We want all women to participate and enjoy sports equally, because women also have the freedom to love sports.
Text / Liu Xueting Liu He
Editor / Yin Haonan
01
Who's "urging them to get married"
March 8 is not Queen's Day, not Goddess Day, but Women's Day.
"Women's Day" is a festival established to celebrate the important contributions and great achievements of women in the economic, legal and social fields and the enjoyment of the same rights as men. "Woman" is not a shameful title, nor should it be reminiscent of the stigmatized image of old age, sloppiness, urban servant, and unreasonableness. On the contrary, some people interpret the word "woman" as a woman can also push down the mountain, and there is a sense of sublimity.
In recent years, feminism has gradually awakened, women's strength is constantly manifesting, in the face of many difficulties, women burst out some unimaginable vitality, women have long become the force that can withstand the "half of the sky".
But outside the arena, female athletes still bear a lot of pressure from traditional social ideas.
For example, "marriage urging".
Female athletes, always, should be independent individuals, not appendages of any man. However, in the media reports, it seems that too much attention is paid to the private lives of female athletes, and the use of inappropriate words to describe the achievements of female athletes.
Sui Wenjing, as the figure skating double skating champion at the Beijing Winter Olympics and one of the world's top figure skaters, the outside world should pay more attention to her pursuit of dreams and responses to doubts.
But if you look for Sui Wenjing's information, or a post-game interview, we will always see things like:
"Sui Wenjing's Response to Relationship with Han Cong"
"A good opportunity for Han Cong to chase his partner has come"
"Netizens have urged marriage"
......
Comments such as these occupy a large number of pages. Perhaps this is also the particularity of the pair skating event, but it also reflects the "special" pressure that the current society gives to female athletes.
Let's also not forget that after Sun Yiwen won the Tokyo Olympic Games, he was often asked about the "mate selection criteria"; Gong Lijiao's figure was also placed too many undeserved gazes under such a special "blind date context".
Even after winning the Asian Cup this year, topics such as "Wang Shanshan's standard for choosing a son-in-law" and "Zhao Lina's standard for choosing a son-in-law" have even been on Weibo's hot search.
In fact, isn't the experience of female athletes constantly challenging themselves, overcoming injuries and doubts, winning glory for the country, and blooming personal brilliance more worthy of media attention?
02
The plight of female athletes on the field
Like other fields, sports are inseparable from women's participation, and the development trend of women's sports is beyond doubt. However, under the current world professional sports system, female athletes have the overall level of market opportunities and media attention, and there is still a big gap between male athletes and even face many difficulties.
For example, in some sports, the "short flowering period" of female athletes has become a feature of the project.
After the women's singles match of figure skating at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the "Girl Factory" of Figure Skating in Russia entered everyone's field of vision.
In many sports, the light body of the little girl is more likely to achieve results, but after the glory, the development of puberty is in these projects, and women's figure skating is one of the "roll kings".
Therefore, the famous Russian coach "Face Sister" Tusit rize especially prefers girls before the developmental stage when selecting athletes, because they are smaller and lighter, and they can more easily complete difficult actions. In training, the face sister treats the team members almost cruelly, constantly instilling in them the concept of strict weight control. She once publicly praised the soft card, in order to control weight, long-term only eat nutritional powder.
Figure skaters seem to have easily completed multiple four-week jumps on the field, but many people only see them constantly breaking records and seeing their beautiful riding, but they can't see the thousands of practices they actually go through and the price they pay behind them.
Yulia Lipnitskaya (soft card), retired at the age of 19 due to anorexia and injury.
Medvedeva (Meva), who suffered permanent damage to her spine, stopped competing at the age of 21 and retired at the age of 22.
Shcherbakova (Qianjin), 17 years old, has plans to retire according to Russian media reports.
Finally, there are darker parts, such as bullying, such as sexual assault.
In 2018, gymnast Simone Byers came forward to expose the sexual assault scandal of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. Over the past 20 years, more than 200 athletes have reported sexual harassment from the team doctor.
But due to the intervention of the American Gymnastics Association and the closed and dictatorial training environment within the team, all unreasonable evils were buried in the darkness.
However, although the history of women's sports is full of difficulties and shackles, there are also many female role models who stand up and strive to become role models and hopes for the girls behind them.
03
A century of struggles for female athletes
As we all know, female athletes have access to opportunities and investment opportunities are not as good as men, and the remuneration and treatment obtained by labor are very different from those of men, and advocating equal pay for equal work has become a crucial part of women's sports.
The U.S. women's national soccer team, as the absolute hegemon of women's football in the world, four World Cup champions, four Olympic gold medals, ranked first in FIFA all year round, with Carly Lloyd, AbiE Warmbach, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapino and many other women's superstars, while the ranking of the U.S. men's soccer team hovers in the 10-20 range for many years. Not to mention the commercial income, only in terms of national team salaries, the national team income of the U.S. women's soccer team is only one-third of the U.S. men's soccer team.
In 2019, the U.S. women's soccer team formally sued the U.S. Soccer Federation for gender discrimination, and on February 22 this year, the U.S. women's national team reached a settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation, which will compensate the women's soccer team with $24 million, while promising to provide the same level of compensation for the men's and women's soccer teams, including world cup prize money. Basically, we can understand that the U.S. men's and women's national soccer teams achieve equal pay for men and women for equal work.
In order to achieve this step, the U.S. women's soccer team took 3 years.
U.S. Women's Soccer
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to participate in the Boston Marathon, when officials and some male runners were not accustomed to women running marathons, and came forward to obstruct her, trying to tear off her bib number.
From then on, Switzer began to fight for the rights of female runners, and eventually, the Boston Athletics Association gave in.
In 1972, the Boston Marathon officially welcomed women for the first time, and it took Switzer 5 years to complete this step.
In the first modern Olympic Games, women did not have to participate in the competition, and they did not even have the qualification to watch. Greek female athlete Mel Bomenni asked to participate in the marathon, but the organizing committee refused.
At the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, for the first time in Olympic history, female athletes were allowed to participate. Of the 1,330 athletes from various countries at the time, only 19 were women, and the official sports were only tennis and golf (cricket was a performance sport).
Athletics, the oldest core event of the Olympic Games, was not allowed for women until the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.
It was not until After World War II, when the feminist movement became more widespread, that the number of women's programs offered in the Olympic Games began to gradually increase. Weightlifting, wrestling, soccer, middle and long-distance running, and other sports that were widely considered "suitable" for men began to appear as women. At the 2012 London Olympics, women's boxing was listed as an official event, and the Olympic program finally achieved gender equality in all major events.
In 2020, the Olympic Agenda 2020 released by the International Olympic Committee listed "promoting gender equality" as one of the most important items.
This agenda has also been tested by two Olympic Games, from the tokyo Olympic Games, from the addition of multiple mixed events in many competitions to the first establishment of a man and a woman and two flag bearers at the opening ceremony, the IOC seems to be embodying the concept of "equality between men and women" in its own way.
According to data released by the International Olympic Committee, in terms of numbers, the proportion of female athletes participating in the Beijing Winter Olympics has reached a record high, and of the approximately 2900 athletes, women account for 45%. In terms of project settings, more than half of the events of the Beijing Winter Olympics have women participating, of which only one of the seven newly established events is exclusive to men, and the other six have female athletes participating.
Statistics of male and female athletes of Chinese delegations to the Summer Olympic Games
In the official coverage of the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee issued the "Gender Balance Reporting Guide", which stipulates how to describe and shoot women and female athletes, requiring media to focus more on female athletes themselves and refuse to use some gender-discriminatory terms.
The Olympic Agenda 2020 also mentions that for the first time in Paris 2024, the total number of male and female athletes will be 50%.
And from 0 to 50%, women struggled for 128 years.
The emblem of the Paris Olympic Games, with red lips to pay tribute to female athletes
Women's sports from scratch, from the embellishment of male athletes to become an indispensable part of competitive sports, women have been rebelling against the prejudices of the public, breaking the so-called "women should be" imposed on women by the world. Women are proving with their actions that sport is the best way to break stereotypes such as "gentleness" and "virtuousness".
On the eve of This year's Women's Day, an advertisement attracted a lot of attention: "A powerful woman does not have to be like a man, sweat belongs to women." 」 With encouragement like this, more and more girls are taking to the sports field to say goodbye to the "white and thin" in the traditional aesthetic and to pursue a healthier and more confident self.
In fact, when we talk about the dilemma of women's sports development and constantly try to break the stereotype to fight for women's rights, we do not want to create a contradiction between men and women, let alone try to deny the efforts and deeds of all men.
We just want to encourage more girls to let go of their baggage and be the most confident version of themselves.
Because women also have the freedom to love sports.