OFF-SCRIPT: Why we **still** need programming for girls.
A plea to stop other'ing women and girls in sports
In the last five or so years (or like my whole life), I’ve collected more than a few moments that remind me what it means to be a woman in cycling.
I was climbing Red Bud one day, coming up on a man and what looked like his pre-teen son. The dad shouted back, “Speed up before a girl passes you.” Minutes later, I passed them both — it’s a trail I ride regularly on my single speed hardtail mountain bike.
On another ride, a man admitted to me afterward: “When I saw a woman was leading the group, I thought, is this the right ride for me? Now my goal is to keep up with you.”
And then there are the photo comments—men weighing in on pictures of me barreling down Devil’s Racetrack, calling me “adorable” for having the right form and looking the right way.
I’ve also volunteered to lead mountain bike rides with Boy Scouts—an organization that’s now co-ed. Out of a dozen or more pre-teen and teenage boys, maybe one or two girls would show up. Do you know how hard it is for those girls to even show up in such a male-dominated sport? And then to hear boys dismiss the women leading the ride, saying we were “only there because a girl showed up”? Comments like that aren’t just disrespectful—they’re damaging. They reinforce the very barriers that make it so hard for girls to feel like they belong in the first place.
These things add up. They don’t just stick with me—they trickle into the conversations I have at home. Over the years I’ve had to explain to my son why there are programs designed just for girls while many of his are co-ed.
It’s not easy to keep showing up when you’re constantly navigating microaggressions about your sex. But the truth is: girls are quitting sports at alarming rates in their pre-teen years. And when the environment reinforces the message that they don’t belong, why wouldn’t they?
Ok—now I’m off to mentor some bad*ss Little Bellas!
https://womeninsport.org/news/more-than-1-million-teenage-girls-fall-out-of-love-with-sport/
https://ambcknox.org/trail/baker-creek-preserve/