speech

“It makes me think about”

 

Topic: Female sports should be equal to male sport.

Facts:

  • In the Football world cup the males prize money is $51.5 million were as the females prize money is at $2.9 million.
  • British sprinter Jeanette Kwakye first winner’s cheque of €500 at a small competition in Ireland.  Men in the 100m at the same event received €2,000.

 

This lies in the birth of modern sport, 150 years ago. Victorian society viewed sport as “inseparable from the philosophy of Muscular Christianity, which defined itself against femininity and ‘softness’,” It did not think much of the notion of women playing, But this is the 21st century now and woman play sport of their own or equal to the mens.

 

What injuries are most common among female athletes?

  • Ankle sprain. This is the most common sports injury in both men and women, but it’s particularly common among women.
  • Shoulder troubles. Examples include rotator cuff problems (including tendon inflammation, or tendinitis) and instability.
  • Knee injuries. These include irritation under theknee cap (called patellofemoral syndrome) and ligament damage (including tears to the ACL), which is especially common among soccer and basketball players.

Why are women more prone to these injuries than men?

There is probably a combination of factors that contribute to the higher incidence of injuries among female athletes. And we have more theories than actual answers. The most common explanation is that it’s due to basic differences between the bodies of men and women. For example, the typical female athlete, as compared with her male counterpart, has:

  • higher estrogen levels, along with less muscle mass and more body fat
  • greater flexibility (due to looser ligaments) and less powerful muscles
  • a wider pelvis, which alters the alignment of the knee and ankle
  • a narrower space within the knee for the ACL to travel through
  • a greater likelihood of inadequate calcium and vitamin D intake.

 

Introduction:

I remember playing my first years of sport,unknown that I could earn money from this when I was older.  Should female athletes earn the same as males?

Science says they work harder. I’m going to talk about three points today. Firstly about the biomechanics between males and females. Secondly why females don’t make it big in certain sports and lastly the injury counts between females and males.

 

Para: 1

Are female and male athletes physically different? Yes and it doesn’t take rocket science to answer to this. But there are some Science Biomechanics that have proved that females work physically harder than males when training and playing sport.  In a healthy individual women have less muscle in the upper body especially around the shoulders and neck compared to the males. This difference can be as large as 30 percent. Males also naturally have bigger lungs than females making it easier for them to do endurance sports such as marathons and cycling.

So let’s compare. The time difference between male and female 100m sprints are about 10% but the javelin is 30%. Now you may think that’s not much but In golf, to drive the ball 200m a female would have to use 80-90% of her maximum force whereas the males use 60%. From this we can tell that we’re slightly weaker than males in sport and to get close to their times such as the 100m sprints or to drive a golf ball, our bodies physically have to work much harder. I believe we shouldn’t be earning less, because we have to work harder.

 

Para: 2

I know playing a sport isn’t all about the money, it’s the passion, But considering the fact you can earn money from sport, then why are we earning less than the males.

An example of this is the football world cup. The men’s prize money is sitting at $51.5 million whilst the females are sitting at $2.9 million. This is a massive difference of 48.6 million dollars. I think ridiculous. This from the birth of modern sport, 150 years ago. Victorian society viewed sport as indivisible from the philosophy of muscular christianity, which was against the softness of femininity. Women’s sport has always been a big change in the gender inequality. We in NZ have poor coaching and facilities and this all due to huge funding gaps between female and male sport. Therefore this lacks the notice and support from people and coaches around the world, because of not having the proper facilities, coaching and funding, we can’t make teams to go away and play for sponsors because there is no training in place or enough females to play because the idea of females playing sport is more unknown compared to the males. Do u wonder why not many females make it big in the sporting industry? It’s not because they don’t have talent but because there is not enough money involved to get them there. Believe it or not but the way the world works today, you need to have more money than you do talent to go anywhere. I can say this is true from  my own perspective as this is my case, I would love to go professionally in football and believe I have the talent too… but, I don’t have enough fundings to travel to and back for trials and games in different regions to play for different teams and make my way to national level.  And this is kinda dream crushing. And what’s worse about the female pay gap is the discrimination of our bodies. Sepp Blatter the president of FIFA for 7 years once said in 2004 that “ we should get females to play in different and more feminine garbs.” He wanted them to play in “tighter shorts,” because “ beautiful woman play football nowadays.” Okay cool I guess some could take that as a compliment but excuse females for saying no. We play sport not for our bodies to be shown off but for our passion for the sport. This is why females don’t make it big in sport, because of these factors, from the not enough coaching and money or to the discrimination of our bodies. Female football players could rise further through the ranks if these factors were not in the way.

 

Para:3

Females have as higher chance of injuries in sport. In a recent study by nationwide children’s hospital in ohio looked at football injuries in kids aged 7 to 17 over a 24 year span. There was a 78 % increase in female football related injuries. Other studies also like this one showed that older female athletes were also more prone to injury. Quite often this involved a lot of medical care and lots of physio. This can be expensive depending on how bad the injury is and how long rehabilitation will take. Now the main injuries that females suffer from are shoulder troubles, Knee injuries and ankle sprains. I suffer from knee and ankle problems, ankle sprain being the most recent. Already I have dealt with a fair share of these problems and know what it’s like to have to go through rehabilitation and physio and know how dare it can be. Reason as to why we are more prone to injury is because of our higher estrogen levels, less muscle mass and more body fat, looser ligaments and less muscle power. These are more the things that females can’t help, but a few that are possible to change is we have wider pelvises and this alters knee and ankle alignment when jumping and landing, but this can be helped by training and jumping to the correct alignment until the body becomes more familiar with the proper alignment being legs straight and not bent in. There are also problems such as low calcium and vitamin D intake but obviously this can be helped by vitamin D tablets or perhaps seeing the sun a little more. Calcium  also has tablets you can take or simply drink a couple of glasses of milk a day. These will strengthen bones and muscles, making injuries more avoidable.

 

I believe that this is another reason why we should earn the same as the males because we need to cover more injury costs and time out of the sport as well as the fact that we have to work harder biomechanically and train bones and muscles to become more stronger to avoid injury. I feel we deserve it and it’s kinda unfair anyways that males earn more.

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