Draft 1 research paper

Aaron Batista

English 201

11 April 2018

Research paper

Do you throw like a girl? Today that probably isn’t the insult it once was, the strive for equality has been a broadening topic over the years ranging from, skin color, to representation and now sports. There are those that are still wondering why we have a separate division for men and women at this point in our society. Sports in the eyes of some people, should be about finding the best athletes regardless of gender. With the relatively new emergence of transgender athletes and restructure of gender norms, is gender segregation in sports still necessary? For decades men and women have competed in separate leagues due to perceived differences in physiology and or ideology, but in our new society where equality is at the forefront what problems would arise if men and women competed against one another?

Baseball, football, and basketball are what comes to mind when you think of sports in America. However there are sports that are much more individualized such as weightlifting, track, and swimming which are all watched by millions during the international Olympic games. As all of these sports have grown there has been a strong emphasis on fairness and structure in order to get the most accurate results. Such as bans on performance enhancing drugs, separations by weight, and separate leagues for genders. Initially gender separation was done in order to prevent female athletes from gaining a foothold in sports. In this day and age not only has that changed drastically but in some sports, female competitors are actually outperforming their male counter parts.