The Vancouver Sun ran a story yesterday about a new study by sociologist Laurel Davis-Delano of Springfield College, which suggests that “female athletes are still apologizing for smashing stereotypes while they pursue their sports.”
The Sun reports:
A newly published study that included college basketball, soccer and softball players found nearly three-quarters of them engage in “apologetic behaviours” — stereotypically feminine conduct such as cultivating a girlie appearance, apologizing for being aggressive and hanging out with men to emphasize their heterosexuality — to deflect prejudice.
“If you break a norm, you apologize. If I burp out loud, I know this offended other people, so I apologize,” says Laurel Davis-Delano, a professor of sociology at Springfield College in Massachusetts, explaining why researchers label these behaviours apologetic. “If you are offending people’s sense of gender ideals . . . people don’t necessarily realize they’re apologizing, but you are catering to other people’s sense of what’s proper.”
Most sports are still associated with masculinity in Western cultures, so female athletes are challenging gender expectations by their very participation, she says.
So what makes this different from female athletes looking pretty just because they want to?
Apologetic behaviours are different from female athletes having long hair or wearing makeup simply because they like to, Davis-Delano says, because they’re performed specifically in response to this gender tension.
While 73 per cent of the study participants said they engaged in at least one apologetic behaviour, from criticizing unfeminine athletes to being seen with a boyfriend, no one shied away from aggression or competing hard against male athletes.
On one hand, apologetic behaviours may help female athletes gain acceptance and be rewarded in their sport, Davis-Delano says. But they do little to challenge gender stereotypes, she says, and Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova is a “classic example” of the result: a female athlete of lesser talent who gets attention and endorsements for her ultrafeminine looks.
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