Gender Stereotypes In Sports

On Sunday, I listened to ESPN Radio on the Internet. The host was Max Bretos, who has been working as a studio anchor for ESPN since 2010. He is the premier voice for soccer on ESPN and before joining ESPN, he worked for the Fox Soccer Channel. The show started with some updates about college basketball games and baseball scores. Also, I learned that Lebron James missed a game because his coach decided to give him the night off. A major topic of discussion was Steph Curry. As a Curry fan myself, it was amusing to hear the host talking about he dropped 46 points the other night, including a buzzer beater three-pointer. Apparently, players from other teams in the NBA are tweeting about how spectacular Curry has been playing. There was a call-in section of the show for people to state their opinions about

Background literature: Previous studies about gender stereotypes enforced on people include; “Effect of infant’s perceived gender on adolescents’ ratings of the infant by Degelman, Dvorak, and Homutoff and Cowan (1983). These studies highlight feminine and masculine traits. They ask middle school students to rate a baby on each of those traits.

Toys play a major role in socializing young kinds into “appropriate” gender roles. The first obvious characteristic that separates toys for boys and toys for girls,

Gender stereotypes are mostly taken for granted at a young age: girls are told to play with dolls and boys are told to play with trucks. But as children grow older they find themselves in a world where the reality of gender roles and stereotypes aren’t acknowledged, and the illusion of gender neutrality is commended. If gender roles are becoming more neutral, then it would follow that gender role stereotypes are also becoming more lax. However, in actuality this is not true.

To some extent, gender has always contributed to the stereotyping of human beings. From the minute they are born, they are treated differently and are expected to fulfill different roles within a family, community, and ultimately society depending on the family virtues and values. Therefore, parents, extended family

Lillie Devereux Blake said, “People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles”. This seems to suggest that stereotypes are developed through culture and life experience. How people learn their specific gender roles is often through what they learn from the family but, also, what they learn from friends and peers. Often people make false assumptions that lead to sexism and stereotypes. These assumptions can cause false accusations and beliefs. This paper will examine some of the stereotypes between men and women and how these stereotypes can lead to negative feelings between men and women.

These stereotypes affect their everyday life, school work, and even career choices. Question are often asked about gender stereotypes like ‘Where did these stereotypes first originate?’ Is there any truth to these stereotypes? If gender wasn’t known would there still be stereotypes? How can we stop stereotypes labeling gender?

Stereotypical behavior is not a new trend, but rather an ongoing lifestyle for today’s society. Gender stereotyping, a sub-category of stereotypes, opens many revelations, developments, and behaviors. While there are psychologists that differ in opinion, education and employment seems to be the primary sources where it is believed that most people both obtains and acts out their stereotypical behavior (Sax & Harper 671).

Raise boys and girls the same way." -Jenny Holzer. Stop raising 'sirs ' & 'hers, ' just raise kids! Media is putting kids into boxes predicated on their gender and attributes their activities and interests to their sex rather than their social condition and standing. Through media, they bombard society with the idea that girls prefer dolls and boys prefer trucks. Gender stereotypes and perceptions are the pictures that are bogged down into our minds which are nothing more than simplistic generalizations and accusations about the mixed beliefs, behaviors, characteristics, and roles that are applied to a particular gender. These received ideas about genders were built from how civilization acted and what they practiced from earlier periods in time which do not actually communicate accurate information about others. Stereotypes are neither inherently good nor evil; they reside in the purpose to which it is put. The representation of stereotypes through the use of media portrays both genders ambiguous role positively and negatively but tends to characterize and personate the more negative side. Today the press spends too much time on trying to give off the mindset of how men & women should be, in reality it destructs a person’s individuality and creativeness having far wide-ranging consequences that should not be taken only on nominal value. Greatly lodged in our society, the issue of gender stereotypes has peregrinated to an extent of defining the exact nature of people. If

Laying out the scene where all these gender ideals start, a pair of twins, male and female, are born. Immediately after birth, the girl is wrapped in a pink blanket and the boy in a blue. Even the diapers they wear are color specific to gender. Fast forward a few years, and it is the twins’ third birthday. The young girl unwraps her gifts to reveal Barbie dolls with sparkly heels, miniskirts and large breasts; a stroller with a baby doll; and a pretty, pink kitchen set. The boy is ecstatic when gifted with matchbox cars, legos, and construction sets complete with toy trucks. Before they are even able to communicate properly with their parents, children alike to the girl and boy in this story are told what they like and do not like. These gender specific toys implant gender stereotypes into young minds and stay with them for the rest of their life, often limiting their potential in education and careers. An article by New York Times, How Gender-Specific

As a society, we condition the idea of what is feminine and masculine to what is for boys and what is for a girl before a child is even born. An example of this would be when an adult is expecting a child, a tradition to celebrate the occasion is to throw a baby shower to anticipate the child’s arrival. Baby showers, typically, are decorated with either pink decorations or blue decorations, pink for girls and blue for boys. We also discussed the many stereotypes that limit both boys and girls. An example of our society limiting both genders is the toys that toy companies make for boys and girls. Girl toys are usually toys that relate to cleaning, cooking and fashion. Boy toys are toys that are more aggressive like guns, boxing, and violent video games.

Stereotypes are very problematic in society. It places specific labels about how an individual should behave or live their lives according to their sex, race, class or gender. This could have a dramatic affect on certain individuals who possibly like or enjoy different things; things that are not what some might call the norm. But stereotypes cause them to feel humiliated for doing so. Stereotypes have and continue to form a misrepresentation of how every individual “ought” to act, think or behave. One of the stereotypes that have the greatest effect in our society is Gender stereotyping; gender stereotyping is defined in Webster dictionary “as generalizing males and females. Gender stereotypes are based on a “complex mix of beliefs, behaviors, and characteristics.”These assumptions that others make could possibly be true to some individuals, but on the other hand affect our decision in a negative way towards the opposite sex. This points to gender stereotyping producing disagreements between males and females, because of their unrealistic expectations that they have set of each other. Which in turn will cause problems in their progression towards adulthood. Since the beginning of time society has always kept a constant definition on what it means to be a “woman”, children are taught pretty much since birth that once they are born they placed into a certain categories, girls are dressed in pink onesises to depict femininity. Society, not biological bases, limits males and

Gender stereotypes have been around for hundreds of years, and sometimes it seems like nothing is changing with them. To some, it may feel like instead of improving, they are just worsening. Gender stereotypes, even today, continue to encase both males and females in a false sense of ‘direction’ on how they should look, act, or feel.

To understand gender-based stereotypes, one must first and foremost understand the distinction between sex and gender. Sex is defined by the physical attributes one is given by the initial biological structure at birth. As told by Anne-Fausto-Sterling, “the body tells the truth” because the appearance of a penis or vagina is the first indicator in determining if one is male or female (Fausto-Sterling, 244). Gender on the other hand, is a category or a means by which we understand the body. For instance, gender is determined through characteristics, cultural

Most children’s choice of toys are based on gender stereotypes of the communities that they are raised in. Boys and girls are divided into categories. Boys are categorized as