Sugar and spice and all things nice…
Little girls do ballet and little boys fight. Don’t they? Girls are interested in sitting up straight and looking pretty; boys like slouching and being mucky. Am I right?
So when they grow up women are more flexible than men and men are stronger than women.
These generalisations are presented to you not as facts but to provoke debate. Different hormone levels and genetics play are a factor as well but let’s concentrate on social conditioning. The pressure to conform to expectations. What does your child’s school offer?
How about a curriculum, which allows all children to sample a wide range of physical activity from an early age? How about more targets or milestones? This is not about competition; it’s about exposing young people to more options.
Is it time to stop thinking as certain sports as having a gender bias? For me hockey is an interesting one. When I was growing up this was seen as a girl’s sport in the UK. In the rest of Europe it was a boy’s sport. There is no obvious reason why.
I would like to think that it might be commonplace to have girl’s boxing, boy’s ballet and mixed football (soccer) teams. What do you think?