CyanicenineI'm not talking about different leagues being the issue, I'm talking about a deeply ingrained societal bias surrounding specific sports. For example Football is widely regarded as a manly man's sport. Whereas Ballet is considered a feminine girly sport. This is widely instilled in us from a very young age. That's not to say that we don't have people crossing those boundaries, but the boundaries are there, and firmly affixed in our minds. Every sport has gender slant to it and this effects how we think and feel about those sports.
That's unavoidable because sports do have preferences like that. Women generally are more flexible than men and are naturally leaner so sports where those are advantages, of course more women will do that. Sports where being huge and muscle is an advantage, more men play. It's not hard to understand and it's not some societal bias... you're just looking way too hard into it and are actually repeating a lot of material from undergrad classes... which explains a bit.
CyanicenineFreeskiing has been around for long enough, and just regular ole skiing has been around for even longer. Female representation in skiing is far from proportional to the general population. Rollerderby's WFTDA was only founded in 2004 yet that sport is overflowing with women. Could societal influences play a role here? Freeskiing isn't that new, that's not a good enough excuse.
Compared to basically any other sport, freeskiing has not been around for long at all. I'm not sure when you got into this aspect of skiing but even 10 years ago, freeskiing wasn't nearly as popular as it is now and now it's still far behind the recognition and participation levels of most sports. That goes for park and for "extreme" hot doggin. This sport- many aspects of it are still in their infancy. I have no idea what Roller Derby has to do with freeskiing, it's just muddling the conversation.
CyanicenineParents make up society, there's no distinction here. There are occasionally really awesome parents that try to let their children be who they want to be, and disregard stereotypes, but it's an uphill battle. Most parents are still going to sign their young girls up for things like tap and jazz class, while boys are more likely to get signed up for T-ball. All this before the age where they can even decide what they like. (I was in tap a jazz ages 4-7, I certainly didn't ask to be and I wouldn't have been able to articulate my interests at that age anyways, so it was completely in the hands of my mother).
Parents don't make up society, some parents tend to follow the "popular" ideals of what you might consider as part of "society's" status quo. Again, you're generalizing all parents when that's simply not true. Not all parents are going to buy blue for boys, pink for girls, etc. junk. If the parents are outdoorsy, they'll pass it along to their kids. If the parents are self-absorbed pieces of shit, they'll buy a girl nothing but dresses and will disown their son when he wears his sister's dress. Again it's up to the parents, not some mystical, unspoken standards of society to determine how parents raise their kids.
[/QUOTE]I agree that this is changing (slowly). It's not the 1950's anymore, but we're still not where we could be in terms of equal representation of women in sports. Especially sports that are considered extreme, or testosterone driven.[/QUOTE]
Yeah it's not a perfect world but lemme ask you something... what would you consider as "equal" in action sports? Is it the prize amounts? The number of participants being equal? These don't determine whether your being treated equally in a sport or not. How you're treated by your fellow participants is a sign of equality, not numbers.
[/QUOTE] Define plenty? I live in Seattle which is very liberal compared to most of the country. If there aren't any women park skiers here where are they? There are a few women snowboarders in the terrain parks at Steven's and Snoqualmie, but for every one female snowboarder in the park there are hundreds of guys.
Let's not not even talk about the park, let's just talk about the general skier population, if I look around the lift line on pow day (I have tons of time to people watch since I like to get their early enough for first chair) it's about a 10 to 1 ratio for men to women, and that's probably a generous estimate. If that's not inequality I don't know what is.[/QUOTE]
Plenty as in there are women on the hill and its not one female snowboarder for every couple hundred of guys... which sounds like a massive exaggeration to me. Go visit PCMR for example- you'll see a couple lady shredders every lap. Again the number of lady shredders in your location is not a sign of society as a whole. When talking about the general skiing population, there are still many women who ski and again just because there isn't exactly as many women as men on the slope doesn't mean that skiing is not equal. Again, go look at HS/collegiate race teams, there are many women who rip. Yeah there are some chauvinist douches but they're everywhere.
I think some women just look wayyy too hard into situations and this is a prime example of that. There are other issues of inequality out there that deserve a lot of attention but this is hardly one of them. Just go ski and try to convince your friends to go skiing with you and properly introduce them to the sport with a blunt and a handle of whiskey- that's how you get more female participants.
You can respond to this shitshow but I've wasted too much time entertaining it. Just go ski.
