Sports Isn’t for Girls
Well that’s what I got told growing up
I grew up in England. I’ve always been a girly girl and never really been fussed with sports. It was always the lesson that I liked most though in school, you didn’t have to work and I enjoyed myself. But looking back at my experience, some aspects were shocking.
I went to an average school, but the clause is that it was a girls-only school. So for the school sports weren’t a big deal. We only had about 2 Physical Education lessons a week and we spent one with a textbook copying down information.
The other time we played sports for 30 minutes, yes only 30 minutes per week which I thought probably wasn’t enough. We used to get a vote of usually about 2 sports to choose from and in all my years in school we never played football.
We seemed to play “girly” spots, like
- dodgeball
- tennis
- running
- gymnastics
These were probably the only ones we did.
While the boy’s school opposite used to do P.E a lot more times a week and focus on other sports including
- football
- basketball
- hockey,
- Marathon running
It wasn’t fair, we had to do the same sports over again as the school said those sports were “easier for girls” but surely this is sexist and not fair as they didn’t consider if any of us wanted to try out a new sport.
It always made me think growing up that they were right and certain sports just weren’t for girls so I never gave them a try, this could have been why I was never sporty as I never had the chance.
I think school failed me, there wasn’t enough done to show me that all sports are for everyone and some aren’t classed as girls or boys.
Did you ever have an experience like this? Or is it something to do with being in an English school?
Thank you for reading :)
