In recent decades, women have been setting new world records at a far swifter pace than men have, and that’s unsurprising if you compare the athleticism of today’s top sporting women with that of their punier predecessors. She offers some provocative data to support this position, including a study that showed a group of second-grade boys outthrowing their female peers while using their dominant arm (with which, being boys, they had had plenty of practice) but doing no better than the girls when both sexes were using their nondominant arm. The apparent disparity in athletic achievement between boys and girls, she argues, has nothing to do with innate ability and everything to do with training and expectations. Dowling compares the idea that men will necessarily be better athletes than women because they are taller and more muscular with the myth that men are the more intelligent sex because they have bigger brains. The remaining battle to be fought by the women’s movement, Dowling contends, is the fight for women’s movement-for the freedom to enjoy the strength and power of their bodies, whether haring around the playing field or striding down the sidewalk. BOOKS lead review of “The Frailty Myth” (Random House $24.95) by Colette Dowling.
0 kommentar(er)
