{"id":941,"date":"2009-07-28T07:53:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T13:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=941"},"modified":"2009-07-28T07:53:49","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T13:53:49","slug":"female-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/07\/28\/female-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"female athletes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Anna<\/a>The Vancouver Sun<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

The Sun reports:<\/p>\n

A newly published study that included college basketball, soccer and softball players found nearly three-quarters of them engage in “apologetic behaviours” \u2014 stereotypically feminine conduct such as cultivating a girlie appearance, apologizing for being aggressive and hanging out with men to emphasize their heterosexuality \u2014 to deflect prejudice.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Most sports are still associated with masculinity in Western cultures, so female athletes are challenging gender expectations by their very participation, she says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what makes this different from female athletes looking pretty just because they want to?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39114,38,108],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-gender","tag-methods","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}