How important do you consider younger girls having female role models in sports and having professional female athletes?
Non-segregated sports that don't rely on physical strength, speed, etc still tend to be almost exclusively men in the extreme corner of the bell curve that professional athletes occupy, so getting rid of gender segregation would result in fewer professional women in sports.
I don’t have a good answer to how important sex and gender is for young people in choosing role models. My biggest role models in sport don’t share a gender, nationality, or race with me. It’s hard to say how I would have acted if they had more in common with me. Interesting.
Maybe the question, if you think gender is really important for role modeling, is what other physical characteristics would be useful to segregate sports by. I think segregating by sex is valuable when there are sex biases (I don’t know of many gender biases in sports), but segregating to increase participation would be something to think about.
I think it creates false hope. I'd much rather see role models who present realistic goals like teachers and scientists. Sports and entertainment dangle low work high income fantasies.
Non-segregated sports that don't rely on physical strength, speed, etc still tend to be almost exclusively men in the extreme corner of the bell curve that professional athletes occupy, so getting rid of gender segregation would result in fewer professional women in sports.