Women in Sports
As football season once again roars across the state this year, it is a worthy time to look back at women’s participation in sports. Are we rushing forward? Or encountering some defensive blocks?
Women’s athletic achievements have long been the second string of the sports world. In 1900, golfer Margaret Abbott was the first woman to earn an Olympic Gold Medal. Yet due to the disorganization of the women’s events many of the women that year, including Abbott, never knew they officially entered the Olympics.
Contrast that to Iowa’s Shawn Johnson, a star of the 2009 U.S. women’s gymnastics team. Born in 1992, Johnson has never known a time when women couldn’t participate in sports. We now have Title IX protection, women’s professional sports leagues and plenty of highly regarded female athletes to look up to. Yet according to a study released in 2007, women’s sports participation is trending down in all of Iowa’s major colleges and universities.
Have women in sports attained respect? Try to do a Google search on female sportscasters, and see what unenlightened criteria these hard-working women are being evaluated on. It certainly is not their insightful commentary.
In recognition of the positive benefits of athletic participation for girls, IWF partnered with the YWCA in Black Hawk County in 1999 to offer the Girls in Motion program for pre-teen girls. Many subsequent IWF programs have emphasized physical activity and healthy lifestyle as a means to improve self-esteem, social skills and teamwork.
Lessons learned in self-respect will hopefully continue to translate beyond the larger sports world, where everyone deserves a fair shot at the goal.
(sources: www.america.gov, www.womengolfersmuseum.com, Who’s Playing College Sports? Trends in Participation Supplement: How Are College and Universities Doing? Grading Participation, Documenting Expansion, published by the Women’s Sports Foundation)
