Introduction
Women form an integral component of every society and supposedly have similar rights as men. The social expectation of women is relatively equal to that of their male counterparts. Sports is an integral activity that involves skills acquisition during team interaction. Women’s involvement in sports has received several setbacks in society. For instance, girls and women have actively engaged in sports actions which have boosted their morale. However, limitations in certain sports, such as football, have contributed to fewer sporting activities amongst women.
Furthermore, the limitations have downplayed women’s efforts to attain top sports leadership positions. As a result, society has given the male counterpart a crucial role in sports leadership, diminishing women in top posts (Lobo). Additionally, the societal perception of women as less knowledgeable has further discriminated against women’s efforts to engage in sports. This paper will mainly focus on understanding significant obstacles that hinder women in sports participation while eradicating the evolution of women who attain leadership positions in sports.
Women’s Challenges to Obtain Sports Leadership Roles
Women are faced with wage gap inequality which alters their capability to engage in sports leadership. A wage gap is a process in which a discrepancy exists regarding employee payment. Arguably, women’s participation in sports has been rendered into a discriminatory process, particularly on the pay aspects. Since the origin of women in sport, their participation has been considered discriminative in administration in the pay factor. For instance, continuity in discriminatory practices has increasingly resulted in the wage gap between women’s and men’s pay. As a result, women have been subjected to lower wages which have comparatively decreased their morale to continue their engagement in sports and leadership. Despite the growth of women’s participation in sports in recent years, a continued pay disparity has further increased, threatening the ability of women to advance in their sporting careers.
The wage gap has led to women shunning away from sports and sporting roles. Analysis of the French team has indicated that every losing men’s team is awarded 8 million dollars while their female counterpart does not receive any amount. Therefore, such cases clarify disparities in pay wages. Body shaming has contributed to women’s challenges in reaching the sports leadership positions. For instance, body shaming of some ladies shows that an individual can be humiliated based on bodily appearance. It occurs due to self-perception or societal perception, which leads to individuals developing a negative attitude towards themselves. Concurrently, body shaming has yielded poor performance, especially when women tend to change their bodily appearance through dietary remarks. The occurrence of body shaming has significant consequences on women involved in sports. In many cases, the desire to evade body shaming has driven changes in meal plans, resulting in subsequent weight gain, which eventually alters women’s capabilities to engage and participate in sports.
Similarly, the pressure to gain weight to evade body shaming has resulted in women’s health-related disorders that have produced drastic outcomes. As a result, women’s desire to further their sporting careers have met tremendous ends. Therefore, body shaming has adversely impacted women’s capabilities to proceed into progressive levels in sports. Similarly, it has declined women’s morale and motivation to engage in higher sports, leaving men to dominate.
Furthermore, lack of respect has contributed to women’s inability to participate and reach leadership positions. The societal perception of women has significantly contributed to such instances as disrespect from friends, families, and peers. Impolite actions have majorly exhausted females’ capabilities to participate in sports. The occurrence of female dominance has been highly undermined by male insecurities, which aim at blocking female recognition. Such actions have played a significant role in limiting women’s ability to explore their careers. Male dominance has substantially contributed to the female perception of being weak hence depriving them of the chance to engage in top leadership positions. As a result, women are continuously given lighter and fewer sporting roles despite their efforts and actions, that often overpower their male counterparts’. As a function of respect, women’s visibility in sports has significantly declined due to disrespectful comments from male partners. Such actions have seriously undermined women’s desire to participate in productive sports and leadership roles.
Men’s ownership of sports clubs has further heightened the gap between male and female roles in leadership positions there. Most of the club’s ownership rest among former payers or male leaders. The increasing involvement of men in critical positions of the club and the underlying perception that females have poor capabilities when dealing with sports has increased disparities in women’s participation in important sports positions. As a result, male domination has contributed to the deprivation of women’s ability to lead and engage in sports activities.
Diversity in Sports Leadership
Diversity plays an integral role in society; it incorporates the involvement of both majority and minority groups and embraces their contribution to the sporting experience. Diversity has significantly improved sporting activities by representing the whole population without ethnic, gender, and background discrimination (Schumacher). Many adoptions of diversity in sports have increased female participation. As a result, women have embraced sports as a universal activity against preconceived gender stereotypes that previously considered sports a male activity. Therefore, assuming sports leadership has been pivotal in increasing women’s representation.
Moreover, diversity has played an instrumental role in reducing barriers to women’s participation in sports. For instance, several setbacks have discouraged women’s participation in games. Several barriers have altered women’s ability to engage in leadership roles in sports. For example, the Institutional mindset has acted as a significant obstacle to male dominance in sports. It includes the classification of male counterparts on a biased basis, which results in the perception that males are the most appropriate category for significant leadership roles. As a result of the institutional mindset, women are naturally brought up fully aware of their inferiority to their male counterparts. However, diversity has played a significant role in evolving the perspective by setting a stage for women’s participation in sports activities. Hence, it has effectively enhanced ladies’ grooming to a critical post in sports.
Furthermore, diversity has shaped the effect of structural barriers, which highly limits women’s involvement in sports leadership. Structural barriers entail fractionalization, which results in women lacking equitable access to key sporting events due to the inability to access solid informal networks. Such has resulted in the depreciation of women’s roles in leadership in crucial sports such as golf. Due to structural barriers, men have developed the tendency to assume that women are not interested in essential games. However, the perception has significantly changed due to diversity, and women’s participation and contribution have highly been realized.
Evolution of Women in Sports Roles
Recently, changes have erupted in society’s perception of female roles in sports. Sports have significantly changed from the dominant male position into a gender-balanced sporting activity. Women’s role in sport has an ancient trace in the Greek women who were the first to play football (Gems et al.). They also participate in race games and subsequent activities. This also marked the desire and emergence of women’s role in leadership posts. After that, the western European culture played a vital role in ushering in the era which entailed immense sexism in sports.
The sexism role minimized strenuous activities in women’s roles; hence women leaders were appointed to spearhead between 1800 and 1900 marked, intense sporting activity, which marked the males’ sporting role. It also implied women’s engagement in sporting roles like their male counterparts. Later, the first women’s Olympics was held in 1922; this activity encompassed highly demanding physical activities and events previously thought to be male roles (Nunes). Afterward recent years have marked consistent improvement in sporting exercise and the rise in demand for women’s equality against their male counterparts in sports activities. Women have rapidly increased the fight for equal representation from engagement to representation and leadership roles. As a result emergence of Title IX marked a stoic committee that spearheaded the role of women in sports leadership.
The Overall Perception of Women’s Sports Knowledge
Generally, women have been perceived as weaker than their male counterparts. Similarly, women have been considered less exciting and comparatively slower than their male counterparts. Such perception has played a significant role in how women’s sports are viewed. Similarly, negative reviews have occurred whenever women’s sports occur. While women are perceived as less exciting, their involvement in sporting activities has significantly been impacted; as a result, fewer women as motivated to engage in the activities. Another contributing factor to women undermining is the preconceived ideology of male dominance in sporting activities. Despite their engagement in sporting experience, continuity in body shaming and disrespect has hindered their aspiration to sports leadership. However, a smaller group of highly determined women has actively overcome all odds and improved their superiority, gaining traction and global recognition.
Roles, Opportunities, and Fairness
According to a Harvard School of business study, women’s role in coaching has contributed to participative and highly transformative sporting exercises (Roberts et al.). Women have improved their sporting exercises to gain global recognition and coaching capabilities relating to their male counterparts. Recently, key observation has indicated the availability of women representation in the team’s coaching positions. While society continues to deprive women of key sports responsibilities, their participation has been considered more fruitful; in providing exemplary results. Therefore, women should be offered equal ad fair chances to express their sporting capabilities since the resultant outcome is highly significant.
Finally, women should be advocated to gain much consideration and express their deliverables, particularly during the sporting exercise. While intimidation has been considered the most downplaying factor that hinders women’s participation in unsporting activities, avoidance could yield unexpected results. Therefore, community perception should be enlightened and significantly improved to avail a platform that would enable women to freely express their sporting desires and capabilities and prove the same. Hence the realization of the critical objectives of the paper lies in the society’s ability to shift women in sports perception and sexism stereotyping, which would, in return, yield the positive outcome of the actual sporting encounter and leadership roles.
Works Cited
Gems, Gerald R., ed. Sports and Aging: A Prescription for Longevity. U of Nebraska Press, 2022.
Lobo, Rita. “Sports industry must promote women into more leadership roles.” The New Economy, 2014. Web.
Nunes, Rita Amaral. “Women athletes in the Olympic Games.” (2019).
Roberts, Laura Morgan, et al. “Beating the odds.” Harvard Business Review 96.2 (2018): 126-131.
Schumacher, John. “Diversity in Sport Leadership.”The University of Connecticut, 2016.