New research has found that women of all ages are less
active than men. Observing schoolchildren at play, researchers have concluded that girls would rather socialize
than play sports.
While I don't doubt the study’s findings that men
are more physically active than women, I have some reservations about
the explanation that girls simply like to sit around chatting, while boys like
to run around and get dirty.
Until I graduated high school, I considered myself the least
athletic person I knew. It was a big joke among my friends that any activity requiring
physical exertion was off bounds for me. But once I realized that being active
did not have to mean doing Indian sprints at Varsity field hockey practice, I
became very athletic. I now bike everywhere, do yoga, dance, hike, surf, and run.
I certainly didn’t shun sports because I “prefer to chat.” But
a casual observer could easily have drawn this conclusion from watching me on
the sidelines during gym class, laughing with a girlfriend instead of trying to
get in on the athletic action. The truth is, I was too intimidated to participate in traditional
team sports, since I seem to have
inherited a gene which makes me physically incapable of throwing and catching a
ball. Even the sports that I did enjoy—gymnastics and track—were unappealing to
me because I had no interest in competing. I just wanted to move around and
have fun.
Perhaps it’s not girls’ natural inclinations that make them
less active than their male counterparts, but rather the way sports are taught
in school.
Photo: The Telegraph
