Gender Difference in Sports
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Introduction
One of the best ways to pass time is participating in sports, other than for commercial purpose. Sports are ideal activities for enhancing attention, motivation, perseverance, responsibility, hard work and other virtues of best character. Sports activities help foster team working as individuals endeavor to learn from others to improve themselves (Halldorsson, 2017). About two decades ago, women participation in sports was minimal and has consistently improved over the years. However, there is still a huge equality gap between men and women in sports in both participating number and the level of performance.
According to Perez-Gomez et al ( 2008), Sex is an identified contrasting determinant in the performance of athletes in regard to height, body weight, fat, muscle mass, and other genetic and hormonal disparities such as aerobic capacity and anaerobic threshold. Other studies by Kenney et al (2015) base their argument on human body physiological processes. According to Kane (2015), physical education is a very crucial part of someone’s school life. Winnick (2016) argues that the objectivity of a person towards sports shows up during childhood. However, men have always led on the list of all quantifiable events since the beginning of an Olympic era (Haugen, 2015). This paper investigates the possible reasons why there exists a gap between the performance of men and women in quantifiable sports.
Methods
This research bases its study on the previous performance of both men and women in quantifiable events in Olympics games, school physical education programs and other empirical data from valid articles. Olympics games record about 82 events but this research samples only 10 events that are participated by both men and women and that are quantifiable. The other method used is a critical review of the literature to factors leading to the difference in the performance such as hormonal differences and physical fitness.
Findings
There is a clear gap between the performance of women and men of about 10 percent in the overall performance of men and women in the Olympic quantifiable games that are participated by both genders. The gap has been dominant and consistent since the beginning of the Olympics sports competitions. In running, a gap of about 10.7 percent prevails between men and women while in swimming sports there is a gap of about 8.9 percent. Another area with a significant gap between men and women is the jumping sports, recording about 17.5 percent difference. The gap has been consistent despite the improvements since both sexes experience the improvement. Nevertheless, a gap prevails where the sport requires special skills and training. For instance, a well-trained woman is likely to defeat a man with no training in swimming skills (Mwisukha, 2017).
Discussion
Generally, men outperform women in sports activities despite age or skills for various reasons that make a man more advantageous. Genetic composition and hormone have a significant role in the difference that prevails between men and women in sports. This encompasses physical attributes such as body height, weight, muscle mass, body fat and aerobic characteristics. According to Billings (2017), men perform better in sports than women due to high testosterone in their bodies. The hormone is responsible for a number of reasons why the body of a man is physically fit for various sports. Testosterone is responsible for innate body features like the building of massive skeletal muscles and larger hearts than women are. The prevalence of huge proportion of Type 2 muscle fibers in the bodies of men is responsible for the strength, power, and speed. Furthermore, the hormone accelerates production of red blood cells. The cells are responsible for absorption of oxygen into the bloodstream and thus men have more oxygen in their blood, a factor that gives men a more aerobic advantage.
The counterpart of this hormone in woman’s body is the cause of the physical body characteristics of women that inhibits most active engagements among women (Casto, 2016). Prevalence of this hormone explains why women bodies have more fat as compared to men. Casto (2016) attributes more body fat as an additional load on human beings. The more the body fat the larger the load and as a result, there is a reduced performance in physical activities.
Moreover, women bodies are quite loose and less muscular. Women’s joints are more flexible as compared to men, thus are in a better position to participate in sports such as gymnastics. Science shows that women have wider pelvic that influences the alignment and movements of the extremities. However, this advantage cannot compare to the physical attributes that male testosterone gives to the body of a man (Casto, 2016).
Another distinguishing factor for difference prevailing in sports performance by both genders is the possibility to get injuries. Most sports activities require great muscle strength to participate. For instance, rugby and American football sports favor men because of their nature of interactivity between the participants. Woman are more prone to injuries as compared to men (Roos et al., 2017). Critics such as Hannah-Moffat (2007) argue that women are good at cheering rather than participating. However, women joints are more prone to injuries, especially the knees and the shoulders. Women have weaker shoulder muscles than men thus are more susceptible to injuries due to the loose supporting tissues. Therefore, men tend to have more stable shoulder tissues than women. The probability of hurting the anterior cruciate ligament, a major knee ligament, is higher for women than to men. However, this risk is controllable through proper training and exposure to more muscle enhancing activities. Human physiology research by Ogden (2014) reveals that the rate at which fats form in the body of a woman is comparatively high than the efforts to reduce them to muscles. Most women, despite attending gymnastics. Presently, training grounds and fitness businesses have grown to a significant figure yet higher number of men than women attends these sessions. A huge population of women dislike engaging themselves in tiresome activities and like to remain in their current state.
Conversely, McConagh and Pappano (2009) argue that male dominance in sports is a vestige of patriarchy. The feel that segregated sports based on the misconception that women are a “weaker sex” fosters social inferiority against women. These scholars believe that women have more potential to participate in sports as men only that most limit themselves to sex stereotyping on sports participation and performance. The emphasis that since most government policies and culture and therefore women and men should compete on a comparative level. However, these scholars reckon that “the pursuit of athletic equality may be a fool’s errand” basing their argument on history, previous research and mere common sense.
Apart from the biological composition of the human body, cognitive psychology reveals that people have different tastes and preferences. Roemmich (2015) reports that 86 percent of women in all age groups have a taste for indoor activities, unlike men who like spending a lot of time outdoors. Typically, most sports are carried out outside and this is why women seem to perform better in indoor sports such as badminton, swimming, and games such as chess. Otherwise, women like less engaging activities, sports being part of it. In addition to that, sports are competitive in nature. According to Reis et al (2015), women are more phobic to losing than men are and try not to engage in sports to avoid embarrassment.
Statistically, women athletes receive lower salaries than men athletes in the world of sports do. NBA and WNBA players’ salaries display huge gaps in the salaries of the respective genders. The payment is uneven even if the work is the same for all players. Sports organizations may seem to promote gender equality to the public but ignore them when remunerating their players. Rader et al (2016) says that men sports have a huge fan base and therefore the return on investment is high. However, Hargreaves (2014) criticizes this and proposes terms of equal pay for equal work.
There is almost a matter of viewer interest. YouTube and other social video domains have registered a high number of views for sports and men dominate on YouTube statistics holding at 76% of the total views ("The Scientific Reason Men like Sports More Than Women", 2017). Women numbers on active watching are lower than the number of male active viewers. Perception of women in the society is yet another contributing factor to reducing interactivity of women in sports in some areas. Some cultures have set norms that limit women to particular gender roles. For instance, some communities still have the perception of women as people with less ability to carry out demanding tasks such as sports that require a lot of energy and motivation. To make matters worse, most of the women in such communities are transfixed to these norms and belittle themselves as their counterparts dictates.
Moreover, women from certain religions are quite restricted from involving themselves in sports. For instance, Muslim women have been actively involving themselves in outdoor sports for various reasons attached to their religion (Roy et al, 2016). Some sports such as swimming require the participant to wear revealing. Keeping in mind that Muslim women are too reserved and will cover almost every part of their bodies, suggesting such a sport to them would be quite difficult.
Lastly, the discriminative nature of sponsors is another cause of gender differences in sports. Currently, the economic world is making it hard for poor people to express various talents. Most sports activities such as football require huge capital investment. As mentioned earlier, women sports receive little to no attention from viewers. The same case happens with the potential companies willing to promote their products through sports sponsorship. Football is a good example of a discriminated sport. Most players and team constitute of men and financiers rush to grab these opportunities to gain greater popularity. The economy in most countries, especially the developing nations is so low such that more than half of the citizens live below a dollar a day. This condition afflicts significantly afflicts women more than men. Lack of access to facilities such as training equipment limits women from participating in sports that require physical fitness.
Conclusion
In summary, it is evident that a huge gender difference in sport prevails with men showing a greater involvement than their counterparts do. Various factors that seem to cause this difference include economic factors such biased sponsorships on sports, biological factors determining the height, body weight, body fat and aerobic capacity. However, biological characteristics are the dominant of all the factors that lead to reduced number of women participants in sports. Statistics obtained from the Women’s Sports Foundation (2016) shows that male athletes receive scholarships of $ 179 million more than their counterparts do. Otherwise, most potential female participants are discouraged by the poor reception of women sports in the society.
However, the bias in sports sponsors due to economic imbalances constitute the level of stereotyping that prevails between men and women sports. Bompa & Buzzichelli (2015) however, asserts that some extreme sport needs more masculinity and restricting women participation is a protective measure to avoid unnecessary accidents. He adds that due to the body composition of women and exposed sensitive areas, it is a risk to involve them in aggressive sports such as rugby, racing, and American Football. Lastly, Hargreaves(2014) proposes equal provisions by those willing to participate in games. He encourages all sports organizations to provide equitable facilities and chances to women through subsidized access to inherent training and skill enhancement for various sports.
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