Tag Archive for 'donne'

First women alpinist expedition on K2

Seventy years after the Italian ascent of K2, the CAI (Italian Alpine Club) is preparing by going beyond the dimension of pure sports achievement: 9 women – four Italian athletes, four Pakistanis, and one doctor – will depart in June for the second highest peak on Earth, ready to leave a mark on Italian sports, but also an imprint on a social and human level.

Federica Mingolla, Silvia Loreggian, Anna Torretta, Cristina Piolini, Samina Baig, Amina Bano, Nadeema Sahar, Samana Rahim, and Dr. Lorenza Pratali: they were the protagonists of the project presentation day organized by CAI with EvK2CNR, an association dedicated to scientific and technological research at high altitude.

It won’t just be a sports achievement but a shared experience that can create strong bonds, a blend of challenges, joys, and difficulties that will leave a mark on each of them. The objective is to tell the female perspective within the context of a Himalayan expedition that sees mountaineers from different worlds and cultures climbing together. Agostino Da Polenza, a highly experienced professional and profound connoisseur of those mountains, will coordinate the climbers. The project will start with training days on Monte Bianco (March 15-18), where the climbers will prepare to face K2.

The racism of Wesley Sneijder

But why don’t they shut up. They don’t have to evolve mentally but at least follow the evolution of the sport and the rules of life.

“If I think back to me in a locker room, I could never think of being coached by a woman.” Former Inter midfielder Wesley Sneijder, spoke to “Veronica Offside” about the issue of integrating female figures into men’s soccer, which is much discussed in the Netherlands and England. “I find it difficult to make a judgment. I think back to how I was as a player, how I was in the locker room. Maybe things have changed now, but I haven’t. I imagine all the football humor that would ensue…. I have nothing against women, but we’re going a bit overboard here.”

A missed opportunity and above all a display of low intelligence, on all sides.

They don’t hire women as head coaches

“The failure to hire women as head coaches of men’s programs, all while consistently hiring men to lead women’s teams, further solidifies the underrepresentation of women in sports leadership.”

Billie Jean King

Australia: $4millions to promote women coaches for top sport

The innovative Gen32 Coach Program was launched in July 2022 with 55 male and female coaches taking part in the flagship program with a focus on enhancing the depth and diversity within Australia’s high performance coaching ranks.

Today’s announcement ensures the program is catering for the modern coach with childcare support and flexible working arrangements available for coaches with children on top of their paid coaching apprenticeship.

The extra investment will extend the paid apprenticeship from two years to three for 29 female coaches to ensure the coaches are ready to take the next step in their careers.

Minister for Sport, the Hon Anika Wells, recently met with members of the program and welcomed the ASC’s target of more than doubling the number of coaches by the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“The Australian Government is committed to addressing the underrepresentation of women in sport, especially in high performance coaching roles,” Minister Wells said.

“The simple fact is that there are not enough women coaches in national teams and it must change.

“Women represented just 18 per cent of accredited coaches for the Australian team at the Tokyo Olympic Games and just 23 per cent at the Paralympics.

“That is not good enough.

“The Gen32 Coach Program is a tangible way to improve this ratio ahead of our home Games in Brisbane.

“It is a contemporary program that doesn’t make a woman choose between children and a coaching career and I congratulate the AIS and Australian Sports Commission for their hard work to bring it to life.”

The Gen32 Coach Program is being delivered in collaboration between the AIS, National Sporting Organisations and National Institute Network partners with a total investment of over $11 million. The AIS is investing over $7 million including $3.9 million announced as part of the Women’s Leadership Package in the 2022-23 Federal Budget.

How many Italians are reading and who are they?

ISTAT data from 2020 help build a picture of the situation.

  1. Readership has been declining since 2010; in 2020 only 41.4% of the population has read at least one book in the past year.
  2. The female population shows a greater propensity to read as early as age 6: overall 47.1% of women, compared to 33.5%  of men, have read at least one book during the year.
  3. More young people between the ages of 11 and 14 (58.6%) read more than all other age groups.
  4. More women (46.4%) read than men (36.1%).
  5. The audience most fond of reading is girls aged 11 to 24 (more than 60% have read at least one book in the year). The share of female readers falls below the national average after age 60, while for males it is always less than 50 percent except for boys aged 11 to 14 years slightly higher.
  6. Reading is linked to educational level: 72.8% of college graduates read, 49.1% of high school graduates read, and only 26.8% among those with an elementary school diploma.
  7. Territorial gaps persist: fewer than one in three people read in the southern regions (29.2%), while those in the northeast reach the highest percentage (44.3%) and 48.5 in the northwest and 44.3% in the center.
  8. Less than half of the readers (44.6%) say they have read at most three books in the 12 months prior to the interview; these are the so-called “weak readers” among whom are just under half of male readers (48.5%) and people between the ages of 11 and 14 (47.2%). 15.2% count themselves among “strong readers” (with at least 12 books read in the past year). Women’s greater propensity to read is also found in the intensity of reading: 16.7% say they read an average of one book per month compared to 13.3% of men.
  9. In 2016, about one in ten households had no books at all in the home, a figure that has now been constant for almost two decades.
  10. Among those with both parents who are readers, 78.1% of 6-18 year olds read; it stands at 64.5% if it is only the mother who has the reading habit and 63.8% if it is only the father. In contrast, the share of 6-18 year olds reading drops to 36.3% if both parents are not book readers.

Movimento special issue: women soccer (English abstract)

 

Italian women tennis players go back in the world ranking: an explanation

In Italy we have a problem in Female tennis, because  we not players among the top 50 in the world ranking and only y2 two among the top 100. A disaster and, above all, the inability to build a winning movement starting from the successes of the gold cycle of Pennetta and company. Beyond organizational matters and the early introduction of young in the tournament circuits, I am convinced that one of the aspects limiting the development of tennis players is the lack of integration of psychological component in training and in physical preparation.

Tennis is a complex sport in which physical reactivity protracted in time, mental readiness and determination and technical-tactical skills are used during each point. I wonder, too, because there are no data about but only personal experience, if  these components are trained by coaches with the same determination that is then asked the players. In my opinion, this approach is flawed, the girls (but this is also true for males)pay much more attenzione to hit the ball and to win the game rather than being tough and determined.

My question is: how much time is dedicated in training to build the toughness and determination compared to the time devoted to the development of the technique and game?

I remember the words that Roberta Vinci was repeated while playing the game, then won, against Serena Williams: “run and throw it in there.” In other words, she continually motivated to be focused on the present. How many training sessions are conducted with this approach?

The winning mentality is not formed at a table but through a coordinated training on these aspects. The same is true for the physical preparation of the tennis player how much care is given to stimulate attention, motivation and toughness during the sessions? In my opinion, there is not attention at these aspects, except maybe one that spontaneously the coach and the athlete can take.

This approach to training requires close collaboration between physical coach, psychologist and coach. There are people with this kind of interest?

Walking, gender differences across adult life

Review of a study on the gender differences across adult life by T. Pollard and J. Wagnild

Walking is associated with better mental and physical health and reduced mortality and, when used for transport, with reduced air and noise pollution. In contrast to other forms of physical activity, walking has the advantage of being accessible to most people. For these reasons, promotion of walking has become more prominent in public health campaigns .

The aim of this systematic review is to assess the current evidence on gender differences in walking in high income countries. We hypothesised that there are gender differences in participation in walking for leisure, for transport, and in total walking. We also set out to examine whether gender differences change across the life-course.

Results

  • More women than men walk for leisure when all age groups are considered together, although the effect size is small.
  • At younger ages more women walk for leisure than men but that this gender difference diminishes progressively with age, with evidence that it reverses in the oldest age groups so that more older men than older women walk for leisure.
  • Walking for exercise found that more women walked than men, except in the oldest age group (60+), in which more men walked than women.
  • Data on walking for fun or pleasure found that more women walked for fun than men.
  • There is no evidence for a consistent gender difference in participation in walking for transport.
  • There was no evidence for a gender difference in the prevalence of walking for any purpose in studies including all ages from the USA. Data reported by age group suggest that at younger ages more women walk than men, but at older ages the gender difference is very small.
  • Walking for leisure is an activity that women can undertake with children and it is possible that child-care plays a role in the relatively high levels of walking for leisure in younger women.
  • Young men’s relatively high levels of participation in sports and exercise decline with age, as reported for the UK and the USA, and it is possible that men adopt walking for leisure as a replacement for more vigorous activities as they get older.
  • In the oldest age groups, the proportion of men walking for leisure declines, but the proportion of women walking for leisure declines more. This pattern may reflect differences in ability to walk in older age. A British study found that “mobility limitation” rises faster with age in women than in men, probably because of higher levels of morbidity in older women than in older men, including musculoskeletal problems.

The 3 keys of success

Research conducted by McKinsey&Company on the success factors of women holding management positions showed that at the basis of their success there are features such as resilience, toughness and confidence. It’s not surprising because these are the basic characteristics of those who succeed in any field, including sport. Based on these features you can build great careers in business as in sport or art. Without the road will be short.

Many women’s programs focus on convening, creating, and broadening networks. While these are important investments, they are insufficient. Companies should also instill the capabilities women need to thrive. Some of the most important are resilience, grit, and confidence.

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties—a form of toughness. Grit is resolve, courage, and strength of character. Confidence is a level of self-assurance arising from an appreciation of your own abilities or qualities. In business settings, resilience allows us to get up after making a mistake or encountering a challenge, grit allows us to push through walls and rise above challenges, and confidence helps transform challenging experiences into greater self-assurance, not self-doubt.

In our 2012 interviews with 250 high-ranking women executives, we found that they thought the top attributes of their own success were resilience and grit, which ranked higher than more obvious factors, such as a results orientation.”

Less gender differences, more medals won

If countries are hoping to come out on top during the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, they better start minding their gender gaps. According to a new study by the University of British Columbia, countries with more gender equality tend to win more Olympic medals.

“I think there’s a stereotype that more macho nations that valorize masculinity or male dominance might be more dominant in male sport, we found that it’s actually the opposite,” says lead author Jennifer Berdahl, a professor of diversity and women’s studies at the UBC’s Sauder School of Business.

Berdahl studied 121 countries using data from the World Economic forum’s 2013 Global Gender Gap Report and compared it with the medal counts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi using a statistical model that controlled for factors such as GDP, income inequality and population size. Her findings reveal that both women and men tend to win more medals if their country exhibits greater gender equality, especially when it comes to educational attainment.

“Our study makes apparent that gender equality has a tendency to lift everyone up within a country,” Berdahl says. “Olympic glory is likely only one example of how whole societies can benefit from greater parity between the sexes.”

To corroborate her conclusions and account for countries’ performance differences in the winter versus summer games, Berdahl also studied the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London and found the same results.

The findings contradict society’s belief in what Berdahl calls a “zero-sum game” when it comes to gender rights, which is the idea that affording more opportunity to women tends to limit opportunity for men.

“Rather, gender inequality is likely to hurt both women and men by encouraging stereotypes that limit their ability to reach their full potential as individuals,” Berdahl concludes in the study. “Eroding false and antiquated norms regarding what men and women can and cannot do is a ‘win-win’ that allows members of both genders to realize their true potential.”