Attitude of persons active and inactive in sports towards sexual stereotypes in life and sports: Lithuanian case

Abstract

Introduction The relevance of work is caused by abundance of articles and research in foreign literature on the problems of distribution of sexual roles and stereotype formation, whereas in Lithuania this topic has not been researched and analysed in detail so far. There is a lack of research, which would attempt to determine the attitude of persons active in sports towards sexual stereotypes. When analysing the attitude of persons, it is important to perceive the origin of sexual inequality and to understand which sexual differences are real and which are the outcome of stereotypes that have been formed in cultural process. During last 40 years the abundance of research has been carried out in order to find out the image of a typical woman and a typical man, and it was determined that 75% of respondents’ opinions on the characteristics of opposite sex coincide. Women are regarded as more careful and superior than men in the social sphere. Men are regarded as more competent, intelligent, creative and able to control their environment. Besides, woman’s thinking is often influenced by factors related to interpersonal relations, because she looks for the approval from others and men’s thinking is more inclined to fighting and competition. Foreign psychologists, when researching into differences between men and women, have noticed only four statistically reliable psychological differences between sexes. These are the ability to orient oneself in space, mathematical abilities, language skills and aggressiveness. However, even these differences always depend on the specific situation. Sports as a social environment can also influence the formation of stereotypes. Mastership, strength, aggressiveness, roughness, competence are attributed to a man here, while in sports woman is often associated with fragility, humility, fairness, passivity, therefore artistic branches of sports are attributed to girls and women already in school. Therefore it is [...].