Women’s Cup reinforces segregation of women in sport – 07/12/2023 – Rodrigo Tavares

Before being passed in 1827, Brazil’s first major education law was discussed in both the Chamber and the Senate. Senators concluded that boys and girls would have to study separately and have different curricula.

“Your use of reason [das meninas] it is too little developed for them to be able to understand and practice later and more difficult operations of arithmetic and geometry. I am convinced that it is futile to fight against nature”, declared the Viscount of Cayru at the time.

In the last century, the laws that made it possible to segregate by gender, in all public and private domains, have been abolished, one by one. Our narratives have emphasized gender parity.

The exception is sport. We normalize sex segregation based on comparative anatomical and physiological arguments that lead to differentiation in performance.

If men have some scientifically proven physical advantages – more total muscle mass, less body fat, more red blood cells allowing for greater oxygen-carrying capacity, larger hearts and lungs, higher testosterone levels – then the bifurcation between men and women is justifiable in physical activities in which prominence and exclusivity are awarded.

From July 20th, we will follow the Women’s Football World Cup held in Australia and New Zealand.

We will support the Brazilian team of Marta, Geyse and Kerolin. We will address female players as “girls” to show our paternal affection and excuse awkward shots with hierarchical encouragement. In pursuit of the unprecedented world title, we will forget the segregating elements of the show.

Those who criticize gender compartmentalization in sport usually present two arguments. The first warns that there are different ways of defining biological sex (using gonads, internal and external genitalia, chromosomes or hormones as criteria). Without rigid boundaries, biological sex is best represented by a scale rather than a dichotomy.

The second indicates that segregation produces more segregation. With a smaller audience and less attention from the media, women’s sport is deprived of financial and material resources, preventing its professionalization and sophistication. There is no female soccer player in an elite club who has access to the same material training conditions as a female soccer player at the same level.

While an athlete’s performance has been scientifically mapped from all possible perspectives to maximize their competitive performance, an athlete’s performance remains understudied.

Little is known about the advantages or disadvantages of menstrual cycles, childbirth and breastfeeding, or the use of the contraceptive pill. Or about nutrition best practices for female athletes.

Many of the equipment are unsuitable for female morphology. Nike introduced the first men’s football boots in 1971, but those designed specifically for women will only debut at the 2023 World Cup.

There are other arguments that we should take into account. Even though male genetic superiority is only verified in sports that demand muscle strength and power, such as athletics, where there is an average performance difference of 10-12% between elite men and elite women, segregation remains. in several other sports where these attributes are not decisive.

In the Olympics, why is there gender separation in sport shooting or archery? Since the pieces are made of wood and not osmium or lead, why does the world women’s chess championship still exist?

Segregation also leads to social sexualization, objectification and stigmatization, reducing men and women to predetermined categorizations.

Why, in the Olympics, are there still several exclusively female modalities, such as artistic swimming or rhythmic gymnastics, cementing the idea that elegance or softness are characteristics of women?

Why are the uniforms of female athletes in some modalities shorter and tighter compared to the two men (see the case of volleyball)? Misogyny in sports is sometimes subtle, taking the form of microaggressions, benevolent sexism, or belittling language.

To confuse prejudice, superiority is reversed in some modalities.

Women have better ability to manage glucose (used as energy), have more adiponectin (hormone that regulates fat metabolism) and higher concentration of intramuscular fatty acids and triglycerides. This means having more resistance.

In ultramarathons, races that can reach more than 300 km, women’s performance is many times superior to men’s. Maggie Guterl, Pam Reed, Amelia Boone, Courtney Dauwalter won multiple mixed events for elite athletes. Since 2016, Australian Mina Guli has run 200 marathons a year, or 100 every 100 days in a row, to draw attention to the growing global water crisis.

However, what is most serious is that we continue to define excellence and regulate expectations according to a male vision of sport. Our assessment reference, when we watch a female modality, continues to be the specific way in which this sport is practiced by men.

Let’s look at football. Women practice it differently. There are more free kicks, duels, passes and fewer fouls. Men prefer physical contact, speed or power of the shot, but our way of watching is biased towards the XY chromosomes.

The trend will be, it is expected, for the anatomical and physiological specificities of men and women to be complemented in mixed teams. Gender segregation in the stadium, as in the classroom until a few decades ago, must be overcome and biological characteristics diluted.

A good initiative would be to balance the views in journalistic coverage of the 2023 World Cup. How many narrators, commentators, presenters and journalists will be men? How many will be women?