Why women do not like sports as much as men: Evolution and other reasons
There is an interesting fact in the world of sports; even though a lot of women like to play and compete in sports, not as many of them watch it on television. Men far outnumber women in watching sports on TV and it is a curious phenomenon as to why this is. Some say there is an evolutionary answer to the question while others give various other reasons as to why this might be the case. Whatever the reason it seems likely that men and women will continue to differ in their sports watching habits for all the times to come.
Over the years it has been a frequent sight to see the men of the family crowded around a television screen screaming at their favourite team as if they can hear them. Looking at the scene one could wonder why the women of the household were not equally as interested in screaming profanities at players who were probably hundreds of miles away. There is a distinct lack of women attending sporting events as well, apart from maybe tennis, gymnastics and figure skating. The large sporting events such as football matches or baseball games have a lot more men in the stands as women. So not only do women watch fewer sports on television but they also attend less sporting matches in the flesh.
Recent studies have shown that female viewers of NFL games have increased from 31% in 2002 from 17% in 1998. Female baseball fans have gone up similarly from 12% in 1998 to 28% in 2002 as have most of the other big sports out there. All of them have seen a fair rise in female viewers over the years. The strange part of this was that the increases were not recorded in women’s sports but the female viewers increased in men’s sports. Even though the increases are significant women viewers still lag far behind men.
In 1972, a bill was passed in America outlawing discrimination in school sports. That bill, called Title IX was supposed to level the playing field for boys and girls when it came to junior level sports in schools around the country. Well it has not seemed to have had that desired effect. Yes it did make everything equal, but in recent times, girl’s sports teams have had a tough time trying to recruit players. Since the boy’s team and girl’s team for any sport in any school in America had to have the same number of players, coaches of boy’s teams found that they had to reduce their rosters to accommodate the fewer players on the girl’s team. This has led to problems in sports funding for schools because if the teams are not the same size then the schools funding can get reduced or cut altogether. But why are not more girls playing sports in school.
Some scientists have said that the reason why women do not watch or take part in sports as much as men is because of evolution. During the days when humans were hunter gatherers, it was the men who would go out and hunt and the women who would gather the fruit and the nuts. So hunting, that the men did, translated over the millennia into military combat and sports. For the simple reason that men bonded when they were out hunting or fighting or playing sports while women bonded while they were interacting with each other in different ways. Even though today there is equality in most households of enlightened couples, historically the way men and women interacted with the same s*x can give us an answer to why more men like sports. This is in no way a concrete answer or the only answer but it is one that scientists are working on these days.
Another reason is that many sports out there can become pretty violent at times. As a general rule and this is in no way suggesting that all men love violent sports and all women do not, but a vast majority of men like to engage in and watch aggressive or violent things on TV as opposed to women. This is why the average soap opera does not have too much violence in it. Even this is changing slowly and women and men have over the years started to watch similar types of shows on TV but there is still a big gap in sports viewing.
In time with more women getting into sports and enjoying sports, the figures of female sports viewing might increase. But the change will be slow and it may need more government intervention or even a change in society.
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