Stereotyping Women Athletes



           When it comes to sports, most women are put down because they are “not as good as the men.” “You Throw Like a Girl: Sport and Misogyny on the Silver Screen” was an article written by Dayna Daniels in 2005, which I found in the Journal of Women’s History. Throughout this article, Daniels’s focus was about the different stereotypes that women receive when something is sports related. 

            Even as we see more women partaking in sports that are normally viewed as  'guy sports', such as; hockey and football, they still do not get as much attention and recognition that the guys do. Whereas the sports section of newspapers are flooding with many articles about mens sports, it is hard to find many articles about women athletes. "Women's sports coverage is shrinking, not growing; even as more girls are competing in sports" (Hardin, 2010).

            Even media, such as television and movies show put-downs toward women. This could be one of the main reasons why it is pounded into society’s heads that “men are better.”  Daniels talks about the sandlot movie and how one of the baseball players in the movie says “you play ball like a GIRL” (As shown in the video clip below).

This video shows a clip from a very familiar movie to American society known as “The Sandlot.” During this scene we see the boys going back and forth saying mean things to each other. The screaming match and name calling continues until one of the boys says “you play ball like a GIRL”, to the other boy. When this statement is made all of the other boys are in shock and the boy that it was aimed toward got really offended. From this, we can see that girls were being put down, even when they were not actually in the picture. This shows that girls or women are viewed as being overall worse than men when it comes to playing sports, and that they are still negatively judged while sports are being played even if they are not present. If a woman exceeds above and beyond the others it is known that her sexuality is questioned, because that is not the 'norm' (Daniels, 2005).

~Katlyn Vickery

Works Cited

Daniels Dayna (2005). "You Throw Like a Girl: Sport and Misogyny on the Silver Screen." Journal of Women's History. 35. 1:29-38. Project Muse.

Hardin Mary (2010). "Shrinking Sports Beat: Women's Teams, Athletes". The Minneapolis Star Tribune.