Girls and extra curricular sports

[randomsabreuse]

Sat in a toddler sports thing where parental participation is not required but attendance is. 2 girls, 7 boys. Tennis attended by 6yo DD is 1 girl, 5 boys with 3 girls (2 sisters) and 9 boys in the older mini tennis class. Gymnastics is girl dominant for 6 yo but even for toddler.

Demographic is a largely middle class/affluent suburban area and after school drops off to tennis... Football is a big draw for boys (millions of youth teams)

Why do so few girls do sports? Does the socialisation start at 2?

Ideas please.

I have one of each, ideally they will do the same stuff for a while - older one has tennis, 2 yo is still too young, otherwise they have the same. Will get options to specialise at 8 or so, plus obviously try other sports as they get old enough...

@2reefsin30knots

Maybe the very early difference is because of the perception that boys need to be worn out whereas girls will be happy to sit with a craft kit.

My DS sails and at junior and youth level, girls and boys train and compete together which I really like. However, it is very boy heavy and I've never really been sure why.

DS's school is moving more and more towards mixed teams for the major sports which I think is really good for all of them. They are trying to lead a push locally for all the cricket fixtures to be mixed.

I don't think it's a good idea to have mixed competitive teams for many sports as teenagers. In my experience this would turn even more girls away from sport.

My dd will do craft for a short time, but not long. She plays cricket and football fir local teams though (her football team were runners up in the county finals for their age group).

She is nearly 10 and it never occurred to me not to e courage her to do sports. Maybe because I had a ds first, maybe because I have brothers, maybe because dh and I are sporty.

DS on the other hand is a lot more sedantry, but does archery. Bit of wimming, bit of cricket, bit of mountain biking, but hates football!

@Reachersloveinterest it's a prep school so there is no huge size/ strength discrepancy between the children.

I think it's good they are moving away from teaching them that there are 'girl sports' and 'boy sports'.

When I was looking at schools for DS, I was told on one tour that in reception class the girls learned ballet and the boys learned football. I discounted that school immediately.

In our area a lot of girls seem to dance, and that takes up a lot of time so perhaps they drop out of other sports due to dance rehearsal commitments? My teenage DD1 swims and runs but has absolutely no interest in team sports, she is very arty and spends lots of free time engaged in that. When she was at primary school she did gymnastics each week at a club, but wasn't what you'd call a natural
DD2 loathes team games because she is small and not very fast. However she swims each week and is good at that, her group is probably 50/50 boys and girls. She also climbs for two hours each Sunday -top rope and bouldering- and is very capable at that and loves it. I think it helps to keep her strong and fit. When she started climbing five years ago I was concerned that it would be full of competitive kids and pushy instructors but was delighted to find it full of polite kids and kind and supportive instructors. It's probably 2/3 girls and 1/3 boys. I'm really glad my not very sporty or competitive daughters have found sports they enjoy and can focus on improving their skills without needing to play in matches. Competitive sport is great for those that enjoy it but I'm glad that there are more options than when I was young.

And the "are girls less competitive?" is interesting. DD2 is fiercely competitive in academic subjects but has not an ounce of competitive spirit when it comes to sports. Now pondering why...

Parents take their toddler boys to football and their toddler girls to ballet.
The girls in DS toddler ballet wouldn't hold his hand because he was the only boy. He didn't like being the only boy either.
DD has moved to girls football because she didn't like being the only KS1 girl (the KS2 girls in the mixed group were very sweet with her though!).
It's 99% down to parents' choice and the remaining 1% is the child feeling left out.

I work for a tennis club & organise club matches for the whole county - age 4 to 7 we have a fairly even mix of boys & girls by 8 the number of girls is dwindling & by 11 there are very few girls still attending. This is both for our club & across the county. For the boys I will have a number of leagues running for each age group, for the girls I’ll be lucky if we get 4 teams (out of hundreds of clubs)
We have tried all sorts of things to get girls playing (Judy Murray had a thing called Miss hits a few years ago to attract girls to the sport - we ran it with very little success)
The recent success of Emma Radicanu (who is from this area) did bring in a lot of older girl beginners, but I don’t think many will continue long term.

I'm a kids cycling coach. Our club starts with preschoolers and we have nearly 50% girls in that group, but the older they get, the fewer remain. And we have an almost completely female coaching team who actively encourage girls so it's not that girls are seeing it as a male dominated environment with no female role models. We actively try to do all the "right" things but a depressing number drop out at the end of primary school, and not to do another activity sadly. Interestingly my DD us a dance teacher and reports the same phenomenon in all the schools she is/has been involved with, so its not just about girls preferring traditionally female dominated activities, there is some stigma around physical activities of all kindscand its very sad.

@MrsAvocet

I'm a kids cycling coach. Our club starts with preschoolers and we have nearly 50% girls in that group, but the older they get, the fewer remain. And we have an almost completely female coaching team who actively encourage girls so it's not that girls are seeing it as a male dominated environment with no female role models. We actively try to do all the "right" things but a depressing number drop out at the end of primary school, and not to do another activity sadly. Interestingly my DD us a dance teacher and reports the same phenomenon in all the schools she is/has been involved with, so its not just about girls preferring traditionally female dominated activities, there is some stigma around physical activities of all kindscand its very sad.

That was pretty much my experience when I was involved in kids cycle coaching. Quite a few girls came back age 15-16, particularly if one of their parents was a club cyclist.

At a young age DD did swimming and ballet. Then as an early teenager dance became a bigger part of her life first through Musical theatre then ballet, tap, contemporary and commercial.
Whilst not 'sport' dance is still being active. Lots of girls prefer dance and given a chance there is a group of boys who also prefer dance.

I think there's a number of factors that kick in later which we know about:

Puberty
Periods
Aversion to getting sweaty/risk of make up running
Socialisation against competitive instincts...
Peer pressure

These facts are well(ish) known when looking at why we don't keep the girls we get.

However girls not even starting sports are more of a concern than those giving up later on a social fitness level.

My aim with my kids' activities is at the very least to let them learn (and hopefully enjoy) the basics of movement and co-ordination - throwing, catching, hitting and kicking a ball, forwards and backwards rolls, cartwheels, swinging on bars. Also listening to coaches with distracting fun stuff around. If they want to do more, great! If not, we'll find other stuff. Ideally schools would offer this but I think PE in primary is getting more and more limited and secondary tends to focus on kids who already can. Which probably adds to general obesity epidemic plus lack of activity!

Part of the reason I'm happiest when I'm spending time with fellow fencers is that being competitive/aggressive is very much normal, so less need to hide that part of me. Even running with fellow fencers (who are not particularly keen runners) can easily turn into a competition, and it's nice to be open about it rather than secretly chasing the "next ahead" in the mid/rear of a parkrun!

@MrsAvocet

I'm a kids cycling coach. Our club starts with preschoolers and we have nearly 50% girls in that group, but the older they get, the fewer remain. And we have an almost completely female coaching team who actively encourage girls so it's not that girls are seeing it as a male dominated environment with no female role models. We actively try to do all the "right" things but a depressing number drop out at the end of primary school, and not to do another activity sadly. Interestingly my DD us a dance teacher and reports the same phenomenon in all the schools she is/has been involved with, so its not just about girls preferring traditionally female dominated activities, there is some stigma around physical activities of all kindscand its very sad.

I have cyclists. Our club is well known for being really good for girls. But the girl / boy ratio is still very boy heavy. I don’t fully get why - both boys and girls love to ride their bikes!

Ps Did you go to the NWYT?

I think it's a result of mothers not having played competitive sport themselves which in turn could be poor PE experiences at school. I've always played competitive sport, so does my DD and in turn her DDs do too.

I was rubbish at sport at school although found a sport I love in my late teens, although I've only really started enjoy fitness training in my late 30s after kids.

Part of my motivation in doing the activity things is for my kids to like sport and exercise and hopefully find their active niche well before I did.

I don't really understand the reasons fully either Mumoftwoinprimary. We have some awesome female cyclists internationally, nationally and locally and as I mentioned earlier, the coaching body at the clubs I'm involved with is heavily female dominated. Our own club and others in the area have produced a number of women pros, national champions, Team GB riders in the last decade or so, across a range of disciplines. We have no shortage of strong female role models, but it's the boys that seem to be inspired by them, not the girls!
Our more "performance" orientated group is completely male at present, and has been so for the last 2 years. We have an extremely promising girl who will be old enough for that group next season and I really hope she will come, but it often becomes a self fulfilling thing whereby if a girl comes and finds she's the only one, she then won't come back the next week.
I organise our local race series, plus some regional races and the male:female entries are vastly different in every category from youth E to adult. It's depressing.

Not that there is anything wrong with social cycling - I don't race myself and I never have done and we do plenty of non competitive activities in our clubs too. But this ingrained attitude that boys will be competitive and race whereas girls will pootle around chatting on their pink bikes with tassles on the handlebars is so pervasive and I see it starting in children as young as 3 in my preschool group. Obviously we continually challenge those stereotypes, both for the girls and the boys, but I do feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall a lot of the time. 😥
(And no, didn't go to NWYT this year as we were on holiday but plenty of friends did and it looks like it was a great weekend!)

A qn to all you sports coaches....just wondering how many youngsters didn't return to their competitive sport after lockdown?

We certainly went through a spate of "what do non-sporty families do at weekends?", followed by "oh it's quite nice not getting up at ridiculous o'clock ".

We are definitely more selective about what we do/compete in, but that would probably have happened anyway (GCSE years).

We've lost some but also gained others Madcats. Quite a few of our 10-12s never came back, but we expect a big drop off around that age anyway, and we have had an absolute explosion of interest at the younger end. I'm not sure it's all pandemic related - we seem to have acquired almost the entirety of one local primary school year group because a couple of kids have enthusiastically "sold" the club to their friends - but there have definitely been some new starters because parents were looking for anything thay was open for youngsters to join in with post lockdown. A number of parents have told me that they are bringing their very young children as much for the socialisation as the sport, as they have missed out on playgroups and so on, and we have the advantage of being outdoors.
On the other hand, several of our more serious teens have just dropped out entirely. A couple have CEV family members which has probably contributed and I guess some would have dropped out anyway, so ots hard to know what's a Covid effect and what's not.
We have had a significant net gain in participation across all age groups including a doubling of attendance at our adult sessions though.

I wonder how much is down to priority being given to brother's sport in a family. I used to help with a Brownie pack and the number of girls that couldn't come to weekend activities because their brother was playing football or rugby was unbelievable. Why the boy's activity took precedent over the girl I was never sure!

@Seeline

I wonder how much is down to priority being given to brother's sport in a family. I used to help with a Brownie pack and the number of girls that couldn't come to weekend activities because their brother was playing football or rugby was unbelievable. Why the boy's activity took precedent over the girl I was never sure!

That's fair enough If there's only one parent available and if someone's in a team then that takes precedent over a brownie activity.

(but Brownies is the worst kind of stereotyping imo so I'd rather my dd was in a rugby or football team)

I think popular "team" sports are very good at taking over a family life at an early age - if you aren't available for matches you're off the team and ignored in training, while if it's an individual sport it's only you who loses out!

One of my big worries is conflict between the kids' activities - 2 yo has spent a lot of time hanging around for 6yo so she will have to fit in with him at some point!

Fortunately for my own O40 competition ambitions DH works some weekends meaning things have to be possible with 1 adult.

For what it's worth there's a few Olympic athletes who started their sport because sibling did it already so logistically stuff made sense!

Juggling siblings activities can be tricky. Even the same club can be on different days for siblings due to age groups. So far this term we have Cubs Tuesday, Rugby Thursday, Scouts Friday, Rugby Sunday. And need to fit in swimming. Scouts may change as Cricket is also Fridays, but that's summer only...

(Both children are girls btw... no prioritising boys over girls, just cant be in two places at once, and DH works 5hrs away!)

I've definitely seen this. DD is 3 and very physical/active, she's on the waiting list for football but from talking to other parents it sounds like it's about 5 girls and 15 boys in the class, and they're only aged 3-5. Girls her age who are starting sport seem to be doing dance or gymnastics.

Personally I'm incredibly unsporty and had a horrible time in PE at school so I know nothing about sports in general. I've only picked football because she's very keen on kicking balls around, it's not a particular interest of mine.

I think it will be a mixture of factors- definitely a little bit of ingrained stereotyping by parents (as others have said "oh boys need to burn off energy" etc) but also influences from media. Lots of popular female tv characters for little girls, like Emma from the Wiggles, are dancers, so your 4 year old is much more likely to ask for ballet lessons than cricket.

DD does various activities. Martial arts classes are a good mix of girls and boys. However, I also attend the classes and in my 3 years at this club, not a single adult female has joined my classes. It's either a mix of children, young teens, very tall men and me.

I would absolutely love to have another adult female join so I can partner up with someone other than DD9 or a male who has to then adjust their power significantly.