Women’s Weight Lifting As Sport Discriminated Against On Grounds Of Gender

The research is devoted to the study of peculiarities of perception by adolescents (by both potential weightlifters and / or future parents, who in due time will have to participate in formation of the worldview and sporting interests of their children) of one of the gender denounced kinds of sports – women’s weightlifting. The research methods are as follows: interviewing students in the form of essay and questionnaire survey, qualitative and quantitative content analysis of interview results. 184 Moscow students (67 young men and 117 young women) at the age of 17-19 took part in the interview. On the whole, the attitude of modern adolescents to women’s weightlifting can be characterised as negative. At that, young men demonstrate greater rejection of this kind of sports than young women do. Voicing their discontent with women’s weightlifting, young men operate predominantly with exclusively gender-related epithets, the considerable part of which is of discriminating nature. In case of young women, 62.9 % of negative responses are of gender-related nature, they include: “unsuitable/unacceptable kind of sports for women”, “unwomanly kind of sports”, etc. The rest 37.1 % of negative responses of young women characterize women’s weightlifting as “dangerous and harmful for health”, “complicated”, “connected with heavy physical loads”, “injury-prone”, etc. The obtained findings suggest that the role of gender stereotypes in perception of women’s weightlifting by adolescent is extremely large. It manifests itself particularly in young men. However, young women tend to establish frameworks, limiting their own freedom of choice and actions. © 2018 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK