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If you really think about it there have been a lot of female athletes who have come up over the years. There was a time when we couldn't do anything and now we have lots of female athletes. There is nothing wrong with it. I LOVE being a female athlete. Dena, track and basketball
When I first started playing, it was to keep my grades up, and then I really started to enjoy basketball and it's like the number one thing. That's the reason why I just fell in love with sports. Running track-just anything that came towards me, I did it. Jasmine, basketball and track
Adrenalin rush. I just love it. Now practicing is not always so much fun, but when you're on the court and you have the clock up and the score and you're playing against people you've never played, it's just so much fun. It just brings joy to my life. Kerry, basketball player
With the exception of the military, sports is the most masculine, male-identified institution in the United States, and from its inception, it has been a closely cultivated arena for males to demonstrate their privilege and power. Unsurprisingly, the entrance of women into this sacred sphere has been carefully monitored and regulated (Cahn 1994; Griffin 1992; Park 1987; Sage 1990). While individual women have continuously contested their exclusion from or limited entry into the sports arena, feminists and advocates of women's rights have expressed ambivalent feelings about women's entrance into the world of sports. This ambivalence was evident in the early deliberations of many female physical educators who, on the one hand, pushed for women to be physically active and, on the other hand, sought to remake sports into a more feminine sphere by downplaying the competitive and aggressive aspects of sports (Cahn 1994; Nelson 1994). However, by the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 70s, the prevailing discussion among feminists in regard to sports was how to increase women's participation in sports so they could enjoy the same rights, privileges, and benefits of male athletes. Sports was seen as a critical arena for women to contest stereotypical images of the docile, passive, inert, incapable female body, thus challenging the patriarchal control and regulation of the...