The controversy over women’s clothing in sports is not something new. Already in 2021, the beach ball bikini caused a loud controversy that led the International Handball Federation to change the rules: from that moment on, beach handball players can wear shorts instead of bikinis. A conquest that the players had been fighting for a long time considering that their work clothes were sexist and objectified their bodies.
Now, a new investigation returns to put on the table the debate of the feminine sports uniforms.
The study presented in the United Kingdom has shown that 70% of women saw girls drop out of sports when they were in school because of their clothes and body image concerns, with many feeling “sexualized” by what they were forced to wear.
Published Friday in the journal Sport, Education and Society after research conducted by England hockey international Tess Howard, the study also found that wearing different uniforms may influence the development of a fear of “masculinization” and “masculine/lesbian” perceptions in sport. and “point out the ways in which the uniform can contribute to harmful athletic-female identity tensions in adolescent girls.”
Recent studies have shown that at the age of 14, only 10% of girls meet the health standards related to physical activity. More than 1 million girls in the UK lose interest in sport as teenagers.
“The findings that I discovered, in terms of the number of girls that this is putting off the sport, they are really alarming. It’s the most underrated cause of low women’s sports numbers,” Howard said. Research into him has led to the release of new inclusive game uniform regulations at the start of the domestic hockey season.
“It’s about choosing; the choice is to be rigorously inclusive. No person should stop participating in any sport based solely on what the uniform requires them to wear. We must put the purpose of sport first and allow people to enjoy being active for all the clear benefits.”
Howard scored in England’s win over Australia at the Commonwealth Games last year as they won a historic gold medal but missed the Tokyo 2020 Olympics with an ACL injury. She hopes that her research, which included responses from more than 400 women ages 18 and older, can help bring about change in the sport at the highest level.
“My dream is to go to the Olympics, but my dream is also an Olympics with the option to wear shorts or skirts,” she said.
“That is a powerful statement of inclusion, belonging and evolution in women’s sport. If people want to wear another type of uniform to play basketball, tennis or gymnastics, it doesn’t matter.”
The Football Association has already confirmed that the England women’s soccer team will change the color of their shorts to blue after long-standing concerns about wearing white during periods. A decision that the New Zealand women’s team has also made- The oceanic team will change color and will no longer wear white due to the menstruation of their footballers, who had requested several times that this be done due to the “anxiety” they suffered from the ruler.
