Once a female athlete spoke out about menstrual complaints – skater Jutta Leerdam, during the World Cup competitions – and she immediately made the news. Gosh, a woman who doesn’t feel very well because she has her period. A week later, Leerdam said that she is feeling better since she no longer pays such strict attention to her diet and what has gained weight. Whoops, news again! It shows how the female body is viewed, as if it were something special.
The woman as an exception is not exceptional. It is also in medical science. Female athletes come off badly in sports medicine research, it appears an American analysis of 669 studies that appeared in six authoritative sports-medical scientific journals between 2071 and 2021. Of all those studies, 71 percent only focused on men. Research exclusively on women accounted for only 9 percent of the total. Only one-fifth of the sports-medical literature dealt with both men and women, was reported at the end of December The American Journal of Sports Medicine.
In some sports, women were the subject of a research question more often than average, such as volleyball. In many sports, research was strongly dominated by men, such as rugby. Looking at softball alone, women were studied relatively often, but baseball and softball together resulted in an overwhelming majority of men’s studies: 91 percent. Which is not surprising: baseball is a typical male sport and is one of the three major American sports. The under-representation of women will therefore be partly due to their low participation in the most popular sports. But that way you can also bounce the ball back, because why is there a difference between men’s and women’s sports? It does not go beyond a brief explanation of the rise of women in sports since the 1970s.
Collect a lot of data
The researchers suggest that the disparity between male and female athletes extends to medical research. Inequality perpetuates inequality, you could say. Research on men is also easier because professional teams of men collect a lot of data about injuries. And perhaps, the authors write, the fact that there are far fewer female sports doctors also has something to do with it. Women are more likely to conduct research on women.
Money is cited as one of the main explanations for inequality. In sports that involve a lot of money, there is also more money for research. And where is the most money? Exactly: the ‘Big 3’. Baseball, American football and basketball. The sports that also get 75 percent of the airtime for sports.
More research into sportswomen is desirable, the researchers write. Because they get injured more often than men, and because there are differences in anatomy and hormones, for example. Scientific journals also have a responsibility, the authors believe. They can put a little more pressure on researchers to include women in their studies.