Recently, women’s sports have greatly progressed, with many young girls embracing sports as a fun activity and as a career. However, women’s sports are still facing many challenges and barriers that prevent women in sports from making a mark on sports careerwise. You may still find the Preakness stakes odds great as we explore this topic.
A new world that will offer women equal opportunities to participate in all sports. By identifying these barriers and addressing them to level up the field for women in sports. Here are some of the barriers and how they can be fixed to allow women to enjoy sports.
1. Lack of Awareness
Statistics showed that only 14% of girls who participate in sports have enough confidence to pursue sports.
Most women do not understand how sports can influence and change their lives for the better and only take part in sports as a part of the activity. If awareness is created by educating women on sports, women can get motivated to commit to sports, from a level of understanding.
2. Fewer Opportunities for Women
Women can only win if they are given a chance to play. Unlike in most men’s sports, where you see sponsors fighting to be part of the team, in women’s sports, sponsorship is minimal, with only 1% of sponsorships of total sports directed to women’s sports.
Generally, women do not get enough opportunities to take part in sports. This barrier can be eliminated by creating more opportunities and encouraging sponsors from all levels to invest in women’s sports.
Women should have an equal playing field as men and invest in them by giving them better pay to keep them motivated. Give women sports value.
3. Lack of Role Models
Although women’s sports have significantly grown, there are still few female coaches who can act as role models for women in sports.
A study from US Sports states that only 28% of all sports coaches are female. This is a very low number, considering the roles female coaches can play to motivate women to make a mark in their sports careers.
To encourage girls to participate in sports and achieve great milestones, you need to understand them, what they are afraid of, what deters them from sports, and most importantly, what motivates the girls, and this is where female coaches come in.
4. Media Coverage
Women in sports receive very low media coverage, less than 4%! Sad. Fewer media coverage means less sponsorship.
Because these women in sports are not getting enough attention from the media, sponsors can not consider investing in the future of that sport and women in general because they lack a large supporter base. Women can pursue sports and scale to higher levels with increased media coverage.
5. Transportation Security
Women in sports face a lot to access the location of training or playing. For many, getting an opportunity to play is a struggle, but the biggest struggle is accessing the location, even after getting the opportunity.
Especially for the young girls in sports, the streets can be unforgiving and unsafe. They require help to get to the location, and without safe means of transportation, they can not make a mark in their lives in sports.
6. Identify Crisis
From an early age, girls are told how to act, look, or what to do. This causes many women to have an identity crisis since most lack self-identity, apart from the branded identity.
If a girl has been told, for example, that women in soccer should like a certain way, tennis players this or that. All this stereotyping can affect her self-confidence, and she may not be able to perform in sports from the fear of stereotypes.
But, this can be overcome by embracing all women from different cultures and backgrounds, despite how they look or their shapes. This enhances women’s self-worth and motivates them to move to great levels in sports.
7. Patriarchy Culture in Sports
Men mainly dominate the world of sports, and women feel intimidated as sports are labeled “male activity.”
Women in sports struggle between maintaining feminism and participating in sports, which hinders their progress in sports.
Verdict
The potential in women’s sports is invaluable. Given enough support through funding, media coverage, mentorship by female coaches, and offering opportunities to the girls, women in sports can achieve great goals in their careers.
Everyone has a part to play in leveling the playing fields, for women to make a mark in sports without sweating their blood off.
