Gymnastics is a sport that displays strong coordination, physical agility, and flexibility of the people involved. This modern sport is divided between men and women, requiring them to compete with varying exercises. For women, gymnastics typically involves the floor, the vaulting horse, the balance beam, and uneven bars. For men, gymnastics typically involves the floor, rings, pommel horse, horizontal bars, and parallel bars. The players in this sport are the gymnasts, competing either on the individual level or in groups of teams. The communicators in this sport are the personal coaches that choreograph the gymnasts’ routines, select music for their floor exercises, as well as observe and spot the athletes as they preform their routines on the different apparatuses.
The internal gender dynamics of gymnastics are first seen within the audience. Women’s gymnastics is much more popular than men’s because there is more than twice as much people watching it. As a result, there is also a much higher level of participation in women’s gymnastics compared to men’s, making this sport predominately female. There aren’t many rules in gymnastics as there are in other sports. If the gymnast messes up their routine, falls, or looses balance, they get a certain amount of points deducted. This could eliminate them from moving onto the next level in the competition. My personal views on the interplay of sports and gender is that I love how the gymnastics industry is still mainly run by powerful and strong women. When most popular sports are male-dominated, it’s nice to see some female representation thats lets us have “our own thing” to be proud of, like Simone Biles winning a total of 32 Olympic and World Championship medals. Wildness in this sport means small female gymnasts are defying the laws of gravity by flying up so high in the air and doing multiple flips simultaneously.
Katsiaryna Aliashkevich
I have always found gymnastics very interesting and fun to watch, so I’m glad you posted about the wildness of it. Like you, I perceive the strength needed by a gymnast to be incredibly intense and “wild”. I found it interesting that you love how the gymnastics industry is still mainly run by women because usually people look for “equivalency” in sports. I, like you, do agree that there needs to be more sports dominated by women because at this point, most sports are dominated by men. I wonder if people perceive gymnastics a certain way JUST because gymnastics is female dominated. Good job!
In my opinion, gymnastics is definitely one of the most impressive sports to watch people compete in. Simone Biles is an icon! I do wonder, though, what impact gender roles and stereotypes had on gymnastics becoming so thoroughly female-dominated. I think there is a possible argument to be made that the same restrictive gender norms that say sports like football or basketball are more masculine may also implicitly say that sports like gymnastics are more feminine. Or maybe the sport became female-dominated and then the stereotype developed? Good work on your post, it’s quite thought-provoking.
I completely agree that the sport of gymnastics is dominated by females due to its nature of seeming more feminine, especially in the floor routines, which includes dance moves and other moves that, in nature, are considered to be feminine, even though the sport is very tough and involves a lot of strength. I think the sport is also more female dominated because parents tend to put their daughters through gymnastic programs at a young age, not their sons, which means that the young population of gymnasts are majority females as well.
I agree that gymnastics is a a really cool sport to watch, and it is definitely very “wild” to see the flips and tricks that the gymnasts are able to perform. I also agree that the female representation in gymnastics is something that we as females can be proud of, as the sports industry is filled by male dominated sports.