Stop Sex-Based Segregation, If You Wish to Curb Gender Discrimination

That sex-based segregation persists in nearly all walks of life; careers and sports being no exception; is a fact and reality of life. Whether it stands up to legal scrutiny is another matter. Covert sex classification, though ostensibly beneficial to women, will turn out to be a pretext for sex-based discrimination. Public policy should not be involved in dividing people on the basis of some sort of classification—like race or religion or, when it comes to sports, either sex or gender.

To begin with – any All-female or All-Male grouping is perverse; meaning thereby; that any only-girls or only-boys school is the sowing field for the crop of discrimination. Same applies to queues at the school assemblies, ticket-windows or ‘Darshan’ in temples. Same is equally applicable to seating of the audience at the ‘Pravachan’ or the ‘Prarthana Sabha’ held in the memory of a departed soul.   

One option that actually would survive legal scrutiny would be having a girl’s queue/team, a boy’s queue/team, and a mixed queue/team. It would be interesting to see what happens because let us not completely invalidate the value of girls’ spaces and boys’ spaces.

Sports are a relatively small set of situations in which we not only allow but assume that it’s okay for the society to be involved in segregating on the basis of sex; it’s one of the few areas where sex segregation is tolerated, no matter what the sport. When we think of football, it is the guys on the field. When we think of basketball, it is the guys on the court.

The rationale has always been, “Men are bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic than women, and so of course we can’t have men and women playing sports together.” One of the issues with sex segregation, especially when it’s not justified by any social interest is that it enables a different version of the sport for men and women. Look at how different men’s gymnastics is from women’s.

There are some issues that are best described as logistical. Some of these concerns are totally reasonable, but most of them can be worked around—things like, “Well what are we going to do about changing rooms or in wrestling?” or “Oh my god, isn’t there going to be a lot of sexual harassment if boys are wrestling girls at the high-school level?” or “Girls don’t want to participate in sports with boys.” But how much of that is actually not about not wanting to play with boys, but not wanting to play with people who don’t treat them as an equal and part of their team?

On one hand, girls’ playing along with boys is not alright because “it would diminish the level of play,” while on the other, there is this desire to protect women because maybe their bodies aren’t meant to compete at this level. It is true that most women are not going to be competitive for the NBA because of the height of the people involved and the height of the basket. But there may be ways of creating situations where most of the people in some division are men and most of the people in other divisions are women, but sex or gender is not the basis for the division. There’s still a way of separating people into groups where they can compete against people who are physiologically similar to them in relevant ways, right? Maybe the more relevant characters could be height, weight, or some combination of those two things. So for example, in wrestling, perhaps weight classes could do all the work.

Unless there is a real demonstration that sex segregation in sports serves an important social interest, there is no reason to continue with it. We may not be able to change this segregation at all levels at which the sport is being played but there might be no valid reasons for such groupings and exclusions, for example, in schools.

AGGREGATE around commonalities; don’t segregate on basis of gender; for segregation prepares the field for sowing the seeds of DISCRIMINATION!

----- 

You can follow the author if you like his postings.

You can share the post with your friends and networks!!

You could also follow the author on other blogsites -

https://www.facebook.com/intheworldofideas/

https://intheworldofideasblog.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/vichaaronkeeduniyamein/ (In HINDI)