November 8, 2024 • 41 mins
All the research on youth engagement with sport, physical education and physical activity indicates that boys are more active than girls. However, 'boys' and 'girls', 'male' and 'female' are not homogenous groups and beneath the headlines sits lots of different relationships. In this short session, we will explore how you can better understand gendered relationships with PE/PA in your school rather than rely on 3rd party surveys.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
One, two, three, four.
(00:07):
Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the My Move Fall webinar series hosted by the HPE Collective.
Today's webinar is the fourth in a series of six episodes.
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Our host, Greg Dreyer, the founder of My Move, is here to discuss a very important topic with us today, the gender activity gap.
Before we dive into it, I'd like to say thank you to all of our listeners for your support over the last several weeks.
We're very close to surpassing 100 listeners across our channel, so we hope that you will continue to listen and share HPE radio with your friends.
(00:54):
And with all of that said, I'm going to toss it over to Greg Dreyer to get us started today.
Thanks very much, Jordan. And nice to be here again. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Jordan, I think this is number four of six. Is that correct?
That's correct.
And I'm also really wary that this is being presented by myself as a someone who identifies as a man, and Jordan is obviously co-hosting, and he's also a man.
(01:26):
And there's, maybe that is somewhat problematic in that we clearly don't really understand the activity experiences of girls, young women, etc.
Having said that, you know, we welcome your comments as always. And if we get stuff that, especially that female colleagues think that we're off the mark with, then reach out and we're very open to hearing what you have to say.
(02:02):
But this has been something in my professional and my personal life as a parent, especially that has always been really, really dear to me.
And I think I would drop it into the wider conversation around inclusive PE and inclusive physical activity and sport. And we've touched upon some of those things in the last three weeks.
(02:27):
And so within the inclusion, and, you know, this is where I think there's, there's, it gets a little bit tricky. So right from the start, you know, I want to just flag up what's often referred to as intersectionality.
And I said that as a man, I don't have an experience what physical activity might feel like in the environments that girls and young women might take part in in sport and activity.
(02:58):
But of course, I don't want to say, I don't want to pretend right from the start that, you know, girls and young women are a monolithic, homogenous group.
And so intersectionality must always be at the forefront. We've got our lens on gender right now. But obviously, you know, girls would have different experience depending on that combination of multiple social factors.
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You know, black girls and white girls would have different experiences to maybe Hispanic girls and able-bodied disabled kids would have different experiences too.
And indeed, you know, if we look in right front loaded it from the off. Now if we're looking at how misogyny and maybe sexism impacts on participation, then clearly they're not experienced the same across all.
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Girls and young women.
There's an awful lot of new conversation here around adultification of kids like when the kids begin to be perceived as adults and when do they stay young and treated as children.
And there's a lot of black writers who are pointing out that black girls in particular are adultified much earlier than white girls.
(04:24):
And that leads to all sorts of problems that are at the calls by the adults who are going to just plain language or falling into that trap based on probably prejudicial views.
Anyway, without further ado, so let's bring this right down to practice and I'm going to try and be a little bit more conversational with maybe with Jordan and anyone else who joins us.
(04:54):
So thinking of the students you teach the boys and girls engage in physical activity differently and how now Jordan as the only teacher.
I mean I can reflect on my teaching over many years in London in your classes do boys and girls engage in physical activity differently and how if so how would you describe the difference.
(05:15):
Yeah, and I want to say thank you for the way that you have introduced us into this topic.
As a man as a teacher and as a father, like the most important thing for me when considering these topics is really to situate myself as an observer to be able to try to understand people who are different from me and in their experiences in my classroom and so when I do think about the students that I teach.
(05:46):
Boys and girls do engage in physical activity differently but like you said, these groups are not monolithic and so there's so much nuance to who these kids are and the reasons that they do participate in physical activity and the ways they engage but
I'll start with a broad observation in that the boys in my classroom tend to come in seeking the like more traditional competitive environment where they believe that physical education is there to separate those of great ability versus those of less ability.
(06:30):
And they want to kind of surround themselves with people who they think are, you know, going back to our last conversation quote unquote good at PE, because they think that points on the scoreboard are the most important thing.
Whereas, most of the girls who I interact with do not come into my class with that competitive edge, but rather, they're more focused on the social experience that the physical activity can provide so a lot of the conversations that I have with my young women are around wanting to be with
(07:11):
students in a setting where they can talk they can listen to music. A lot of dancing happens in my class, even if dance isn't the, the unit of study, you know, I watched my students play a modified volleyball game today called Nitro ball.
And I look over and the girls at one of my, one of my nets were playing but they were also singing along to spice girls and dancing and just really enjoying themselves whereas, you know, on the other side of my net, I have one core group of athletic boys who were very intense on making sure
(07:50):
they knew what the score was, and setting up proper volleyball plays and again, not to create like paint with a really broad brush but there are some differences and what I see the students that I interact with and when they come into PE.
(08:11):
Thank you. Yeah, fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. It is the fascination of observation. And I guess so just a little bit background before we can really come back to that.
I think, no, if we're talking about engagement in physical activity globally, this is clearly going to vary around the world. So the World Health Organization, and as someone from a critical perspective, I would always question the figures, but these figures carry huge amount of currency in policy making
(08:45):
organizations. And this is these figures that came out two years ago, 81% of 11 to 17 year olds globally are inactive, which the World Health Organization defines as insufficiently active to sustain good health.
And yeah, as someone from a critical perspective, I would question what these figures, how they're achieved, how they arrive at what they mean and how they impact policy. So these fuel crisis and policy is often a knee jerk reaction to a perceived crisis.
(09:22):
But without going into that, because that's quite a heavy conversation. So most young people do not sustain or do not build a really positive relationship with physical activity.
Certainly in the UK over here, we're talking about 45% is like the official figure with the data that we collect on my moves. Some schools are able to show much higher figures, which is great. And that's probably because of the data collection tools, and also really defining what is physical activity.
(09:56):
And then within organized sport, this is a US figure 70% drop out before the age of 13. And that's so that's obviously kids who were in sport through elementary school into middle school.
And they drop out in huge numbers. Now, that is a clear call to action. There's something going on there. That's where young people learn really quite early in life that sports not for them.
(10:24):
So for anybody who's interested in young people having joyful, wonderful experiences in school that are going to be sustained over their life course.
There's an awful long way to go. And this was a US figure, an organization called women in sport published this figure last year, that they say between top of elementary school and end of high school around 1 million girls will drop out and the drop out rate is, and
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indeed the activity rate is always skewered in favor of boys. That's not to say that the boys are all active and they're all sustained activity, but the issues that we're dealing with are more pronounced amongst girls and young women.
So the question remains, why, and this is a very difficult question to unpick. And I would always start with what's at the core of our subject physical education is about the physical, you cannot escape the physical.
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So, as a self proclaimed constructivist and if, if, if so, I want to ask a question. What does it mean to a five year old, a 10 year old and a 15 year old.
What does it mean to be a boy or a girl to be a man or a woman, what does that mean to them. And where do they get those meanings. Now, if, unlike me, you don't believe that these meanings are constructed and that they are innate, then that's fine, but we're on a really
(12:10):
different level and I'm not sure we find that much common ground. So I believe that as young people grow up, they make sense of the world, and they make sense of the world mainly through words words are really powerful.
When it comes to the body, it is always gendered, almost always gendered. So it means different things to be a boy or a girl as manifested through the body. And there's research that shows that very young children can gender a body, and it's normally and again really relevant to our world is normally
(12:51):
the way the body moves. So I, when I was working in university I used to play this clip of a children's TV show, where they had these like little monsters and they would dance.
They would move to music. And it was so evident, who was presented, even though they were sort of gender neutral, they clearly weren't and young children would have picked up that some of these little monster things were moving as traditionally women or girls would
(13:25):
move, much more feminized movement, and others were much more masquerized and then when we unpicked it, it was really clear by what gave those signals off. Now the point here on this little chart is that this of course what we're talking about our binaries and
there's very little middle ground as the way this is presented. And that doesn't actually reflect certainly pre adolescent experiences, because kids tend are often work across these binaries.
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And then as they get older, they feel less comfortable being on the wrong side of the binary. And that's why if we go back to those figures, that is probably one of the explanations around dropout.
Because if we look at how the body is used. And if we take these and I've just put these six or seven words here, they tend to be gendered words.
(14:30):
And I saw a few, a few years ago being at a wedding and watching people dancing at a wedding. And I was fascinated by how gendered the use of the body was on the dance floor.
And it was really evident that the men were taking up much more space. They felt entitled to take up much more space. Their movements were much more expensive.
(14:55):
They were dancing in a much more restrained way. Now, of course, that intersectionality comes, comes into play there as well. You know, if I happen to be a wedding from, you know, that was a white British wedding predominantly,
it was from the Indian subcontinent people would have been dancing differently. If it was from the Caribbean, we've been dancing differently, etc. So use of the body is different around the world. But, you know, clearly power, strength, speed is often associated with male uses of the body,
(15:31):
whereas precision and elegance and control is often associated with female use of the body. Now, if we believe in a concept of freedom as an educator, we want young people to have genuine freedom to be able to move and use their bodies, how they see fit.
So the two images that I got here, obviously Serena Williams throughout her career, she transgressed many and tore up many stereotypes of how women were meant to play tennis.
(16:04):
And Nike celebrated that. Now, again, I think this is potentially really problematic if we ask, like, does that speak to young women?
Nike always presented it as it does speak to young women and it should. So you've got this notion that a woman is free if they can own spaces that have traditionally been male spaces.
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And there's probably a lot in that but the autonomy piece, the agency is really, really important.
So when you're working with a 14 year old kid, or a 12 year old kid who is making sense of the world, they're placing it. And what it means to be masculine and feminine.
I'm not always sure. Like if they're showing they're leaning towards being able to move in this in powerful ways and strong ways and competitive ways, then great, they've got the freedom to do that.
(17:02):
Now, I was fascinated, certainly as a British person when I watched the Netflix documentary here around the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad.
I was really hooked on that, partly because that's quite alien to sort of, well, British culture is a very traditionally US thing, I suppose, and Jordan, you can correct me if I'm wrong there, but
(17:25):
now the notions of how the bodies use their to be elegant to be beautiful, the language around that, the reinforcement that these young women always had about their beauty.
And the elegance of their movement was, I just found it astounding. And I also found it must be really exhausting to always have to live to those beauty standards.
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So how does that make sense? How do we bring that into play in our classes and in our curriculum?
And ultimately I'm in the position, I suppose, where it is that freedom piece.
I was reflecting before this on a book club session that HP hosted around a book that is obviously really popular at the moment, The Anxious Generation. And I shared in a conversation with Jordan and on the HP Collective, some
(18:27):
of the podcast that asked questions about that. And it said that The Anxious Generation presents two simplistic arguments, in other words, social media, and the way young people relate to social media is by and large a bad thing, and
is a problematic thing. And I was reflecting on that in terms of gender movement, physical activity, and L space.
(18:51):
And this is where it does get really murky. And there's no simple answer here. So social media, of course, can be really restrictive and can really reinforce traditional beauty types, oppressive sexism, it can really
(19:12):
reinforce that this is what it means to be a young woman, and really deny people those freedoms. But on the flip side, you can also find brilliant stuff about that is really changing the way girls and young women move.
And that is only a reflection of wider society. So if we look from since Venus and Serena Williams were doing their thing on a tennis court, look at the huge changes that have taken place in the way women are presented as moving.
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And now I'm just talking about elite sport. I think the fitness industry can be quite toxic, but it can also be really liberating. Now what CrossFit has done to present strong powerful women is astounding and hydro hydrox is that what it's called high rocks is doing the same thing.
There's loads of examples. My social media feed is full of men and women moving in ways that they want to move and taking ownership of that in a way that I think we probably haven't experienced before.
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And I can only think that that is a really positive thing for young people to see. So I'm not sure if that makes sense, George, jump in and correct me if it doesn't.
It definitely does. So the the CrossFit example is my favorite. That's a world that I've lived in for a long time. And the word liberating I think is a good one to understand.
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First of all, what are the invitations that we're giving our kids in our classes to join in the physical activity. How are those phrase. It's really important the language that we use in order to bring them into a space where they they might feel uncomfortable.
I have two young Hispanic women currently in my, my fitness class, my weight training class. And for the first part of the semester I spend a lot of time, me owning what we're doing in class so I can talk a lot about movement mechanics and how to properly structure
(21:24):
the set so that you're not over training and like all these considerations related to what it looks and should be like in the weight room and quite frequently they ask me, Mr. Manley, can we, can we go take a run on the walking track today.
And, you know, my response is yes because you know that movement is just as good and positive but the curiosity I have is, you know, what kind of culturally and related to, you know, their gender has been communicated to them to make them believe that,
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well, today we're learning a little bit about the bench press or we're focusing in on some dumbbell movements. You know what what communications have they received and what have the invitations I've given them sounded like to disarm some of their hesitance, so that they can understand that these
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are places where they also belong, and they don't have to have the same goals as a competitive CrossFit athlete or a competitive powerlifter, but where does this movement serve you and your life.
I think that's a really important consideration.
Yeah, yeah, really nicely put. Thank you.
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I really worry all the time with these things I think we could sit on those conversations for a long time. I'm not sure how. So, so this, this is called the activity gap, and I just wanted to bring these questions to the fore and these are inspired by, I can't remember if I mentioned
before, but this is probably my favorite educator, US professor Gloria Ladson-Binning, and in terms of the attainment gap, the attainment gap by race, she questions it, and she says, is it an attainment gap, or is it an investment gap.
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And she presents a very compelling case that is actually an investment gap, and we shouldn't by calling it an attainment gap, we are shifting responsibility to individuals and to communities and we're saying that certain individuals are at fault for their own lack of attainment.
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So she's looking at the structures that produce these gaps. So I'm just asking some questions around here, is it an activity gap, or is it an investment gap. Now I'm also wary of Title IX. Now as a UK citizen, again, I stand to be corrected, but my understanding of Title IX is that it is not legal by federal law to
(24:15):
invest heavily, to more heavily for any service, public service provided to men compared to women. So those funding streams must have parity.
But that's just the financial investment, and there's emotional investment. There's also energy investment. There's attention investment. These are all very scarce resources. So a teacher only has a certain amount of attention, who gets that attention, and why.
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Expectations is a fascinating conversation around gender and sport and physical activity that Jordan just touched upon. Whose expectations count and whose expectations contribute to shaping lived experiences, what boys, girls, men, women expect from themselves and expect from others.
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And indeed, a cultural gap. Now, clearly, if we, again, if we go back to intersectionality, then what is defining man, man, woman, and, you know, how the body should be used, and what, you know, the very mokey space that is ideal body and ideal
(25:45):
beauty forms. And I was, you know, I think these are very difficult constructs that as a transformational educator, I think we really have to begin to pull apart.
Now, if we go back to what I was saying about the Dallas Cowboys and the cheerleaders, you know, I think that is could be really restrictive. And what we're trying to do is help young people find their space for their world.
(26:11):
What does that mean if a young woman buys it into, as Jordan just said, whether it's from, from a particular cultural or community or whether they're getting ideal body shape and notions of beauty from, from their media feeds.
Does that mean that they shouldn't and is the role of the educator to tell them that that's wrong. Probably not the role of education is to expand not to restrict.
(26:37):
How do we have those really sensitive conversations over time, because the question that Jordan just asked, you know, how those young women will shift or might shift from essentially doing CV, and I'm going to use quote unquote calorie burning
activity, I jog in to strength activities, when something happens in their lived experience, that they change the way they perceive their body, what it is, and how they can use it.
(27:10):
And that is the very definition of liberation, being able to use their body in the way that they want. And part of that is opening the window of curiosity, and just examining that.
But clearly, you know, we're talking about building muscle, and, you know, just like building muscle, like seriously.
(27:33):
This is about, this is about slenderness. This is about, you know, I would argue that this is about the avoidance of fat and fatness is badness.
And that's another whole argument or conversation around what the body should look like. What is a, you know, a set against the binary fatness is badness slenderness is goodness, very simplistic binaries.
(28:01):
I'm not sure that holds up, especially to educate young people for, you know, what's in store for them as they go through their lives, and clearly bodies change as they go through their lives.
So the cultural gap, the expectation gap and the formative years experience, which is really related to expectations.
(28:22):
There has been so much work done on what's the expectation of infant boys and infant girls, toddler boys and girls, and what their play forms are, and what they play with, and how boys are so readily given implements to throw and catch and kick,
and how girls are given implements and toys that reflect maternalism and caring and empathy and looking after.
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And, you know, again, coming away from the binary, we come into a much more fluid existence. Would little girls benefit from having implements to throw, kick and catch?
Of course they would. Little boys benefit from having toys which require them to develop empathy. Of course they would.
Fast forward, you've got kids coming into Jordan's class and their primary focus is, am I beating you? You know, there's an awful lot of really healthy activity going on in the way Jordan described the way the girls would enjoy and engage in their valuable.
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So just to wrap up and bring in this really to practical into your class.
So on here are the barriers and on here are some of the things that we can do to really challenge these barriers. And this is taken from that Women in Sport project, but you know, I'm sure there's not a single PE teacher on here who doesn't get some of the top reasons that girls say they disengage.
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And the first two really talk to what Jordan and I have discussed has been just really good PE, really good inclusive PE, which starts with what is the definition of being good at PE.
So if we start to challenge that and create much more inclusive environments, where being good is that you are engaging, you're engaging over a sustained period of time.
(30:22):
How do we know that because my move gives you that data to do that. So my move becomes a transformational tool within a transformational program.
And then we've got different definitions of being good. And we are judging kids in different on different terms. However, when girls talk about being judged, of course what they're talking about is being physically judged and, and the sense of being watched and being gazed at.
(30:50):
And this is incredibly uncomfortable. And I don't think that that is just about reframing success. I think that needs to be addressed head on here.
You need to get to the causes that are causing insecurity and young people to feel unsafe, psychologically unsafe and uncomfortable because of comments, verbal comments, other behaviors, other gazes, etc. Very nuanced behavior that most teenagers begin to become very aware of.
(31:25):
So physical and psychological safety is so important.
And I just want to really add here before I continue around this notion of privilege, and we started by talking about Jordan I coming at this through the eyes of two men.
And within the world of physical activity. I can't think of great manifestation of male privilege. So if I bring that really to my lifting experiences.
(31:56):
Now I'm always very, very wary that I can put on a t-shirt pair of shorts, whatever it is, and I can hit the gym I can go for a run. I can, I can do pretty much whatever activities I want to, without having to think about how the clothing makes my body appear,
(32:21):
whether it makes certain parts of my body appear big or small. I'm not saying it's totally oblivious to this. But you know, I have never once in my life gone out and worried about, oh, I wonder if I wax my legs, but never.
And as a cyclist, I did waste my legs.
And that used to get the odd comment but did it ever bother me? No. But, you know, when we're talking about what the barriers, this is real life stuff for a lot of kids.
(32:53):
How do young women deal with the physical changes during adolescence. Of course, young men are impacted by that as well.
I would probably argue and tell me if you think I'm wrong, that young men, but enlarged nowhere near as much as young women, the changes that they're taking place, whether we're talking about their period once a month, whether we're talking about changes,
(33:15):
like shifts in distribution of body fat, etc. You know, when kids have a growth spur in pre adolescence, their movement becomes clumsy until they catch up with that growth spur, right? We've all seen kids have longer levers and where they were catching and throwing and bouncing a ball,
all of a sudden their center of gravity has changed, they can't change direction, they feel clumsy. How do we create a space where we're saying, you know what, that's okay, you're going to catch up, stick with it for a while, or we're going to make it a little bit easier.
(33:45):
And that's just like growing. Growing when you're having to deal with, you know, the appearance of body hair for the first time, and you're meant to be wearing like shorts or a t-shirt or going swimming.
You know, this is kids need to feel really safe and secure in how they're going to navigate those personal changes.
(34:08):
So yeah, I think we do, I really think we do need to reframe success. We really do need to address any of the behaviors that make other people feel that this is not for them, and really work harder to create safe spaces to celebrate,
to display a whole range of bodies doing a whole range of movement.
(34:31):
And, you know, Jordan speaks about this more and better than I do, but really say that success is finding that meaning. It's not about being someone else, it's not about being the best, but if you find a relationship to physical activity that helps your life flourish,
because this is a serious problem, pressures of work and other responsibilities. And again, it hits some girls very, very hard where those pressures come from, what other responsibilities they have looking after younger siblings, etc.
(35:04):
So, you know, if they can't be on performance pathways or find sport, something meaningful because they're competing, then we need to say, okay, check in for 15 minutes, go to the fitness room for 15 minutes, go for a walk for 15 minutes,
because that will help your life flourish and find your connection. And we need to be better and constantly get better. I think we have got better over the last few years, but are we all really comfortable having the conversation around body changes, around
(35:40):
fitness and fatness? How do we, a couple of sessions ago, I was talking, looking at the feedback kids gave on my move when a young woman said, my fitness goal is to lose fat.
And I think that takes a really skilled practitioner to address that in a sensitive and yet an informed way that does give the agency to the young person, not to say to them, you don't need to lose fat, or to say you really should and you should lose more fat than that.
(36:12):
You know, this is about how do you give agency? How do you allow the young person to take control of the biggest expression of self that they have, which is, what does my body look like and what do I want it to look like?
So we touched upon some really difficult themes. I hope it made sense. I'm going to be quiet and bump it over to Jordan.
(36:38):
Yeah, one closing thought there on having the conversation. It goes beyond having the conversation with the student as well.
We talked last week about stakeholders and I know I'm about to speak in anecdotal evidence and perhaps this is going to be taken as a broad generalization, but I think there is some truth to it.
(37:06):
So every year at open house, I get to meet some of my students parents. This has only happened twice, but I've had parents with their students next to them come to me and place the expectations on what my P class should do for their student.
And when the time it happened with a female student, the conversation was, hey, my girl really needs to lose some weight. And so we're really happy that she's in PE class this semester.
(37:40):
She really needs to lose some weight. And so, you know, keep us updated on how she's doing and participating. And it was a really uncomfortable place to be.
And I think I did it for you as a young teacher when that happened. I didn't know how to have that conversation with the parent. Obviously I was able to talk with the student privately in class about what my expectations were and and what P is for, but I was not able to address that effectively with the parent.
(38:13):
And when the time it happened with a male student, like Greg told us earlier, the message was entirely different and almost empowered that student, like the dad came in and was like hey my boy here he's just his gross fur.
He's really skinny right now we got to bulk him up.
You know, it was also focused on the way his body looked, but the two messages were drastically different.
(38:39):
The purpose of the PE class was to fix these kids in some way or another, and only one of those ways was so emotionally damaging, and it was it was geared toward the female students so
you know, just being super cognizant of the gender activity gap and understanding them the way students receive messages is the first step to being able to inform all stakeholders and the purpose of your PE class and why you do what you do, and and how you might have an impact with their
(39:21):
students.
So, obviously I want to say thank you to Greg for joining us this afternoon for another really powerful session, talking about a really serious subject that holds a lot of weight.
Obviously Greg invited you at the beginning of the webinar to share your experiences with us. We recognize that we come from a standpoint where we do not represent the population in which we are speaking about and, and everyone has so much to their identity that we can't
(39:59):
possibly represent every single listener today but, you know, talk to us tell us what your experiences as a young mover where and tell us about what you're seeing in your classroom with your kids right now, because, again, posting the conversation is the first step for us to be able to make any impact here.
(40:20):
I want to say thank you for listening to the my move webinar series. This was episode four out of six. HPE radio is close to 100 listeners and we're excited to be launching a new podcast series soon called teacher takeover, where me and Jeff Bartlett will be interviewing
teachers and going behind the scenes to understand more about how they operate in their classroom to really just do a lot of sharing of practice and to highlight really awesome teachers around the world.
(40:53):
Thanks for tonight's show with a friend, and we'll see you next week.
3, 2, 1, yeah!
One, two, three, four.
(00:07):
Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to the My Move Fall webinar series hosted by the HPE Collective.
Today's webinar is the fourth in a series of six episodes.
(00:29):
Our host, Greg Dreyer, the founder of My Move, is here to discuss a very important topic with us today, the gender activity gap.
Before we dive into it, I'd like to say thank you to all of our listeners for your support over the last several weeks.
We're very close to surpassing 100 listeners across our channel, so we hope that you will continue to listen and share HPE radio with your friends.
(00:54):
And with all of that said, I'm going to toss it over to Greg Dreyer to get us started today.
Thanks very much, Jordan. And nice to be here again. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, Jordan, I think this is number four of six. Is that correct?
That's correct.
And I'm also really wary that this is being presented by myself as a someone who identifies as a man, and Jordan is obviously co-hosting, and he's also a man.
(01:26):
And there's, maybe that is somewhat problematic in that we clearly don't really understand the activity experiences of girls, young women, etc.
Having said that, you know, we welcome your comments as always. And if we get stuff that, especially that female colleagues think that we're off the mark with, then reach out and we're very open to hearing what you have to say.
(02:02):
But this has been something in my professional and my personal life as a parent, especially that has always been really, really dear to me.
And I think I would drop it into the wider conversation around inclusive PE and inclusive physical activity and sport. And we've touched upon some of those things in the last three weeks.
(02:27):
And so within the inclusion, and, you know, this is where I think there's, there's, it gets a little bit tricky. So right from the start, you know, I want to just flag up what's often referred to as intersectionality.
And I said that as a man, I don't have an experience what physical activity might feel like in the environments that girls and young women might take part in in sport and activity.
(02:58):
But of course, I don't want to say, I don't want to pretend right from the start that, you know, girls and young women are a monolithic, homogenous group.
And so intersectionality must always be at the forefront. We've got our lens on gender right now. But obviously, you know, girls would have different experience depending on that combination of multiple social factors.
(03:23):
You know, black girls and white girls would have different experiences to maybe Hispanic girls and able-bodied disabled kids would have different experiences too.
And indeed, you know, if we look in right front loaded it from the off. Now if we're looking at how misogyny and maybe sexism impacts on participation, then clearly they're not experienced the same across all.
(03:52):
Girls and young women.
There's an awful lot of new conversation here around adultification of kids like when the kids begin to be perceived as adults and when do they stay young and treated as children.
And there's a lot of black writers who are pointing out that black girls in particular are adultified much earlier than white girls.
(04:24):
And that leads to all sorts of problems that are at the calls by the adults who are going to just plain language or falling into that trap based on probably prejudicial views.
Anyway, without further ado, so let's bring this right down to practice and I'm going to try and be a little bit more conversational with maybe with Jordan and anyone else who joins us.
(04:54):
So thinking of the students you teach the boys and girls engage in physical activity differently and how now Jordan as the only teacher.
I mean I can reflect on my teaching over many years in London in your classes do boys and girls engage in physical activity differently and how if so how would you describe the difference.
(05:15):
Yeah, and I want to say thank you for the way that you have introduced us into this topic.
As a man as a teacher and as a father, like the most important thing for me when considering these topics is really to situate myself as an observer to be able to try to understand people who are different from me and in their experiences in my classroom and so when I do think about the students that I teach.
(05:46):
Boys and girls do engage in physical activity differently but like you said, these groups are not monolithic and so there's so much nuance to who these kids are and the reasons that they do participate in physical activity and the ways they engage but
I'll start with a broad observation in that the boys in my classroom tend to come in seeking the like more traditional competitive environment where they believe that physical education is there to separate those of great ability versus those of less ability.
(06:30):
And they want to kind of surround themselves with people who they think are, you know, going back to our last conversation quote unquote good at PE, because they think that points on the scoreboard are the most important thing.
Whereas, most of the girls who I interact with do not come into my class with that competitive edge, but rather, they're more focused on the social experience that the physical activity can provide so a lot of the conversations that I have with my young women are around wanting to be with
(07:11):
students in a setting where they can talk they can listen to music. A lot of dancing happens in my class, even if dance isn't the, the unit of study, you know, I watched my students play a modified volleyball game today called Nitro ball.
And I look over and the girls at one of my, one of my nets were playing but they were also singing along to spice girls and dancing and just really enjoying themselves whereas, you know, on the other side of my net, I have one core group of athletic boys who were very intense on making sure
(07:50):
they knew what the score was, and setting up proper volleyball plays and again, not to create like paint with a really broad brush but there are some differences and what I see the students that I interact with and when they come into PE.
(08:11):
Thank you. Yeah, fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. It is the fascination of observation. And I guess so just a little bit background before we can really come back to that.
I think, no, if we're talking about engagement in physical activity globally, this is clearly going to vary around the world. So the World Health Organization, and as someone from a critical perspective, I would always question the figures, but these figures carry huge amount of currency in policy making
(08:45):
organizations. And this is these figures that came out two years ago, 81% of 11 to 17 year olds globally are inactive, which the World Health Organization defines as insufficiently active to sustain good health.
And yeah, as someone from a critical perspective, I would question what these figures, how they're achieved, how they arrive at what they mean and how they impact policy. So these fuel crisis and policy is often a knee jerk reaction to a perceived crisis.
(09:22):
But without going into that, because that's quite a heavy conversation. So most young people do not sustain or do not build a really positive relationship with physical activity.
Certainly in the UK over here, we're talking about 45% is like the official figure with the data that we collect on my moves. Some schools are able to show much higher figures, which is great. And that's probably because of the data collection tools, and also really defining what is physical activity.
(09:56):
And then within organized sport, this is a US figure 70% drop out before the age of 13. And that's so that's obviously kids who were in sport through elementary school into middle school.
And they drop out in huge numbers. Now, that is a clear call to action. There's something going on there. That's where young people learn really quite early in life that sports not for them.
(10:24):
So for anybody who's interested in young people having joyful, wonderful experiences in school that are going to be sustained over their life course.
There's an awful long way to go. And this was a US figure, an organization called women in sport published this figure last year, that they say between top of elementary school and end of high school around 1 million girls will drop out and the drop out rate is, and
(10:58):
indeed the activity rate is always skewered in favor of boys. That's not to say that the boys are all active and they're all sustained activity, but the issues that we're dealing with are more pronounced amongst girls and young women.
So the question remains, why, and this is a very difficult question to unpick. And I would always start with what's at the core of our subject physical education is about the physical, you cannot escape the physical.
(11:33):
So, as a self proclaimed constructivist and if, if, if so, I want to ask a question. What does it mean to a five year old, a 10 year old and a 15 year old.
What does it mean to be a boy or a girl to be a man or a woman, what does that mean to them. And where do they get those meanings. Now, if, unlike me, you don't believe that these meanings are constructed and that they are innate, then that's fine, but we're on a really
(12:10):
different level and I'm not sure we find that much common ground. So I believe that as young people grow up, they make sense of the world, and they make sense of the world mainly through words words are really powerful.
When it comes to the body, it is always gendered, almost always gendered. So it means different things to be a boy or a girl as manifested through the body. And there's research that shows that very young children can gender a body, and it's normally and again really relevant to our world is normally
(12:51):
the way the body moves. So I, when I was working in university I used to play this clip of a children's TV show, where they had these like little monsters and they would dance.
They would move to music. And it was so evident, who was presented, even though they were sort of gender neutral, they clearly weren't and young children would have picked up that some of these little monster things were moving as traditionally women or girls would
(13:25):
move, much more feminized movement, and others were much more masquerized and then when we unpicked it, it was really clear by what gave those signals off. Now the point here on this little chart is that this of course what we're talking about our binaries and
there's very little middle ground as the way this is presented. And that doesn't actually reflect certainly pre adolescent experiences, because kids tend are often work across these binaries.
(14:00):
And then as they get older, they feel less comfortable being on the wrong side of the binary. And that's why if we go back to those figures, that is probably one of the explanations around dropout.
Because if we look at how the body is used. And if we take these and I've just put these six or seven words here, they tend to be gendered words.
(14:30):
And I saw a few, a few years ago being at a wedding and watching people dancing at a wedding. And I was fascinated by how gendered the use of the body was on the dance floor.
And it was really evident that the men were taking up much more space. They felt entitled to take up much more space. Their movements were much more expensive.
(14:55):
They were dancing in a much more restrained way. Now, of course, that intersectionality comes, comes into play there as well. You know, if I happen to be a wedding from, you know, that was a white British wedding predominantly,
it was from the Indian subcontinent people would have been dancing differently. If it was from the Caribbean, we've been dancing differently, etc. So use of the body is different around the world. But, you know, clearly power, strength, speed is often associated with male uses of the body,
(15:31):
whereas precision and elegance and control is often associated with female use of the body. Now, if we believe in a concept of freedom as an educator, we want young people to have genuine freedom to be able to move and use their bodies, how they see fit.
So the two images that I got here, obviously Serena Williams throughout her career, she transgressed many and tore up many stereotypes of how women were meant to play tennis.
(16:04):
And Nike celebrated that. Now, again, I think this is potentially really problematic if we ask, like, does that speak to young women?
Nike always presented it as it does speak to young women and it should. So you've got this notion that a woman is free if they can own spaces that have traditionally been male spaces.
(16:28):
And there's probably a lot in that but the autonomy piece, the agency is really, really important.
So when you're working with a 14 year old kid, or a 12 year old kid who is making sense of the world, they're placing it. And what it means to be masculine and feminine.
I'm not always sure. Like if they're showing they're leaning towards being able to move in this in powerful ways and strong ways and competitive ways, then great, they've got the freedom to do that.
(17:02):
Now, I was fascinated, certainly as a British person when I watched the Netflix documentary here around the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad.
I was really hooked on that, partly because that's quite alien to sort of, well, British culture is a very traditionally US thing, I suppose, and Jordan, you can correct me if I'm wrong there, but
(17:25):
now the notions of how the bodies use their to be elegant to be beautiful, the language around that, the reinforcement that these young women always had about their beauty.
And the elegance of their movement was, I just found it astounding. And I also found it must be really exhausting to always have to live to those beauty standards.
(17:52):
So how does that make sense? How do we bring that into play in our classes and in our curriculum?
And ultimately I'm in the position, I suppose, where it is that freedom piece.
I was reflecting before this on a book club session that HP hosted around a book that is obviously really popular at the moment, The Anxious Generation. And I shared in a conversation with Jordan and on the HP Collective, some
(18:27):
of the podcast that asked questions about that. And it said that The Anxious Generation presents two simplistic arguments, in other words, social media, and the way young people relate to social media is by and large a bad thing, and
is a problematic thing. And I was reflecting on that in terms of gender movement, physical activity, and L space.
(18:51):
And this is where it does get really murky. And there's no simple answer here. So social media, of course, can be really restrictive and can really reinforce traditional beauty types, oppressive sexism, it can really
(19:12):
reinforce that this is what it means to be a young woman, and really deny people those freedoms. But on the flip side, you can also find brilliant stuff about that is really changing the way girls and young women move.
And that is only a reflection of wider society. So if we look from since Venus and Serena Williams were doing their thing on a tennis court, look at the huge changes that have taken place in the way women are presented as moving.
(19:46):
And now I'm just talking about elite sport. I think the fitness industry can be quite toxic, but it can also be really liberating. Now what CrossFit has done to present strong powerful women is astounding and hydro hydrox is that what it's called high rocks is doing the same thing.
There's loads of examples. My social media feed is full of men and women moving in ways that they want to move and taking ownership of that in a way that I think we probably haven't experienced before.
(20:20):
And I can only think that that is a really positive thing for young people to see. So I'm not sure if that makes sense, George, jump in and correct me if it doesn't.
It definitely does. So the the CrossFit example is my favorite. That's a world that I've lived in for a long time. And the word liberating I think is a good one to understand.
(20:45):
First of all, what are the invitations that we're giving our kids in our classes to join in the physical activity. How are those phrase. It's really important the language that we use in order to bring them into a space where they they might feel uncomfortable.
I have two young Hispanic women currently in my, my fitness class, my weight training class. And for the first part of the semester I spend a lot of time, me owning what we're doing in class so I can talk a lot about movement mechanics and how to properly structure
(21:24):
the set so that you're not over training and like all these considerations related to what it looks and should be like in the weight room and quite frequently they ask me, Mr. Manley, can we, can we go take a run on the walking track today.
And, you know, my response is yes because you know that movement is just as good and positive but the curiosity I have is, you know, what kind of culturally and related to, you know, their gender has been communicated to them to make them believe that,
(22:03):
well, today we're learning a little bit about the bench press or we're focusing in on some dumbbell movements. You know what what communications have they received and what have the invitations I've given them sounded like to disarm some of their hesitance, so that they can understand that these
(22:24):
are places where they also belong, and they don't have to have the same goals as a competitive CrossFit athlete or a competitive powerlifter, but where does this movement serve you and your life.
I think that's a really important consideration.
Yeah, yeah, really nicely put. Thank you.
(22:45):
I really worry all the time with these things I think we could sit on those conversations for a long time. I'm not sure how. So, so this, this is called the activity gap, and I just wanted to bring these questions to the fore and these are inspired by, I can't remember if I mentioned
before, but this is probably my favorite educator, US professor Gloria Ladson-Binning, and in terms of the attainment gap, the attainment gap by race, she questions it, and she says, is it an attainment gap, or is it an investment gap.
(23:27):
And she presents a very compelling case that is actually an investment gap, and we shouldn't by calling it an attainment gap, we are shifting responsibility to individuals and to communities and we're saying that certain individuals are at fault for their own lack of attainment.
(23:50):
So she's looking at the structures that produce these gaps. So I'm just asking some questions around here, is it an activity gap, or is it an investment gap. Now I'm also wary of Title IX. Now as a UK citizen, again, I stand to be corrected, but my understanding of Title IX is that it is not legal by federal law to
(24:15):
invest heavily, to more heavily for any service, public service provided to men compared to women. So those funding streams must have parity.
But that's just the financial investment, and there's emotional investment. There's also energy investment. There's attention investment. These are all very scarce resources. So a teacher only has a certain amount of attention, who gets that attention, and why.
(24:52):
Expectations is a fascinating conversation around gender and sport and physical activity that Jordan just touched upon. Whose expectations count and whose expectations contribute to shaping lived experiences, what boys, girls, men, women expect from themselves and expect from others.
(25:18):
And indeed, a cultural gap. Now, clearly, if we, again, if we go back to intersectionality, then what is defining man, man, woman, and, you know, how the body should be used, and what, you know, the very mokey space that is ideal body and ideal
(25:45):
beauty forms. And I was, you know, I think these are very difficult constructs that as a transformational educator, I think we really have to begin to pull apart.
Now, if we go back to what I was saying about the Dallas Cowboys and the cheerleaders, you know, I think that is could be really restrictive. And what we're trying to do is help young people find their space for their world.
(26:11):
What does that mean if a young woman buys it into, as Jordan just said, whether it's from, from a particular cultural or community or whether they're getting ideal body shape and notions of beauty from, from their media feeds.
Does that mean that they shouldn't and is the role of the educator to tell them that that's wrong. Probably not the role of education is to expand not to restrict.
(26:37):
How do we have those really sensitive conversations over time, because the question that Jordan just asked, you know, how those young women will shift or might shift from essentially doing CV, and I'm going to use quote unquote calorie burning
activity, I jog in to strength activities, when something happens in their lived experience, that they change the way they perceive their body, what it is, and how they can use it.
(27:10):
And that is the very definition of liberation, being able to use their body in the way that they want. And part of that is opening the window of curiosity, and just examining that.
But clearly, you know, we're talking about building muscle, and, you know, just like building muscle, like seriously.
(27:33):
This is about, this is about slenderness. This is about, you know, I would argue that this is about the avoidance of fat and fatness is badness.
And that's another whole argument or conversation around what the body should look like. What is a, you know, a set against the binary fatness is badness slenderness is goodness, very simplistic binaries.
(28:01):
I'm not sure that holds up, especially to educate young people for, you know, what's in store for them as they go through their lives, and clearly bodies change as they go through their lives.
So the cultural gap, the expectation gap and the formative years experience, which is really related to expectations.
(28:22):
There has been so much work done on what's the expectation of infant boys and infant girls, toddler boys and girls, and what their play forms are, and what they play with, and how boys are so readily given implements to throw and catch and kick,
and how girls are given implements and toys that reflect maternalism and caring and empathy and looking after.
(28:53):
And, you know, again, coming away from the binary, we come into a much more fluid existence. Would little girls benefit from having implements to throw, kick and catch?
Of course they would. Little boys benefit from having toys which require them to develop empathy. Of course they would.
Fast forward, you've got kids coming into Jordan's class and their primary focus is, am I beating you? You know, there's an awful lot of really healthy activity going on in the way Jordan described the way the girls would enjoy and engage in their valuable.
(29:33):
So just to wrap up and bring in this really to practical into your class.
So on here are the barriers and on here are some of the things that we can do to really challenge these barriers. And this is taken from that Women in Sport project, but you know, I'm sure there's not a single PE teacher on here who doesn't get some of the top reasons that girls say they disengage.
(30:01):
And the first two really talk to what Jordan and I have discussed has been just really good PE, really good inclusive PE, which starts with what is the definition of being good at PE.
So if we start to challenge that and create much more inclusive environments, where being good is that you are engaging, you're engaging over a sustained period of time.
(30:22):
How do we know that because my move gives you that data to do that. So my move becomes a transformational tool within a transformational program.
And then we've got different definitions of being good. And we are judging kids in different on different terms. However, when girls talk about being judged, of course what they're talking about is being physically judged and, and the sense of being watched and being gazed at.
(30:50):
And this is incredibly uncomfortable. And I don't think that that is just about reframing success. I think that needs to be addressed head on here.
You need to get to the causes that are causing insecurity and young people to feel unsafe, psychologically unsafe and uncomfortable because of comments, verbal comments, other behaviors, other gazes, etc. Very nuanced behavior that most teenagers begin to become very aware of.
(31:25):
So physical and psychological safety is so important.
And I just want to really add here before I continue around this notion of privilege, and we started by talking about Jordan I coming at this through the eyes of two men.
And within the world of physical activity. I can't think of great manifestation of male privilege. So if I bring that really to my lifting experiences.
(31:56):
Now I'm always very, very wary that I can put on a t-shirt pair of shorts, whatever it is, and I can hit the gym I can go for a run. I can, I can do pretty much whatever activities I want to, without having to think about how the clothing makes my body appear,
(32:21):
whether it makes certain parts of my body appear big or small. I'm not saying it's totally oblivious to this. But you know, I have never once in my life gone out and worried about, oh, I wonder if I wax my legs, but never.
And as a cyclist, I did waste my legs.
And that used to get the odd comment but did it ever bother me? No. But, you know, when we're talking about what the barriers, this is real life stuff for a lot of kids.
(32:53):
How do young women deal with the physical changes during adolescence. Of course, young men are impacted by that as well.
I would probably argue and tell me if you think I'm wrong, that young men, but enlarged nowhere near as much as young women, the changes that they're taking place, whether we're talking about their period once a month, whether we're talking about changes,
(33:15):
like shifts in distribution of body fat, etc. You know, when kids have a growth spur in pre adolescence, their movement becomes clumsy until they catch up with that growth spur, right? We've all seen kids have longer levers and where they were catching and throwing and bouncing a ball,
all of a sudden their center of gravity has changed, they can't change direction, they feel clumsy. How do we create a space where we're saying, you know what, that's okay, you're going to catch up, stick with it for a while, or we're going to make it a little bit easier.
(33:45):
And that's just like growing. Growing when you're having to deal with, you know, the appearance of body hair for the first time, and you're meant to be wearing like shorts or a t-shirt or going swimming.
You know, this is kids need to feel really safe and secure in how they're going to navigate those personal changes.
(34:08):
So yeah, I think we do, I really think we do need to reframe success. We really do need to address any of the behaviors that make other people feel that this is not for them, and really work harder to create safe spaces to celebrate,
to display a whole range of bodies doing a whole range of movement.
(34:31):
And, you know, Jordan speaks about this more and better than I do, but really say that success is finding that meaning. It's not about being someone else, it's not about being the best, but if you find a relationship to physical activity that helps your life flourish,
because this is a serious problem, pressures of work and other responsibilities. And again, it hits some girls very, very hard where those pressures come from, what other responsibilities they have looking after younger siblings, etc.
(35:04):
So, you know, if they can't be on performance pathways or find sport, something meaningful because they're competing, then we need to say, okay, check in for 15 minutes, go to the fitness room for 15 minutes, go for a walk for 15 minutes,
because that will help your life flourish and find your connection. And we need to be better and constantly get better. I think we have got better over the last few years, but are we all really comfortable having the conversation around body changes, around
(35:40):
fitness and fatness? How do we, a couple of sessions ago, I was talking, looking at the feedback kids gave on my move when a young woman said, my fitness goal is to lose fat.
And I think that takes a really skilled practitioner to address that in a sensitive and yet an informed way that does give the agency to the young person, not to say to them, you don't need to lose fat, or to say you really should and you should lose more fat than that.
(36:12):
You know, this is about how do you give agency? How do you allow the young person to take control of the biggest expression of self that they have, which is, what does my body look like and what do I want it to look like?
So we touched upon some really difficult themes. I hope it made sense. I'm going to be quiet and bump it over to Jordan.
(36:38):
Yeah, one closing thought there on having the conversation. It goes beyond having the conversation with the student as well.
We talked last week about stakeholders and I know I'm about to speak in anecdotal evidence and perhaps this is going to be taken as a broad generalization, but I think there is some truth to it.
(37:06):
So every year at open house, I get to meet some of my students parents. This has only happened twice, but I've had parents with their students next to them come to me and place the expectations on what my P class should do for their student.
And when the time it happened with a female student, the conversation was, hey, my girl really needs to lose some weight. And so we're really happy that she's in PE class this semester.
(37:40):
She really needs to lose some weight. And so, you know, keep us updated on how she's doing and participating. And it was a really uncomfortable place to be.
And I think I did it for you as a young teacher when that happened. I didn't know how to have that conversation with the parent. Obviously I was able to talk with the student privately in class about what my expectations were and and what P is for, but I was not able to address that effectively with the parent.
(38:13):
And when the time it happened with a male student, like Greg told us earlier, the message was entirely different and almost empowered that student, like the dad came in and was like hey my boy here he's just his gross fur.
He's really skinny right now we got to bulk him up.
You know, it was also focused on the way his body looked, but the two messages were drastically different.
(38:39):
The purpose of the PE class was to fix these kids in some way or another, and only one of those ways was so emotionally damaging, and it was it was geared toward the female students so
you know, just being super cognizant of the gender activity gap and understanding them the way students receive messages is the first step to being able to inform all stakeholders and the purpose of your PE class and why you do what you do, and and how you might have an impact with their
(39:21):
students.
So, obviously I want to say thank you to Greg for joining us this afternoon for another really powerful session, talking about a really serious subject that holds a lot of weight.
Obviously Greg invited you at the beginning of the webinar to share your experiences with us. We recognize that we come from a standpoint where we do not represent the population in which we are speaking about and, and everyone has so much to their identity that we can't
(39:59):
possibly represent every single listener today but, you know, talk to us tell us what your experiences as a young mover where and tell us about what you're seeing in your classroom with your kids right now, because, again, posting the conversation is the first step for us to be able to make any impact here.
(40:20):
I want to say thank you for listening to the my move webinar series. This was episode four out of six. HPE radio is close to 100 listeners and we're excited to be launching a new podcast series soon called teacher takeover, where me and Jeff Bartlett will be interviewing
teachers and going behind the scenes to understand more about how they operate in their classroom to really just do a lot of sharing of practice and to highlight really awesome teachers around the world.
(40:53):
Thanks for tonight's show with a friend, and we'll see you next week.
3, 2, 1, yeah!
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