How Do You Change, After All These Years?

Last Wednesday, February 2nd, was the National Girls and Women in Sports Day. A day that has been taking place for 25 years now, and a day I had no idea even existed. When I began reading Erin Whiteside’s blog post from the Sport, Media, and Society blog, I was shocked to realize that such a day came and went without my knowledge. I was actually frustrated that I didn’t know because I believe myself to be a huge advocate for women in sports and sports media. In this blog post, Whiteside continues to talk about what exactly happens on National Girls and Women in Sports Day and she raises a lot of interesting points. The idea behind this day is to continue to advocate for equality in sport, but Whiteside goes on to example that women cannot simply advocate for equality anymore. Instead, women must also advocate for a change in the perception of women’s sport and a move away from sport being only associated with masculinity and sport as a male preserve. I think she makes a very good point, because for as long as sport has been around, this is what it is associated with. We learned in class this past week that gender plays a huge role in how sport is looked at in our society. Sport is constantly being reinforced by society as a male preserve through things such as institutions, media representations, and cultural practices. In order to change the idea that masculinity is the only thing that is associated with sport, things such as more female coaches and more positive media representation must happen if we ever want to move away from this idea of sport as a male preserve. I think one of the most upsetting aspects of media representation that comes from the Birrell and Theberge piece is simply the idea of symbolic annihilation, or out of sight, out of mind. I think being ignored is one of the lowest blows you could give to anyone, and it seems to happen over and over when it comes to female sport. I think Whiteside makes an excellent point that in order to have women’s sports become more of a constant force in the world of sports; you can’t just fight for what Title IX asks for…you have to fight for a complete reshaping of how our society thinks. It won’t be easy, but I think society is on the right path. And the more people know and understand the way sport is structured in our society, the more tools we have to change it. Because knowledge is power, right?