A non-professional female player smashing the un-smashed, dropping cross-drops and returning men's' powerful smashes seem like an anomaly to many. For that matter, we get awestruck even when seeing professional female players like Maria Sharapova or Serena Williams do trick shots or when P.V Sindhu does a jump smash. Why is that? We seldom get surprised when Lin Dan does the same.
Taking a casual look around sports facilities, we find that most of them are saturated with testosterone. But where are the women?
For some, it’s a trade-off between taking care of the weekly laundry and playing two games of badminton. And for others, it’s a bargain between playing a game at an outdoor court - while it’s drizzling-and watching a sequel of a blockbuster Netflix series.
It depends completely on the importance that they place on various things and on how much joy they draw from the same.
Does the average woman still think, “Sports and physical activities are primarily undertaken to cultivate physical power, which normally is required of men who have been involved in activities related to bread-winning and pursuits of different kinds of conquests to gain and retain power.”?
Then, any sport would come across as an activity that is solely for the boys and the men.
And if that is the case, what is expected out of the female counter-parts surely, is being better equipped at child-rearing. It needs more fragility, decision-making skills, interpersonal skills, patience and some amount of physical stamina.
“At the end of the day, sports are not directly linked to excellence in any of the conventional activities that the fairer sex has been doing since time immemorial.”
An amateur sportswoman, who enjoys and engages in sports activities on a proactive basis has enjoyed the pursuit of the same since childhood and makes it her hobby and dreams to be a professional. Maybe, after a while, this unconventional activity seems to her as something completely away from the mainstream and without many benefits.
Therefore, we find different sports facilities with more number of male amateur sportspersons who are there solely to experience the release of the happy hormones in the brain or to experience the feeling of conquest or triumph after winning a game, or to even know that they are becoming physically fitter or stronger because that gives them a sense of purpose at the court – whatever sport it be.
But, with the inter-changing role of women and men nowadays, why shouldn’t it be the same with sports?
An endorphin release and a natural fitness regime can not only increase the quality of the lives of the aspiring female players – even for the ones who started late, by increasing their confidence level in terms of picking up and learning things from the scratch, but also they could become a pioneer of sports at home, especially for their offspring and can surely lead by example. And what can be a better feminine trait than that?
Shreya Shikha is a student, pursuing her PGDM in Human Resource Management, from Xavier Institute of Social Service, Ranchi. She's currently in the first year of her course. In her free time, she loves to read fiction, write blogs and pursue sports - badminton and basketball - particularly.
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