19 years old per 100,000 driving licenses had rise from 9. 76 death to 19. 23 deaths. People taking driving t ests being taken is on increase. It often teenagers driving late at night when most accident occur.According to the survey accomplished in 2005, twelve teens from sixteen to nineteen years old died every day from motor vehicle accident. Around 6,000 teenage drivers are killed in auto accidents each year. They are four times more likely to be killed in car accidents than any other age group. Some good news would be that it will reduce obesity. Driving encourage the population to be come lazy and obese if you cant drive it will forced to walk instead of being in the car and getting bigger.That is not the case many teen get busy these are three main distractions: visual (taking one’s eyes off the road), manual (taking one’s hands off the wheel), and (takings one’s mind away from the driving task) decisions and not taking seriously. In conclusion it should be raised it not safe. A lot of people died each years and the causes are teen are being on their cellphoneâ₠¬ ¦ etc Altogether it could be good to raise the driving age to 21 because the roads would be safer and 21 years old are more mature than 17 year old. The death rate would decrease and the road would safer

Essay about Eli- Coming of age in the Holocaust - 914 Words

ELLI- Coming of age in the Holocaust. Elli, her mother and all of the prisoners they meet all have to undergo numerous physical and psychological hardships when they are forced into the concentration camps. They are treated like cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse when they are taken from their houses to the ghetto, then to the synagogue, and eventually to Auschwitz, the death camp. The majority of suffering that was inflicted on Elli and her associates was physically inflicted, this was in the various forms of: beatings, rapes, murders, hard labor, and also subjective forms such as being exposed to diseases. The Germans also toyed with different ploys to beat the Jews, such as sterilization. This is demonstrated in Chapter†¦show more content†¦Likewise, in the winter they are given little protection from the elements, in the barracks they are only given two blankets per five people, one to lay on and the other to cover themselves with. Being exposed to the kind of horror that Elli was, you can expect her to have many problems. She has to witness people being shot, beaten, executed, demoralised, tortured, and tormented. Many times it is her who is the victim in these scenarios, such as in Chapter Twenty-seven when Elli tries to protect her mother from being beaten by the female guard. Elli loses all common sense at this point and lets her emotions take over her, and as her punishment she is savagely beaten by the guard as well. After witnessing so much death, pain, and suffering Elli would have been scarred for life. We see a classic example of this when we meet amp;quot;Felicia the Blockalteste.amp;quot; The German’s that killed her family tormented her and later she started to work for them. She was trying to get some blood redemption by being so harsh to the Jewish prisoners, even though she was Jewish herself. In the death camps, as well as much physical abuse, they were also the victims of constant moral abuse. For example, the male guards were always calling them amp;quot;Blode Lumpenamp;quot; which means amp;quot;Idiotic Whoresamp;quot;, also amp;quot;Blode Schweineamp;quot; meaning amp;quot;IdioticShow MoreRelatedThe And The Holocaust : A Breach Of Faith2649 Words   |  11 Pages Teaching the Holocaust The reign of the Holocaust took place between the years of 1933 to 1945, where Jews were persecuted, starved, and murdered by the Nazis. It was December 17, 1942, when the United States joined the Allies to condemn Nazi Germany’s â€Å"bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews† (FDR and the Holocaust, FDR Presidential Library and Museum). The thirty-second president of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that rather than saving more Jews