And while society considers the "generic person" to be male, both men and women may identify with a male athlete, but men will not identify with a female athlete.
It's also the case that up until the last century or so, sports were considered unfeminine, so that kept a lot of women from becoming atheletes. That is part of why most sports fans are men and why the most popular (i.e. lucrative) sports are played by men. I think it's only now that we're seeing a large numbers of women athletes, and only now that they are beginning to compete on equal footing with men in certain sports, like golf for instance.
I think you can draw a lot of parallels to women's education, for instance -- separate colleges for men and women, active discouragement to women pursuing certain subjects, etc. Heck, it wasn't until the 1960's that Harvard allowed women undergrads use its libraries!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-07-20 09:29 pm (UTC)It's also the case that up until the last century or so, sports were considered unfeminine, so that kept a lot of women from becoming atheletes. That is part of why most sports fans are men and why the most popular (i.e. lucrative) sports are played by men. I think it's only now that we're seeing a large numbers of women athletes, and only now that they are beginning to compete on equal footing with men in certain sports, like golf for instance.
I think you can draw a lot of parallels to women's education, for instance -- separate colleges for men and women, active discouragement to women pursuing certain subjects, etc. Heck, it wasn't until the 1960's that Harvard allowed women undergrads use its libraries!