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...

I agree - and I was v glad that DD didn’t continue with dance.

To comeback to your original point, boys are perceived as more lively from birth. Mums of boys used to tell me how lucky I was to have a girl and that boys are exhausting. As a coach, I find that younger sisters of boys seem bolder, more competitive than older sisters of boys or only girls. It's a nurture- nature feedback loop.

My DD is very active, always has been but I guess we're fairly active, had a dog who got walked and the kids came too.

I'm innately competitive, just find sport "safer" for competition than life in general. Debatable if DD being competitive is nature or nurture

Hmm I think many more girls would continue sports and enjoy PE in school if the competitive side of it wasn't the only focus. I certainly would have! Far prefer non competitive and can focus on exercise for life etc rather than the top 3/7 in the class at whatever.

Would be nice if both options were available to cater to all personalities. I enjoy the tactical bit of direct 1 Vs 1 sports but also enjoy me Vs clock at running. Hate aerobics because I'm so useless at left Vs right under pressure! Dance is not my thing either although I did do some ballet, tap and modern as a child.

It's more a concern for me that fewer girls are trying sports, even very low pressure multi sports clubs and that toddler gym looks to be around 50/50 rather than 90% girls than that girls are or aren't competitive. Nothing should be properly competitive at 6 (although I'm well up for them doing "listening" competitions) although there may be the odd mini game that is competitive once the skills are in place - tennis they do racing to a line named by the coach but other than that most things are more co-operative than competitive (pair with longest rally rather than winning points).

A lot of dads really dedicate huge amounts of their time to volunteer for Saturday football and rugby.

And women? Not even close

I think we need to look inwards a little more as to why girls aren’t playing so much team sports.

Although around where i live - girls football, hockey, netball, cross country, judo…. Abound.

My daughter does
Football
Chess
Performing arts
Dodgeball

My son does the same but replace football with rugby

We have done many sports over the years and found some to be 50:50 but sport dependent. My son rides and every class he's ever been in he has been the only boy. My daughter is a talented rugby player and her club attracts a good number of girls/women at all ages but not as many as boys/men. Gym is a good mix but depends on discipline. Climbing has always been a really even mix even at the older age ranges. But I agree many sports have issues with attracting equal numbers.

This ethnographic research into girls playing football (or not) in two London primary schools shows the barriers that my dd experienced almost word for word.
www.researchgate.net/publication/248975381_%27Why_can%27t_girls_play_football%27_Gender_dynamics_and_the_playground

Add in things like no toilets at football matches (nowhere to change pads, can’t just wee in the bushes as a girl), and it’s not hard to see why lots of girls who like football at (say) 5yo just give up.

IME, mixed PE puts a lots of girls off any sort of exercise. The boys expect to dominate and do. It’s not fun for the girls, who are shoved out the way, not passed to, and derided for missing a catch or whatever.

Last term’s multi sports after school club (KS2) started off 1/3 girls. Was just down to my dd by the end and one other. All because the boys made it clear they weren’t welcome there, and the teacher couldn’t change that behaviour. There were a couple of potentially nasty injuries (bat in face) due to boisterous behaviour, which didn’t help either.

I wonder if there is a class element in this too. Where I live there's a mix of working and middle class families. The (primary) school DD goes to isn't great for sports - one PE session a week, sometimes cancelled. The middle class kids tend to do lots of extra curricular activities including sports. A lot of the working class boys tend to play a lot of football- out every day on our estate and many are very good so they will get into local football teams. The girls however although out playing every day don't tend to do sport and are often on the swings chatting. The opportunities just aren't there for them and I think the school in particular really lets them down

@AnUnlikelyCombination the point about boys dominating in mixed groups is very salient. In this respect the competitive spirit op is talking about comes to the fore. The girls tend to take turns, and boys tend to queue jump. Boys chance their luck where a girl might hesitate or even ask for permission before having a go at a skill or piece of apparatus. "The boys stole our football" for instance, it's never the other way round.
For a group of girls, a same age boy tends to be stronger and faster and less inhibited, so they get exciting skills like somersaults and handsprings while the girls are still doing tuck jumps and cartwheels. I put this down to nature magnified by nurture - the girls do less activity, so they build less strength, because they start out with less.
Boys may have a wider ability range - some can't navigate a roly-poly, but it is the quicker ones that the girls compare themselves against.

It's easy to see the queue jumping in boy vs girl but it is the very reason age segregation exists.

The number of times i have heard "they won't give us the ball"from younger boys when they play with older ones is high. Young children tend to disappear just as easily and not come back in such settings.
I'm guessing same for girls. Sex segregation can be a good thing, either that or much more involved mentoring or coaching to stamp out the queue jumping or sports which don't have a shared resource which is the path I've taken.

There is also an element of costs/affordability. Most sports clubs require you to pay fees & often buy specialist uniform & equipment. For those on lower incomes, it isn't doable.
So you might be able to afford a football do your child can kick that around on a local park, but you aren't likely to be able to afford gymnastics equipment/netball hoops (& somewhere to put it) etc.
We can only afford for DD (7) to do two sports/activities. She started swimming from a very young age, & has continued & she is doing very well. She tried ballet as her friends were going to do it; liked it but we felt it never progressed, so wasn't really learning anything; so she decided to try gymnastics, which she still does for now. She'd like to try archery, but the local club won't take her till she's 8. She's not a natural athlete, (neither am I) but she tries. But she has no interest in football/netball etc.
DS(3) does swimming also & are thinking of putting him in gymnastics next year too - he seems to have a more natural affinity for it but so far hasn't shown any interest in football etc. But then DH doesn't either so again, probably a mix of nature & nurture.
School really put me off sports - vividly remember that girls did netball (which I hated!) & boys did rugby in the winter; & then in summer girls did aerobics & boys did football! We badged the PE teachers to let the girls & boys play football together & we were told it was illegal!!!

Re: dance - where we live (fairly affluent medium sized town in the South East) I was not able to find a good dance school. They all seem to be basically oriented at making the most money out of parents. So classes are purely recreational and almost never separated by ability and you are encouraged to take more and more styles of dance within the same school (the usual ballet-modern-tap triad and more in addition). Dd still does dance because she loves it but it is just painful to pay each term because of this obvious business slant - it's not like I don't symphatize with the need to make money to stay in business but this is a bit too obvious.
In contrast, local swimming club actually costs less and less per hour as the swimmer advances (and clearly makes way way less profit once you factor in the pool hire costs). Local football costs nearly nothing. Of course these all are not for profit things run by parents committee.

Budget is definitely an issue, but why does it affect parents of boys and girls differently? Everything we do has minimal cost, other than the cost of the classes (quite aware that the classes themselves cost money)

Once you get to any kind of competitive level everything costs money. Horses/sailing probably cost the most, then most of the cost will relate to travel to competitions and time spent training rather than necessary gear costs making smaller sports more expensive more quickly than bigger sports with more numerous participants in a given area.

In some ways the drop off is less of a concern than the lack of numbers starting, working on the assumption that many boys will start football, many girls will start dance but ignoring those doing the 'obvious' activities, way more boys try sport outside school than girls.

All the stuff we do is in a middle class/affluent area.

Add in things like no toilets at football matches (nowhere to change pads, can’t just wee in the bushes as a girl), and it’s not hard to see why lots of girls who like football at (say) 5yo just give up.

I saw this "girls need special facilities" claim used by both proponents and opposers of women integration in some male dominated activity. I personally never found it particularly important .I don't see a pressing need to change the pad during the two-three hours of the match and yeah, well - everybody peed in the bushes of our local football field when toilets were closed during Covid. Peeing in the bushes is a useful skill you need to teach your daughter

Budget is definitely an issue, but why does it affect parents of boys and girls differently?
Well, the cheapest activities to do in the UK are football and rugby, that are culturally popular with boys and might even help to earn a living to someone very good.
A boy would play football with friends then ask the parents to join the football team and they would support him.
A girl won't show interest unless encouraged because of societal expectations, so if the family budget is limited they would just tell themselves she "isn't sporty"

Wow definitely wouldn't sign my girls up for anything without toilets!!! We might do an outdood wee on a long hike away from people but wouldn't expect that at an organised activity in front of peers.

@PileOfBooks

Wow definitely wouldn't sign my girls up for anything without toilets!!! We might do an outdood wee on a long hike away from people but wouldn't expect that at an organised activity in front of peers.

TBH I only ever encountered this situation during Covid related changes (and not just with sports - it was a challenge to find a toilet during lockdowns everywhere).

In normal times there was always a clubhouse with toilets for both genders, as you would expect from health and safety point of view. So don't discount football for this reason.

BFrazzled - no or shut toilets is precisely what happened to me (and dd) last weekend at her football match. And every Wednesday at training. It’s great that it doesn’t bother you, but as you can see from Pile, it is an issue for some people. Sometimes for medical reasons, sometimes just preference. But either way, it’s another push away from sports for girls.

On money, maybe it’s the same reason that far more boys than girls have paid-for tutoring in dd’s class. Something about being more prepared to invest in boys?

I realise mine is only 6, so I don’t know what she will keep going with when she is older, but she does tennis, football, swimming, and then ballet, modern and acro.

I’m fully expecting her to drop things as she gets older (and she knows that she cannot take up karate, gymnastics or cheerleading, which are the other things she wants to do, unless she drops an existing activity!).

When she was a toddler, she did football, baby gymnastics, baby ballet and swimming.

She isn’t unusual amongst her friends. Most of them do swimming plus another sport plus dance or gymnastics.

Her football is a girls training squad of the local amateur team - there are about 20-24 girls or around 5-8 each week. Then there are older teams. So it seems girls football should survive quite healthily at her club. I think there is specific “wildcats” FA funding to develop girls teams. I’m a bit sad that they separated from mixed teams so early, but I’m glad she has the opportunity to play, as I certainly didn’t at her age.

I have no idea what happened to my post, but it should say there are 20-24 girls at football regularly each week!

Oh I know what it was “20 to 24 girls AGED around 5-8 years old”.

There is vast research on this. It starts very very early with how adults treat girls and what they are taken to. A huge % of parents only take girls to traditional girls activities. Girls overall are not encouraged to play out in the same way. Schools are often poor for this. Then girls don't develop the core skills early and decide they are no good.. and on it goes.

Did you ever watch 'no more boys & girls'?! Very good illustration of it all

@Secnarf most clubs have the option for girls to play mixed football if they want but overall girls tend to prefer to play in a girls team for social reasons and parents tend towards this too with their girls. Often girls start in boys teams and migrate later. The wildcats programme has resulted in over 25,000 more girls playing I believe as it removes a lot of barriers. Maybe by 2030 we'll have lots more genuinely mixed teams !