Equal ain't just a sugar substitute!

Today I caught the Canadian Women's Bowling Championship (do you think I could find a link to this anywhere on the web? No. And that's part of the problem. Anyway --). I didn't realize it was a women's championship. I saw a lady bowling and thought, "You don't see too many professional female bowlers out there." And then I noticed that her opponent was also female. And I realized it was only women bowling.

Stupid epiphany, hey? Anyway, I started thinking about gender divisions in sports. Any time I bring up something like this I have to be careful of what I say -- if I phrase something wrong I could end up having hell rained on my head. But traditionally there has been a gender division in sports that is based on some very realistic differences. Some sports, like football and hockey, have kept the genders separate because the powers-that-be believe females are at a disadvantage in strength and speed. While this is not always the case, obviously, I believe this is something that should be kept in mind. Other sports have similar divisions, such as golf: men can generally drive farther than women, so women would be at an immense disadvantage if they competed head to head. On the other hand sports like tennis are generally gender-segregated, but have found room for mixed gender play in the form of doubles.


But why the hell is bowling segregated? If you can throw strikes consistently, shouldn't you be able to do so when competing against another gender? I suddenly realized there is a whole slew of sports that segregate for reasons other than physical prowess. Like darts, or curling. Does lawn bowling work this way? I don't even know.


Maybe there are reasons that I'm missing. I think the answer is probably more to do with politics than differences between gender: the number of bowling events would probably drop if men and women competed together, sponsorship would go down, not as many avenues for competition, etc. Or maybe the women want to compete separately. Either of these reasons could be more excuses than reasons.


For people interested, this link to the National Association for Girls & Women in Sport is killer awesome. This is American, so you know. It outlines how funding for women and men sport in college must be equal, but 80% of universities in the U.S. still do not abide by this legislation. College football is a biggie: four times in the last several decades schools have tried to get football excluded from the legislation, citing the extremely high costs of the sport and that their profits go back towards all athletics. NAGWS own studies find these numbers to be inflated, and state that there already exists legislation that allows for extra expenditures in football. So there. Interestingly enough, varsity cheerleading is not considered a sport -- unless they have a coach, practice as much as sports teams, and compete against other squads more often than they cheer at games. Could this ruling perhaps be influential on the popularity in competitive cheerleading today?


As an aside, 5 pin bowling is apparently something peculiar to Canada. Canadians invented it in 1905 and it never really caught on anywhere else. Yet we eat it up here. Crazy. And I was originally gonna post the famous picture of American soccer star Mia Hamm celebrating a goal by ripping off her shirt, exposing her Nike bra underneath. I thought this was seen as an iconic photograph of women's sport -- at which I was going to rip it apart for being such a ridiculous picture to be iconized (?). But I couldn't find the picture. So maybe I was wrong about the whole thing. The pic I did use is the U of Toronto women's hockey team -- circa 1925.