By Sarah Welsh-Huggins

Photo Courtesy of Carolyn Hill

Where are the women?

That’s a question that Lafayette’s intramural coordinators have asked themselves all fall.

Recreation Services organizes ten intramural sports competitions during the semester. This fall, all but three of them were composed entirely of male students. Only the 2 vs. 2 basketball tournament, the indoor volleyball league and the intramural soccer program saw any participation from women’s teams.

“It’s kind of an anomaly,” said Chris Thomas, a recent Louisiana State University graduate and a new addition to the intramural sports staff. According to Thomas, the breakdown in intramural participation at Lafayette used to be more even, but with the emergence of more club sports 10-15 years ago, female involvement in intramurals dropped dramatically. The improved workout facilities at the Kirby Sports Center have also played a factor.

Today, Lafayette’s female, non-varsity athletic students fall into two categories: “If they’re interested in competing, they will join club sports,” Thomas said. However, “a lot of women prefer individual, less structured activities” to stay fit, instead of team sports.

Psychology Professor Susan Basow believes that this attitude is not so anomalous, but rather rooted in a larger cultural perception about women’s physical fitness and their involvement in sports. Although the passage of Title IX forty years ago generated a huge increase in girls’ participation in athletics, there is still “a cultural ambivalence about women in athletics in ways that don’t exist for men,” Basow said. “For girls, it’s okay to be involved in sports, but it’s also okay not to be […] There’s not the expectation that girls will participate.”

For most boys growing up, they are “really encouraged, really expected to participate in sports,” Basow said. “Being physically athletic has always been part of men’s socialization.”

This is a trend that Thomas has also observed. “A lot of the frats have teams,” he said. The intramural programs also are composed of “a couple of freshmen teams from all-freshmen [residence] halls.” One team, he noted, is a group of seniors who lived in the same dorm their first year at Lafayette and have played together in intramurals ever since then.

Likely, this same group of friends will maintain their interest in sports for years to come. Compared with women, “there is a more continuing role for sports in men’s lives,” Basow said. Like Thomas, she noted that for a greater percentage of women than men, athletic participation is “seen as a way to be physically fit, to keep weight under control or to be part of a group,” and much less about bonding with their peers.

“The biggest feedback we’ve gotten,” Thomas said, is that most non-varsity or club sport female students at Lafayette, “just want to work out on their own time.”

And for those few women who are interested in playing intramurals, the reticence of their female classmates discourages their own participation. Thomas discussed one female student who tries consistently to form intramural teams for basketball or volleyball competitions—which are intended to be single-sex leagues—but is often unable to play because she and her friends are the only female team.

In college, participation in intramurals “becomes sort of a voluntary activity,” Basow said. “It competes with other activities.” In general, many women in college “spread their time more widely in other areas than men.”

Despite the gains in women’s athletic participation over the past few decades, Basow thinks that society’s gendered perception of male and female prioritization of activities will prevent any further major shifts in attitude.

Next spring, Rec. Services will attempt to draw in more women with the implementation of all-female flag football intramurals. But as of now, few women at Lafayette actively seek involvement in intramurals. “We don’t get a whole lot of questions from girls,” Thomas said.