With the 2024 Paris Olympics taking place this Summer I think it’s important to look into the transformation of women’s sport and the challenges it still faces. Sexism in sport has been a recurring problem since the 1800s due to the constant inequalities of genders, leaving a blind eye to all women’s potential success in sport.
Women are the definition of brilliance, talent and excellent role models for younger generations which has only just been taken notice of in the past 5 years. For example, Barbara Slater, former Olympic gymnast and the BBC’s first female director of sports has shown strength and determination when striving for women’s rights and equality. Similarly in this years Olympics we’ll see competitors like Sky Brown and Keely Hodgkinson fighting for golds in their sports and showing their true potentials.
Bella Davis, a first year and football player for the women’s first team at Marjon University says how sexism in sport has been an unneeded problem since she started playing at the age of 5. Bella experienced verbal abuse from male football players, hearing comments like how she should “get back in the kitchen.” Many girls resort to quitting their sport because of this and Bella explained how she saw this happened to her close friends. However, now living in the 21st century and seeing some signs of positive change, especially in universities, women are now welcomed into a more equal community to excel in their sport.
However, with sports like hockey, we’re able to see a more female dominated sport constantly on the rise. Whereas encouragement to play sport usually lies with women, Lily Kaye, a first year and hockey player at Marjon university, says how: “It’s nice to see men playing and being encouraged to play hockey at university as there wasn’t a team for men when I lived at home.” The support communities can bring together, equalising potentials and success, raises some thoughts to why the world couldn’t have been like this years ago.
The coverage on women’s games and matches continue to increase as well as the numbers in female presenters which will hopefully continue throughout this years Olympics.