Have you been to recess lately?

It just so happens that I have. Recently, I volunteered for recess duty at my son’s school. (He’s in first grade.)

There is plenty to say about recess – including that at many schools there is simply not enough of it. Some low-performing schools have eliminated recess to increase time on academics in hopes of raising tests scores, despite much research which demonstrates the value of recess. But this post is not about that.

It’s about the lost opportunity of recess. As a former teacher, as a parent, and as a (former) kid myself, it’s not difficult to see that free play time tends to be very segregated by gender. To anyone who pays attention it seems clear that girls and boys have very different play time interests.

But why is this? How much is socialization and girls being quietly (almost invisibly) discouraged from playing sports in their free time?   (My dissertation on the subject here). As someone who has studied this phenomenon, I love to see girls play soccer or basketball at recess, but research shows that boys control TEN times as much space on the playground or the courts, plus much of the equipment (Thorne, 1997, p.83; see Gender Play for a full investigation of this topic).

You will see the girls shooting baskets off to the side (and with the not quite fully-inflated ball) while boys dominate the play space in a large, organized game. Furthermore, boys are more likely to interrupt all-girl games. With this domination of space and “claimed entitlement…playgrounds are basically male turf” (Thorne, 1997, p.83).

At my son’s school, he often spends recess playing a game that involves chasing the girls or them chasing him. But many days he plays basketball or soccer with a group of boys (yes, I ask him every day who he played with and if it was a sports game, it is never girls). On the day I volunteered, he was in a heated game of basketball with seven other boys. One girl sat on the curb watching. I asked her if she wanted to play. She responded, “no,” but said that she plays with her older brother at home.

Wasn’t this a lost opportunity for her (and for the boys)?

I won’t argue that recess supervisors need to insist the girls jump into the boys’ games (though that would be great!). But I will argue that teachers and school staff need to insure that girls have equal access to equipment and space — and are encouraged to use them. We may need to help girls become confident enough to play with the boys or to command their own games.

When girls and boys play together, they both benefit and learn from one another. We don’t need to have boys versus girls (though that is often the default position when teachers/supervisors lack other ways to identify opposing players). Maybe it’s time to get some pinnies, provide some support, and let boys AND girls take control of the play space at recess.

I work – really hard – at avoiding gender stereotypes with kids so I decided to tick through what we had lined up for Christmas this year: there was the Wii for my son and an American Girl doll for my daughter. Err – I mean, a Wii for the family and an American Girl doll for my daughter.

So I caught myself, and to compensate for who might dominate the Wii, decided we should find a great game for my daughter. Knowing nothing about Nintendo, I suggested my husband order a girl’s sport game—you know, Girls’ Extreme Sports or WNBA or girls’ soccer.

As it turns out, they don’t exist. Check out Nintendo’s “Girls’ Games” section on this website to see their offerings: dance, cooking, fashion, cheerleading and princess, in sum. [I do realize you can make your person a girl athlete on the sports games, but the obvious message in the girl-genre of games is troubling].

I’m not sure why, but when my son was asked to bring in a wrapped book for a Pollyanna gift exchange (aka Secret Santa or Yankee Swap) with his class, we were instructed that books be marked “boy” or “girl.” My first reaction: why do they have to be one or the other? There are books both a boy and a girl would find appealing. What must we “gender-ize” everything?

Yes, I know, girls and boys are different. But as a former teacher and mother of boys and a girl, I see the balance girls and boys can gain from one another. As parents and as educators we should seek ways to bring boys and girls together and not focus on separating them at every opportunity.

So this holiday season, here’s the challenge: Avoid putting kids in a “gender-ized box” (excuse the pun). Think about gifts that you might not ordinarily buy for that girl or boy on your list. By sticking to gender-typical gifts, we reinforce gender stereotypes that are very outdated – and may even discourage the recipient from finding a new activity or toy that she or he would enjoy.

Here are a examples and suggestions for broadening your purchasing scope:

·         My daughter recently received a bracelet-making kit; it was a big hit with her AND her 7 year-old brother

·         Last year I bought my son AND daughter knight’s swords (foam, of course); accompany this gift with stories of King Arthur’s Round Table and/or the books Jane and the Dragon or Not One Damsel in Distress.

·         Buy sports equipment for girls (and don’t insist on pink!); think beyond the soccer ball—buy hockey sets (indoor and outdoor), lacrosse sticks, a skateboard, flag-football sets—even bowling or badminton equipment

·         Shop for kids’ jammies in the boys section, for both genders! Girls also love pirates, dinosaurs, trucks and sports. Don’t limit them to princesses and bunnies.

·         My two-year old son is very into dolls right now. It helps that he has an older sister, but he gravitates towards his favorite doll even when she is not around, making up names, telling me the baby is “silly” while cracking up, and comforting baby after he throws it on the ground (he also breastfeeds his baby!). All of this role-playing is wonderful for his development and will help him make a great dad someday.

·         All kids love dress-up; Any kind of dress up! Buy a super-hero costume for a girl, without limiting it to Wonder Woman (scantily-clad) or Cat Woman (beyond inappropriately-clad; who can work in those clothes?!). Girls as well as boys want to wear an apron in the kitchen and dress up as a fire fighter, doctor, pirate, or spy. (See www.sewplainjane.com for really unique capes and masks).

My final college softball season starts in three weeks. Time to worry about my makeup and hair?

Softball may be a serious, competitive, slide-in-the-dirt sport, but as it grows in popularity (and TV interest), there is heightened attention — to looking good.

When I tuned into the Women’s College World Series on ESPN at the end of last season, it hit me: The players sported a perfect ponytails, sparkly headbands and ribbons — and enough layers of make-up to suit them for a magazine spread. From the shoulders up, they were vying for Miss Teen USA, not an NCAA national title.

One has only to read the coverage to discover that, like competitors in a beauty pageant, players actually schedule pre-game time for hair and makeup.

These women are fierce competitors and I know they mean business. We may be accustomed to noting perfect hair and makeup in gymnastics, but in women’s softball? (check out a few photos here, here, here, and here). Does Derek Jeter take time for foundation and bronzer before stepping onto the field?

Why must  female softball players reinforce their “girly” side, particularly for ESPN cameras? Doesn’t this hinder the message of female athletic empowerment that the Women’s College World Series is meant to convey?

Sure, we are all aware of the stereotypical line about softball –  that everyone is lesbian, that we are “dykes on spikes.” Why is it that no matter what sport women participate in that still today — it’s 2010! — gender and sexuality must take center stage over raw talent, athletic ability — and the drama of the game?

Wearing gobs of makeup (look at stills or clips and it’s not just a swipe of blush) during a national championship does not prove some quasi-feminist point that you can be cute and athletic at the same time. Rather, it reveals to the girls who are watching that no matter how strong, fast, talented or competitive they are that how they look matters most.  The Women’s College World Series is an opportunity to collapse female stereotypes of passivity and weakness, yet it’s become a stage to codify and perpetuate them.

And it’s not just softball. Just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Lancome has unveiled a cosmetic line apparently inspired by the female athletes who will be competing for a gold medal.

Please, fellow female athletes, let’s stop getting dolled up to compete. Leave heavy make-up and perfect hair for dinner or the runway — not the diamond.

By Laura Pappano

I can’t wait to see what happens when I tune in to the NFL this weekend. Will we see more dropped passes? Missed routes? Hugging and giggling in the huddle?

After all, the league is kicking off a month-long effort to support breast cancer awareness through its “Crucial Catch” campaign to encourage regular mammograms. Unlike last year, when teams handed out pink ribbons and sold pink fan T-shirts, this year players, coaches, and refs will be having actual pink-colored items touching their bodies.

Smartly, however, the NFL (as it does so well) has imposed limits on the amount of pink. About 100 players will be wearing pink cleats like this, others will wear pink wristbands, gloves, and helmet decals. The captain’s patches will be pink and they’ll use a pink coin for the toss.

Pink, as I’m sure you know, is a very dangerous color.

The explosion of pink merchandise (MLB, NFL, among others), like pink sports gear — from baseball and softball gloves to soccer balls and lax sticks — after all, has been positioned as a concession to female fans and girl athletes. Turn it pink and it’s a little less threatening. We’ve been conditioned to think of pink as soft, gentle, diminutive, a little ditzy, perky, bubbly….(you get the idea). Not hard core competitive stuff.

Of course, that’s precisely what University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry insisted when in the 1970s he had the walls of the visiting team’s locker room painted pink to “weaken and debilitate opposing football players.” (In 2005 the color was extended to the carpet, urinals and lockers – setting off more than a little debate — photo here).

To be fair, the Iowa shade is a bit paler than the NFL is showing this month. Perhaps it is the difference between dusty rose and a near magenta? We can call it “Power Pink,” but there’s no doubt that the psychological signaling around this color is getting awfully confusing (for a change).

Just 10 days ago Nicole Lavoi wrote on her blog One Sport Voice, about the still-alive-and-well practice of a hockey coach belittling a player by making him wear pink gloves. Did this coach not know about NFL players wearing pink gloves? Or might pink –gasp! — be on the cusp of an image makeover?

Credit those who take a stand and raise awareness about the critical importance of cancer screening (and kudos to Susan G. Komen for the Cure for pioneering the pink ribbon as a symbol of breast cancer awareness in 1991). Heck, the other day I saw a pink oil tank truck and yesterday a pink newspaper landed in my driveway. If this isn’t a sign of success, what is?

Yet, how can we normalize the overly-loaded color pink when guys like my friend, political writer Dave Denison, point out that they have been trained since childhood to find the color repellant? (And Dave in print and in person is the quintessential fair-minded dude).

Can Dave be persuaded by the likes of Brett Favre to rethink his pink aversion? (To be fair, I’m not nutty about the color, either, but perhaps I, too, have fallen under Fry’s spell?) Maybe the NFL needs to stop being so timid and go full tilt. Make the jerseys and helmets pink (think of the merchandising – it could rival throwbacks!). Why not make the football pink? And who says the lines on the field have to be white?

Then maybe we could move past all this silliness about pink – and onto whatever is next.  Like, say, What color is prostate cancer awareness?

By Katie Culver

At the playground the other day a girl struggled to climb up a curved ladder after my son. She was wearing sandals. Her feet kept getting tangled in her dress.

Another day, a brother and sister at the park with their grandparents were swinging when the boy jumped down and ran to the next piece of equipment. The grandfather lifted the girl out of the swing and warned: “Now remember, no running! You have sandals on.”

“No running?” At the playground? Really?

When we wonder why women and girls still struggle for equal opportunity in this country, when we puzzle over why girls are so often discouraged – if not outright excluded – from sports, it might be time to consider how we dress our kids. From birth.

This is about more than the fact that gifts that come with a new baby differ strikingly. When parents shop for children’s clothes there is a clear (if oft-ignored) message being sent. Girl’s clothing has a common theme: “I’m cute” or “I’m a helpless princess” and “my looks matter the most.” Boy’s clothes, on the other hand, are all about cars, trucks, and sports — themes that suggest action and physical activity.

When my own daughter Mia started to creep it was obvious: It’s tough to crawl in a dress.  Yet, baby girls are always clothed in dresses.  Girls are at a disadvantage already.

I make sure Mia wears leggings/shorts and t-shirts and insist on sneakers she can walk/run in whenever we go out to play (the rule is the same for my son, who is five. You can’t run in crocks!).  The good news: At two-and-a-half, Mia runs and climbs like a champ, dribbles a soccer ball – and can throw a curve ball.

Yes, she is coordinated — but this is no accident.

Girls must be encouraged to develop physical skills early on and especially once they enter school. More often than their boy counterparts, girls opt out of physical activity—sitting out at recess and during gym class. Girls also tell researchers that they don’t “like” to play sports, both findings that emerged from my own dissertation study (“Shut Out: How Hegemony, Discouragement, and Opportunity Affect Access to Sports for Low-Income, Urban Girls.”) Or check out the joint study by Harvard School or Public Health and the National Women’s Law Center on Massachusetts girls lagging behind boys in sports participation.

(For those interested in more: see W.C. Taylor’s study, Physical Activity Among African-American and Latina Middle School Girls, 1999, or Lena Williams, Women’s Sports: Hispanic Female Athletes are Few and Far Between,” 2002.)

The point: It is tough to play when you lack skills and boys dominate the play space. But it’s even tougher when you are a girl who is not dressed for playing.

Forget puffed sleeves, ribbons and fancy shoes. Let’s change the focus of girl clothes from some rigid notion of gender appropriate “fashion” to function. From pretty to comfy. From the emphasis on looks to an emphasis on action.

And, while we’re at it, as long as we parents are consumers, why don’t we favor clothing companies that feature girls playing sports, driving cars and being active? Consider how girls’ perspective on sport would change if they could picture themselves actually in the game — from the start?

Katie Culver, a mother of (soon to be three) children, is a consultant for the Barra Foundation and conducts Gender Workshops for teachers and parents. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban Education from Temple University.

By Laura Pappano

The visual is stunning.

Click here to see the Little League Softball World Series championship TV schedule.  You’ll find ESPN2 (the channel broadcasting women’s college hoops unless there is a men’s game that can’t fit the ESPN or network schedule) is showing two semi-final games on Tues., Aug. 18 and the championship on Wed., Aug. 19 (7 p.m. EST)

Reasonable airtime given that this is Little League. Kids. Right?

Mistake. That is the Little League Softball World Series. Click here for Little League Baseball’s World Series broadcast schedule.

Softball games may be limited to three on TV, but from Fri., Aug. 21 to Sun. Aug. 30, you can basically watch 12-year-olds play baseball all day long (and into the night).

Between the three channels — ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC – broadcasters will bring you 36 – yep, THIRTY-SIX!! – Little League games (including consolation play).

The disparity in prestige and attention might be chalked up to the American passion for baseball over softball, if Little League didn’t have such a troublesome record on gender issues. Sure, it now “celebrates” the move to allow girls (following a successful civil complaint by N.O.W. on behalf of Maria Pepe of New Jersey in 1973).

But the move in early 1974 to start a Little League softball program has been seen by some, including Jennifer Ring author of Stolen Bases: Why American Girls Don’t Play Baseball (Illinois, 2009) as a strategy to steer girls into softball and keep baseball for boys. Today, there are few girls on Little League teams. (see post)

It may be unfair to blame Little League for what is a larger cultural truth: baseball is not merely a terrific game, but an institution that celebrates male power. But it surely is not an accident that Little League dugouts are loaded with Dads re-living their youth and it’s a rarity to see a ponytail on the field.

I am the mother of a boy smitten with baseball and Little League. I love the game and played as a kid. But as an organization (and an effective one  – is there a better brand in youth sports?) Little League is missing an important opportunity. This is not just about allowing girls to play, but encouraging them.

And if there is a Little League Softball World Series, make it as big a deal as Little League Baseball. Otherwise the message is that 12-year-old boys are just more worth watching than 12-year-old girls. And, as one who has attended my share of games, I certainly don’t think that’s the case.

The lead women’s pack at mile 18 of The Boston Marathon 2009

One of the most frustrating things about watching the Boston Marathon is that it’s hard to tell how fast the runners are. I’m not talking TV coverage or the delay in the Boston Athletic Association website in recording runners’ progress (it’s actually a GREAT site). Or even the what-just-went-past? sensation one has watching from the race course.

What I mean is that we are keenly aware – especially this year – of how much slower the elite women’s pack was than the elite men’s pack. But that glaring gap misses the story.

Pause to note: This comment doesn’t diminish the fact that the women’s race was a riveting, nail-biting-scream-at-your-TV-exciting finish. American Kara Goucher put on a stunning effort for the USA, finishing third at 2:32:25. And she wasn’t even the one offering the tape line drama of Salina Kosgei of Kenya edging out Dire Tune of Ethiopia  — that’s 2:32:16 over Tune’s 2:32:17. Tune collapsed at the finish line. (Wouldn’t you, if you’d just lost a 26.2 mile race by ONE SECOND??!!)

My point, though: The men’s race was less dramatic, but swifter, with Deriba Merga gliding across the finish at 2:08:42, nearly a minute ahead of second place finisher Daniel Rono of Kenya and Ryan Hall of the USA.

BUT because the women’s race begins before the men’s race and because results are reported by gender first, the take-away is about how much faster the men are than the women (and, again, particularly this year when the women started off slow – the part of marathon running that is not about sheer speed but about gaming and strategy and how to beat your field).

Yet, if we look at the big picture of marathon running, we see that – heck – many of these really good women are running as fast as these really good men. Take Colleen De Reuck of Colorado (she led the women for a few moments at mile 18), who finished in 2:35:37, that was top among women aged 45-49. A little-made comparison: She came in second among the men in the 45-49 age group, right after Oleg Strizhakov of Florida (2:31:27) but before Michael Platt of Massachusetts (2:39:07).

Go through the race results and you find women finishing among top men around their own age. In the 40-44 age group, Alina Ivanova of Florida (2:36:50) was just a few seconds behind Robert Landry of Massachusetts (2:36:46), who finished 10th among his age peers.

Marathons are reported as men’s races and women’s races, but when we look beyond gender, it’s hard to miss the other story: There’s an awful lot of overlap among really good male and female distance runners.