Africa-Press – Lesotho. Lesotho Sports and Recreation Commission (LSRC) Vice President and Women Leadership Programme Coordinator Moipone Mashale said for a while now, women participation in sports has been deteriorating
but with women leadership and women for women programs implementation, there is hope that they will pass the trial. In a “consultation” interaction with Informative
sport, Mashale indicated that at their young age women participate in sports but as soon as they reach teenage stage or marriage life, they lose interest in sports.
“According to the research, this is usually due to the cultural norms which hinder women to pursue their dreams in sports. The likes of gender
stereotypes that compel the girls to perform house chores while boys are always free to participate in sports. Apart from that, when a woman starts to engage
in marriage and have a baby the shape of the body changes, so she starts feeling like she is not competent to go back to sports and doubt her strength,” Mashale explained.
She added that these are the things that are related to cultural norms but again another barrier is masculinity as a lot of sporting codes utilizes power.
She said women doubt their power and thus often feel unfit to compete or participate in vigorous sport activities, except a few who are brave to join certain sport codes.
“Lately in sporting codes such as boxing and rugby, a few girls are seen participating, including football which has
attracted most women, thought they hardly occupy certain leadership positions. There is also a lot of inequality or equity in terms of allocation of any resources that are related
to sports as mostly in any sporting code, women get limited sponsorships a opposed to men,” she enlightened. Mashale further stated that there is men dominance in most sporting codes.
She said as Women in Sports, they have had a lot of shifts that were caused by international sport conferences from 2010, whereby women assembled to tackle the problems they are facing in sports, looking at a
number of declarations including Botswana declaration for Africa Region that was signed by several countries trying to help women to get involved in sports.
“The progress up to date is very slow because signing of declarations is not associated with the funding and there is
slow increase of women in sports especially in decision making processes. By making an example of my favorite sport which is netball, it has been women
sport but in the country, to our surprise, its National Executive Committee (NEC) that was elected two months ago has only two women and the rest of the
committee members are men. “This means that as women we are not empowered enough to stand up and take control, even in our designated sectors, we put a
lot of trust on men. Therefore, the Women Leadership Committee is trying to work on building the issues of self-confidence in women, capacity building,
knowing policies and implementing right policies to protect women and girls in sports. Since last year, we introduced the Women Leadership Programme which brought
together ladies from 20 various sporting codes and trains them about these issues,” she explained. Mashale said the first batch will graduate from the programme this year in September and the group of 20 women will follow,
with which they are looking forward to implement another program called Women for Women, which will be open for all woman in sports. She said the programme will
work at creating women leaders who will mentor other in sports. Weight Lifting Public Relations Officer (PRO) Anna Shale when asked about weightlifting as one of the sports
considered to be male dominated due to the physical power used in the sport, she said it is not male sport like it has been perceived; it is a sport for both
genders. She indicated that the challenges met by women include under eating, knee valgus, weak push or pull, diastasis recti and gym intimidation. “Under eating is probably the most
prevalent problem within the female fitness community, where the emphasis is always on getting smaller and leaner. Knee valgus is a physical issue many
women have because of our wider alignment and it can be caused by stiff ankles, weak adductors tight adductors or an under active posterior chain. Weak push or
pull is having a weaker upper body which is something most of us are born with, even many strong female power lifters have a weak bench therefore our power
tends to come from our legs,” Shale explained. She further showed that diastasis recti is experienced by many women who have been pregnant and experience a
weakening or a tear in their abdominal wall so this can arrange from mild to severe and cause problems anywhere from discomfort all the way to a serious
hernia. “Gym intimidation is feeling like you don’t belong in the weight room with men swinging heavy dumbbells and barbells is very common,” she noted.
Shale said many times when she talked to women in the free weight room, they have confessed they were glad she was there too. She enlightened that there is no discrimination and there is a
program which assists them to pursue this sporting code without hesitation. Hands of Life Bicycling Cyclist Kananelo Khabane shared the challenges they are facing as young women who are dedicated
in cycling sport when riding bicycles in public, especially in town. She said, “People become surprised and literally stare at a woman riding a bicycle, it is
like a miracle. They mock or cheer her up in a negative manner, somehow indicating that she is not capable of what she is doing. I remembered an incident I recently experienced whereby a man challenged my riding experience by
riding straight on my lane expecting me to ride off so that he can pass. This shows that some people do not respect women who ride bicycles the same as men,” she stated. She encouraged young women who are willing to join cycling to hold back their fears and follow their dreams.
