Urban Girls: The Have Nots of Sports
June 20, 2009
by Judy Silver
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Soledad Pierre walks her cousins home from school. Housework and childcare responsibilities often prevent her from practicing with her basketball team. Yet, such responsibilites are not equally shared by her older cousin Karl, who lives in the same household and plays basketball nearly every day.Photo credit: Nicole Bengiveno/NYT.
Marj Snyder, the Chief Program Officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation, says:
Urban girls are the have nots of sports and physical activities participation… Where is a girl going to learn how to be on a team? That’s what she’s going to experience when she walks into the boardroom or into her job in a business environment. Sports is where boys are learning it, so girls want to learn that, too.
Snyder makes the comments in a video that accompanies Katie Thomas’ New York Times story on the disparity between urban girls’ and boys’ sports. Although, in the suburbs, girls’ participation in sports has grown dramatically since the passage of Title IX, the picture in cities is much different. Thomas explains:
… The revolution in girls’ sports has largely bypassed the nation’s cities, where public school districts short on money often view sports as a luxury rather than an entitlement.
But the problem goes much deeper than just funding and availability of programs. Thomas continues:
Coaches and organizers of youth sports in cities say while immigrant and lower-income parents see the benefit of sports for sons, they often lean on daughters to fill needs in their own hectic lives, like tending to siblings or cleaning the house. Others… are worried for their daughters safety, another roadblock to playing.
Efforts are afoot to get better data on the situation. US Rep. Louise Slaughter and Senator Olympia Snowe have introduced H.R. 2882 and S. 471 respectively to mandate that schools report details of sports expenditures and participation by gender. At a press conference announcing the House legislation, Linda Hallman, Executive Director of the American Association of University Women said:
…Sunshine is often the best disinfectant, making information public that in turn can help schools and communities identify and solve problems. By shedding light on the current status of programs, we can determine where schools stand today and where improvements might need to be made tomorrow.
That’s fine, as far as it goes. But what of combating the deeper sociological issues of uneven home responsibilities and cultural expectations for girls and boys? Schools don’t have direct control over changing that. I know that The New Agenda has both educators and sociologists in our commenting community. What are your thoughts?
In the past several decades, the largest groups of immigrants into this country have come from Latin American countries where there is a distinct cultural divide between genders and participation in educational and extra-curricular activities.
I come from an area where I have seen girls and young women discouraged from pursuing academic and extra-curricular pursuits simply because of their gender. The article is right in that families expect more from females when it comes to household chores and family interaction. I have seen that this is rampant in the community in which I reside and it saddens me.
I have seen it in my own family. As the only unmarried daughter I am expected to take care of certain things while my brother, who is also single, leads his own life without even having close to the same obligations. Unfortunately, the choice is to either shoulder the responsibility or have my family members that need assistance go without the care that they need.
I believe that the best way to combat this is to speak out about it (which I do, and which relieves some of the pressure). Someone needs to be a voice for these young women and talk to their families letting them know the benefits of having their daughters be more active outside of the home.
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