You Throw Like a Girl: Sex, Gender and Sports

I thought our guest speaker on sex, gender and sport this week was really interesting. The topics we discussed related very closely to topics I covered in my paper about how gender is demonstrated and "done" at the Rec Center.

After talking about the different stereotypes that are attributed to women in sports, such as women not being athletic or strong, or that only homosexual women play men's sports, I tried to do a little bit of research to dive deeper into why this was the case. In class we discussed historical factors and the "psychology of the uterus" as factors in why we attribute different behaviors to different genders.

Outside of class, I found a few interesting articles that try to give physical explanations for this. Most of them recognize that there are far more similarities between men and women than there are differences, and that biological factors cannot explain the vast differences in stereotypes concerning sport. However, many studies suggest that men and women display different throwing patterns at a very young age.

While the common phrase "you throw like a girl" can be seen as offensive, this may be a contributing factor to this stereotype. This particular graphic was taken from a 2010 Washington Post  article that summed up various studies on throwing styles of young girls and young boys. The author also makes the argument that boys are taught to throw at a younger age and in a different way than girls are, which could also be a factor. However, to decrease this for the sake of the study, they also studied aboriginal boys are girls who are both taught to hunt and throw in very much the same way. This study also concluded that boys threw "better" than girls.