Gender Stereotypes In Sports Essay

When people looked at sports, they can generally delineate what sports are considered male and female. This is called gendering, and gendering can happen anywhere. I chose the Dr. Pepper Star Center ice rink, where I personally figure skate, because skating is generally seen as a female sport. I wanted to understand three major geographic questions. These are questions such as, what areas are gendered more female than male, or visa versa? What might the gendering of certain spaces mean? If certain spaces are gendered, what does this imply about figure skating as a sport or sports in general?
When I first entered the rink during classes, the people I observed were largely female. When you enter the building, the first thing you see is the skate
rental desk, where there were four employees behind the counter, two were female and two were male. When you walk in the doors to your left, you enter the rink. I observed twenty-three adults sitting in the bleachers, fifteen of which were female and eight of which were male. On the ice, I observed both hockey and figure skaters, as well as coaches. There were 9 coaches, and all but two were female. The same logic applies to the figure skaters, out of the fourteen figure skaters I saw, eleven were female and three were male. The opposite logic applies to hockey players, of the six people I observed, all but one were male.
I find that the majority of the places in the rink are gendered heavily.
Looking at the skate rental desk , I observed that it was not gendered. This might be because working behind a counter where both something normally viewed as male and female were being sold, are not viewed as effeminate and don’t “threaten” a woman’s femininity. When I viewed the bleachers, it was clear it was gendered female. This might be because of the stereotype that moms stay at home and take the kids to their activities, while dads work. In some places this may not be true, but at least in the bleachers of the rink, the gender stereotype prevails. The figure skaters were overbearingly female, even including the small children. This may be because of social and/or cultural expectation for boy to play “rough’ and masculine sports such as football and hockey, while females, in the eyes of cultural norms, should follow more “girlish” pursuits, like dancing, and as it is becoming clear, figure skating. This same reasoning applies to males and hockey, as hockey is clearly a male-dominated sport. As the data shows, figure skating is still widely dominated by females, but their male counterparts are beginning to join in on the fun, and the same goes for hockey. Girls are now being allowed to play on hockey teams and it is becoming more socially acceptable for girls to be involved in more masculine sports. This being said, the majority of sports are still heavily gendered, but with societal norms being to
change, sports may become less gendered to either males or females.