ABSTRACT
Research from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the summer found a quarter of girls aged 5 to 10 had not taken part in any sport over in the previous month – a rise of almost 50% in five years. Many, many schools still segregate pupils by gender in physical education (PE) or sport in the United Kingdom. It is much more likely in secondary schools but still common in primary too, as far as I can tell (statistics are remarkably hard to find). ‘Gender-integrating sports might potentially decrease some of the socionegative outcomes attributed to male team sport athletes, possibly including violence against women’, explains a research paper called ‘I used to think women were weak’. At the time of writing, every other sporting event in the Olympics is segregated by gender (only men compete against men, and only women against women) except a few mixed-pair categories, and several events are completely different.
