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Teaching Games For Understanding
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The essay will discuss whether Sport in New Zealand has had a positive influence on gender relations and does it creates opportunities for women? The discussion will focus on information from research, readings and personal experiences. Gender is a social phenomenon which shapes our sense of personal identity, the nature of our everyday interactions with others and the sets of social relations embedded in institutions such as family, the workplace, the school, the state, the media and sports. “Gender is something that societies make” (Court & O’Neill, 2001, p.7). The writer acknowledges that gender relations are fluid and dynamic ,they are constantly changing within times and places. That is part of the answer; however we as a country need to evolve and improve our gender relations. Sport is a vehicle for promotion and or regression of these principles. The majority of the literature in the area of ‘gender and sports’ has come from the USA and therefore is related to American culture and ideologies and has some relevance to the New Zealand setting. It was found in North American families that young girls were not discouraged from playing sport and engaging in physical activity but they were likely to be treated by their brothers in three respects. One being that fathers spend considerably less time in shared physical activities and exercises with their daughters in comparison to their sons. Playtime is more likely to be regulated and controlled by parents and thirdly girls are less likely to learn that physical activities and achievements in sport can or should be uniquely important sources of rewards in their lives. It is no wonder that girls end up playing different kinds of games than those their brothers play, in the majority of childhood experiences in the past and even now, Lever (1976,1978 cited in Coakley, 1998, p. 242). However Jim McKay a senior lecturer in the department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland, Australia is the most visible and significant scholar of managing gender relations in sport in the Commonwealth. His book ‘Managing gender’ Affirmative action and Organizational power in Australia, Canadian, and New Zealand Sport. Evaluates the implementation of affirmative action programmes in these countries and how these action initiatives usually have been marginalised, trivialised, or incorporated into the corporate-managerial and masculinist cultures that pervade sporting organsiation, the media, and the government (McKay, 1997). McKay provides evidence and examples in which legislated equity initiatives can be resisted by the state and by some women. There are many barriers to ‘break-down’. Some of them are administrative while others are opposite gender related, however many of the problems stem from traditional role models. The writer has included studies of participation numbers and gender differences from Australia and New Zealand. These studies identify the problems that we face and need to resolve in issues of equity. The primary problem, is the need to promote a healthy lifestyle for all with particular emphasis on affirmative action programmes for women and girls. Legislation could also provide a further catalyst for the enhancement of these programmes. Participation in Sport and Active Leisure by New Zealand Children and Adolescents survey was undertaken by Sue Walker, Jenny Ross and Alistair Gray. They surveyed 1518 five to seventeen year old New Zealanders. 36 per cent of girls were inactive and 26 per cent of boys were inactive, with 64 per cent of girls active an 74 per cent of boys were active. 2.5 hours per week of sport and active leisure were considered as the guideline between inactive and active categories. “If appropriate physical activity enhances the lifetime health and well-being of individuals and if childhood experiences influence adult behaviour, then a first step in promoting physical activity in younger age groups is to establish the baseline level of physical activity” (Walker, et al. p 4,1999). Some gender differences in physical activity reveals that boys are significantly more active than girls. These results are consistent with Physical activity of New Zealand teenagers report based on the Life in New Zealand survey (Wilson, Hopkins, Russell. 1993) and an Australian survey of participation in sport and physical education activities (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998 ). These surveys and reports tell us that we need to promote equality of participation, but is it enough to identify the problems that we already know? The answer is categorically NO! Only when we use a multi-dimensional approach to enhancing the activity and development of girls and women will we be able to say sport and leisure has contributed to positively to gender relations in New Zealand.
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