Netball, the champion of women's rights
My mother used to play netball in school. She loved it but I have never played the sport and neither did any other boy I knew. This got me thinking as to why it was that a lot of women seem to have played netball but guys haven’t. Is netball a sport that only women play and if it is then why is that so? Netball is different from basketball in a few ways; the first one being the fact that in basketball a player can dribble the ball and then can take two steps and shoot the ball or pass it, in netball the player can only take two steps and then has to pass the ball to a specific shooter or to someone to pass it to the shooter.
Also in netball there is a lot less physical contact than in basketball. Netball is played in many Commonwealth countries and is derived from basketball with which it shares similarities. The players in netball can only hold the ball for a period of three seconds before passing it or shooting it. The similarities between netball and basketball are many but the biggest difference is that women play netball predominantly across the world. It is a very popular sport with a World Cup of Netball and the World Netball Series.
The origins of netball are very interesting because it developed from basketball to be played by women and adhered to the social norms for women at the time. “Netball emerged from early versions of women's basketball, evolving with the increasing participation of women in sport. James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented basketball in 1891. His new game was played in his school's gymnasium between two teams of nine players, using a soccer ball that was shot into closed-end peach baskets. Senda Berenson, a teacher at a nearby women's college, developed women's basketball the following year, with modified rules designed to accommodate the social norms regarding appropriate conduct and attire for women, and contemporary notions on their limited physical capacity,” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netball).
This statement of the origin of netball from Wikipedia is very interesting because here is a sport that emerged because the social norms at the time didn’t allow women to play a physically demanding game like basketball. That could be the reason why in netball there is less running and less contact with other players. It seems that this was a sport that was invented for and by women in a way because as women got their freedoms and wanted to also partake in sports such as basketball but weren’t allowed to they decided to invent their own sport.
A sport that could be their own and one that would one day become just as famous as basketball. And they achieved their goal with the resounding popularity of the sport all across the world. One estimate puts the number of people playing the sport at 20 million in 70 countries. The women who invented the sport during a time of severe restrictions and oppression against women would be proud of how far their sport has come.
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