This is part of a continuing series women and confidence in sports; excerpts from The Girl’s Guide to Swagger in the Outdoors and Sports – continued from this post.What holds us back?
Whenever we take on new challenges, we may feel fear. We can let the fear stop us or we can face it and move forward. What do we fear about the outdoors and sports?
Women and girls often feel that they are not athletic enough to play sports. The New Normal? What Girls Say About Healthy Living, reported that 40 percent of girls ages 11 to 17 don’t participate in sports because they feel they’re not skilled enough.
In a recent study of 14 year olds in Lisbon, researcher Maria do Mar Pereira, the deputy director for the University of Warwick’s Centre for the Study of Women and Gender observed that girls and boys changed their actions in order to act within expected gender roles. In an interview with Think Progress, she reported that “even girls who enjoyed sports often avoided physical activity at school because they assumed it wouldn’t be a feminine thing to do, they worried they might look unattractive while running, or they were mocked by their male peers for not being good enough.” Read more here