New data has "raised questions about why Australian women are much more likely to be involved in individual sports than team sports," according to David Sygall of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. Apart from netball and softball, "which each have a heavy female skew," women as a percentage are "out-represented by men in all team pursuits." By contrast, women are "strongly represented in solo activities such as running, boxing, yoga, swimming, aerobics and gymnastics." The "most striking findings" of the investigation, conducted by Roy Morgan Research, were that the "man-heavy" activities were team sports, such as cricket, football, rugby union and basketball. It "posed questions about why women are heavily involved in just a couple of team sports and if there were obstacles to them participating in others." Roy Morgan Research Deputy CEO Hugh Amoyal said, "The fact that netball and softball come up female-heavy suggests that it's wrong to assume that women don't like playing team sports. The question is why are they choosing netball over other sports? It's probably less about there being something inherently feminine about netball. We think it's more a snowball effect of it being that the sport is more accessible to them, they played it at school and so on." The "aggressive nature of some could be a reason for lower female interest." But "some would say" that field hockey, in which 47% of participants are women, is "very aggressive." It is "the same with netball." Amoyal: "Sports like AFL and rugby league tend to be more macho sports, meaning that even if it was more accessible, there might not be a huge spike in women wanting to play them" (SMH, 7/9).
