Women and sports: A new area of empowerment – An ethnographic study in an urban spot in West Bengal

Abstract

Sports are one of the ubiquitous activities of modern contemporary society. Pervasiveness of sports can be seen by the enormous amount of primary and secondary involvement in it by people of all ages, social strata sports penetrates into and plays a significant role in all of the social situations. Sports have emerged as a primary area of controversy about men’s and women’s roles. Traditionally, sex roles expectation has encouraged females to be passive, gentle, delicate and submissive. These cultural expectation clashed with those traits often associated with sports, such as assertiveness, competitiveness, physical endurance, regardless, and dominance. Thus female first puberty were encouraged to bypass sports unless the sport retained the femininity of the participants. Currently quite rapid changes are occurring. Unquestionably, the greatest change in contemporary sports is the dramatic increase in and general acceptance of sports participation by women. Evidence of the transformation that sport is undergoing in the urban sports in West Bengal observed analyzed and interpreted in the present study.