The Eye

Keeping girls in SPORT

This year’s FAROS report shows that 70% of young women have abandoned sporting activities by the age of 18 and suggests ways of reversing the trend by placing more emphasis on the school and family dynamic

The transition from primary to secondary is essential, since it is when 13% of girls give up sport against 5.9% of boys. “We need to rethink the schoolyard. We need to put aside the traditional idea of an area with goals and basketball hoops”

It is not sim­ply that they do less sport, but they also stop play­ing at a younger age and even­tu­ally they end up pay­ing with health prob­lems that could have been pre­vented with reg­u­lar phys­i­cal ac­tiv­ity. This state­ment is backed by var­i­ous stud­ies show­ing that 80% of girls do not do the level of sport ad­vised by the WHO and that 70% of young woman stop play­ing sport when they reach ado­les­cence. One of those sur­veys was car­ried out by Barcelona’s Sant Joan de Deu Hos­pi­tal and pub­lished in the most re­cent FAROS re­port on ed­u­ca­tional fail­ure called Health and girls in sports.

The idea is sim­ple: it is not just a ques­tion of get­ting young girls into sports – at six years of age, 6.9% more boys are in­volved in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties than girls – so for those girls who do, then we must find ways to en­sure that the prac­tice re­mains at­trac­tive as they grow. The tran­si­tion from pri­mary to sec­ondary is es­sen­tial, since it is at this point that 13% of girls give sport up against only 5.9% of boys. By the time they reach 18, this has plum­meted and just three out of 10 are still in­volved in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

The same study shows that there has been at least some im­prove­ment since the last Sports Coun­cil re­port in 2010. “We are start­ing to see a so­cial aware­ness re­gard­ing the im­por­tance of sport in long-term health,” says the spe­cial­ist in sports med­i­cine, Eva Fer­rer, one of the co­or­di­na­tors of the FAROS re­port.

The study also claims that the va­ri­ety of sports avail­able also has an in­flu­ence. Often, cul­tural val­ues and stereo­types end up in­flu­enc­ing the choices made by girls. “The fact that there is now more vis­i­bil­ity of fe­male ath­letes is help­ing, but it is im­por­tant that there is more di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. It seems that girls are not won over as much by com­pet­i­tive sports and need op­tions to choose other play-like ac­tiv­i­ties,” Fer­rer in­sists.

In this re­gard, there is a need to con­sider the school and the fam­ily as the two basic pil­lars in the pro­mo­tion of sport among girls. “We must re­think the school­yard. We need to put aside the image of the tra­di­tional sports area with goals and bas­ket­ball hoops,” in­sists Fer­rer, who ar­gues that teach­ers need to de­velop a proac­tive at­ti­tude against in­equal­ity. “What is needed is to lessen the focus on ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­ated with tra­di­tion­ally mas­cu­line cul­ture and pro­mote val­ues and ac­tiv­i­ties tra­di­tion­ally as­so­ci­ated with a fe­male cul­tural model,” says the re­port.

Sim­i­larly, we must re­work the fam­ily dy­namic. “The idea is to cre­ate an open choice of pos­si­bil­i­ties and re­ject so­cial con­di­tion­ing. Why should see­ing a girl doing mar­tial arts be an ex­cep­tion, or a boy in­volved in dance?” asks Fer­rer.

There is a lot at stake. Be­cause sport with young­sters has more than an im­me­di­ate ef­fect. It is also an in­vest­ment in the fu­ture. There are nu­mer­ous stud­ies that have shown that in the long run it re­duces the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, os­teo­poro­sis, and even some can­cers. It also has psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits, for anx­i­ety, stress or de­pres­sion. In this re­gard, ex­perts in­sist that “it is es­sen­tial that sport be­comes a habit be­cause it is proven that ac­tiv­i­ties for chil­dren will en­sure more phys­i­cal ac­tiv­ity once that young boy or girl reaches adult­hood,” and this is key to fam­ily ac­tiv­i­ties. “Walk­ing or hik­ing is sim­ply a mat­ter of will­ing­ness,” said Fer­rer.

FAROS Sant Joan de Déu is a plat­form that aims to pro­vide fam­i­lies and pro­fes­sion­als in the field of health and ed­u­ca­tion with qual­ity in­for­ma­tion about health and the well­be­ing of chil­dren. The plat­form of­fers more than 1,000 health sug­ges­tions, clas­si­fied by age and themes, such as food, learn­ing and dis­eases. Once a year it pub­lishes a re­port analysing a par­tic­u­lar as­pect in depth. This re­port is the 11th that has been car­ried out so far.

health

FAROS: the health and wellbeing of children

FAROS is an online reference centre for families run by the Sant Joan de Déu hospital in Barcelona. Apart from developing awareness of social issues and health through publications, such as this report on young women in sport, on a regular basis, families, educators and health professional will find a wealth of information on nearly every aspect related to child development. The hospital says its reports, or Quaderns, are “a series of monographic reports on child and youth health issues addressed to parents and educators, as well as to health professionals. In their preparation, professionals from the hospital and others of national and international relevance participate.”

faros.hsjdbcn.org

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