I grew up in a family where sport was not actively promoted. My mother was an only child, raised by her single aunts, and she was discouraged from doing sports. My dad, who went to military school, tried all sorts of sports before dedicating himself full-time to Trotskyism and political activity — it was 1968, after all. He eventually decreed that sport was a waste of time, and that football, in particular, was the opium of the masses, paraphrasing Marx’s statement about religion. So, in a city where Argentine star Diego Armando Maradona was inspiring people to dream big dreams, I grew up as a brainy girl in a brainy household that condemned the national sport as something beneath us.
At school the situation was not better. Southern Italy is infamous for its lack of infrastructure — only 3 schools out of ten have a gym in southern Italy nowadays, and things may have been even worse 25 years ago. My high school was located in the very heart of Naples old town, in a former Jesuit convent dating back to the 1500s. We used to exercise once a week in the Oratorio dei Nobili, a beautifully large hall, with its frescoed ceilings depicting religious scenes. In the centre, there was a grandiose framed fresco of the Nativity of Mary by Battistello Caracciolo, one of the city’s most important 17th century painters.
I was not so impressed by the art, to be honest, as I struggled keeping up with the PE classes that I hated. We would run around the hall, and maybe do some coordination exercises. I would feel clumsy and unprepared. What I know is that at some point, students were barred from doing sport in the Oratorio dei Nobili, because our sweat was ruining the prized frescos.
My struggles with sport
I had no role models — nobody around me did sports seriously, especially not girls. The slimmest girls around me were mostly encouraged to do gymnastics or ballet, while the boys were sent to football practice. My mother was actually a big fan of basketball, and when she could, for a couple of years when I was in middle school, she sent my brother and me to basketball as an extracurricular activity. Only when I was 16 I discovered I could swim in a swimming pool, and enjoy it. In the meantime, I struggled with my weight, with being bullied for being chubby and also with my endless energy.
When I left Italy for university in Scotland, I met friends who exercised regularly — they jogged, they cycled, they swam. I started running and doing yoga — which are still part of my (sometimes) daily routine, and which definitely helped me channel my stress and feel better about myself.
When in 2017 I started covering women’s football for a journalistic project that took me and two colleagues to Brazil, The Gambia, Denmark and the United States, those who knew me were surprised. What was I, of all people, doing covering sports?
But to me it was clear that the society that was still preventing girls around the world from chasing their sport dream was the same structure that had prevented me from exploring exercise more widely. I understood their struggles — and I thought everybody else should understand them too.
Even Brazilian professional footballer Marta, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest female footballers of all time and was named FIFA World Player of the Year six times, had to sneak out of her house and play with boys. Female football was illegal until 1979, and Marta, who was born in 1986, still met a lot of societal resistance.
“I was very frustrated. I looked around, I stopped to think, and I just couldn’t understand it,” she told me and my colleagues. “Why is it so hard to accept that a human being was born with a talent, knows how to play, wants to do it and that is what makes her happy?”
Women at the Olympics
I am thinking of women in sports because the 2024 Olympics made history: for the first time, there was the same representation of female and male athletes. This is a major step in the right direction (women first participated in the international games in 1900, representing just 2.2% of athletes). And other great steps in the right direction have been taken, like for example having the first-ever Olympic Village nursery for mothers to spend time with their young children. We have also seen heavily pregnant athletes competing, such as Egypt’s fencer Nada Hafez and Azerbaijani archer Yaylagul Ramazanova — a sign that ideas around what the female body can accomplish even in pregnancy are changing.
Yet, there is still so much to do.
While women’s sports have more audiences than ever, and also more money, the growth is still slow. A 2023 report commissioned by a women’s sport and entertainment collective found that 90% of sponsorships still go to men’s sports. This also has an effect on how far women dream about being athletes. A 2023 study by Women in Sport found that the lack of funding impacted career choices — less than 29% of girls and young women aged 13-24 said they dreamt of reaching the top in sport compared to over 50% of boys and young men.
As Jessica Pinchbeck and Candice Lingam-Willgoss, lecturers in sport and fitness at The Open University argue in this piece, very little is known about how to support female athletes as it is more complex to study them because of the hormone fluctuations. Not to mention how to support pregnant or postpartum athletes.
A misinformation shitstorm
And then there is the issue of how women’s sport is perceived and talked about.
Take the case of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who won gold medal in the women’s boxing 66-kilogram weight class, despite being at the centre of a huge controversy and misinformation shitstorm around her gender identity.
During Khelif’s preliminary match against Italy’s Angela Carini, a blow by the Algerian athlete resulted in Carini abandoning the fight after 46 seconds. “I’ve never been hit with such a powerful punch,” Carini told reporters after the match. That comment was transformed into a viral misinformation campaign.
At the 2023 International Boxing Association (IBA) Women’s World Championships, officials had disqualified Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, saying that the women “did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.”
The Internet went wild. People I considered smart in my circles shared infuriating posts saying that Khelif was a trans athlete (she is not, she is a woman), insinuating that the Olympics are a joke for not checking on athletes, and so on and so forth. (Khelif eventually filed a criminal complaint over alleged “acts of cyber-harassment” to the Paris public prosecutor’s office, mentioning famous figures such as JK Rowling and Elon Musk, who misrepresented Khelif’s gender.)
I recommend you read this piece by Jaime Schultz, author of the book “Regulating Bodies” to understand more about the testing of testosterone and how it affects women athletes unjustly. “Most sports are organized according to a strict male-female binary. Nature isn’t,” she writes.
I also recommend that you read this piece about Khelif’s childhood, and how hard it was for her, as a girl, to be interested in playing football and eventually ending up as a boxer — a sport that is not considered apt for women in conservative environments.
There were also a lot of other difficult moments at the Olympics. Male commentators came under fire for their sexist comments. A Eurosport commentator was suspended for suggesting female swimmers were off fixing their makeup. Another commentator from France’s RMC radio talked about a top tennis player as a housewife. “On the left, there’s Sara Errani, who’s the boss. She does everything: The washing up, the cooking, the mopping up.”
Female elite athletes keep being referred to as “girls” or addressed by their first names — unlike men. The official Olympics broadcaster had to warn camera operators not to film or frame female athletes in sexist ways.
“It is unfortunate that far too often, attention is paid more on how women athletes look, versus their power, grit and performance,” Danette Leighton, CEO of the New York-based nonprofit Women’s Sports Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
Yet one image speaks volumes: U.S. gymnasts Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles bowed down to Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who won the gold for the individual floor exercise final. It speaks of camaraderie, of respect, of overcoming struggles (this was the first all-black podium in men or women’s gymnastics at the Olympics). It is an image I wish I had seen growing up because it would have told me about all the reasons why sport is great and makes us grow and develop. It would have given me an ideal to follow — the way it inspires young children right now.
What I’ve been reading
“Has your husband ever gotten anyone pregnant before?” A routine question asked by a doctor helping a woman figure out the reasons for her infertility. In this touching, first-person account (from the Modern Love column of The New York Times), a secret opens the door to new possibilities along a difficult path towards motherhood.
What I’ve been listening to
This is a great episode from People Fixing the World, a BBC programme that focuses on solutions to the world’s problems. It looks at what solutions there are to support premature babies around the world — especially in countries where incubators are not available. Doctors in Colombia are teaching mothers to look after their babies like kangaroos do. The so-called “kangaroo mother care” teaches mothers to wrap babies tightly against their skin. The technique has been used in Bogotá since the late 1970s and it has saved babies and helped them thrive.
What I’ve been watching
“How did I come to the idea that my parental leave would be a sort of sabbatical?” This question in this beautiful short animation called Postpartum really touched me. German filmmaker Henriette Rietz tries to unpack the complicated and overwhelming days after her child is born. She talks of pain, sleepless days (day becomes night, night becomes day), of endless breastfeeding, of false expectations and external pressures. The animation is sweet and ironic — and the images it brings to the idea of new motherhood are refreshing and beautiful.
What’s been inspiring me
These words, by Lisa Buscomb of the New Zealand-based account Wilde Road, reached me on a day I was struggling with my to do list, before trying to take some days off. “Some days just don’t go to plan, you feel behind and a little lost,” she writes. “But it’s okay. Everyone has these days.” It reminded me to take a breath, to take some rest, to be kinder to myself. I hope they do the trick with you too. Thank you María José for sharing.
With love and care,
Irene
📣 The First 1,000 Days is edited by community member and friend, Shaun Lavelle.
Photo credits and alt-text: Ian Murray on Unsplash, Close-up of a gold medal with a red and white ribbon lying on a wooden surface, with a blurred natural background.
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