Next Sunday, October 29th, more than 1.400 runners will gather in front of Unicamp's Faculty of Physical Education (FEF). The start of 8rd Round of Unicamp, a competition that goes beyond the university community, with participation from people from all over the region, is scheduled for 8 am. Since starting to promote the event, the University has brought onto campus a phenomenon that was the increase in street racing across the country. A phenomenon that professor Helena Altmann, from the Faculty of Physical Education (FEF) at Unicamp, addresses in the article “Physical and Sports Activities and Women in Brazil”, written at the invitation of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in addition to the unpublished document “Movement is Life: Physical and Sports Activities for All People - Brazil's National Human Development Report".
The report, according to the professor, is a large survey on the practice of physical sports activities in Brazil based on different issues. In addition to Altmann, two other professors from Unicamp were invited to write what the UNDP calls background paper: Heloisa Reis, also from FEF, signs "Physical Activities and Violence: football as a reference" e "Power, transparency and democracy in sports management", the last article being co-authored with Mariana Zuaneti Martins. Professor Larissa Galatti, from the Faculty of Applied Sciences (FCA), writes about “AFEs, Human Development and High Performance Sport”.
According to Altmann, the report reveals inequalities in relation to the practice of sporting activities, based on various social markers of difference, such as gender or racial issues. “In general, in Brazil, men practice more physical activities than women and black women do less than white women, for example. The markers establish very significant differences in terms of access.”
The practice of physical activities is part of the UNDP's strategies for human and sustainable development. To write the article, the teacher started from the 17 Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations. The fifth item refers to “Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls”. When describing this objective, the UNDP website page has a photo of girls playing football. “The image they chose to illustrate the objective is an image of sport, bringing an idea of how much sport can promote gender equality”, he notes.
The image of the girls, in an environment of some poverty, in an active and protagonistic stance caught the attention of the teacher and researcher. This was the beginning of the reflection she seeks to make in the article.
Using IBGE research, the professor highlights the relationship between gender inequality in sports practices and the world of work, as women are still largely responsible for domestic work. The teacher also cites Unicamp research carried out in partnership with Spain, analyzing the regularity of activities carried out by girls and boys in the eighth and ninth years of elementary school in public schools in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas.
Studies have shown that boys practice almost one more day of sporting activities per week. Furthermore, there is the problem of the large concentration of boys playing only football, which reveals the limited availability of other activities, as is also being seen in another research that the teacher presents in the article, based on an analysis of social projects aimed at sport and financed with funds from Campinas City Hall. “There are a much larger number of boys being served by these projects and the predominance of football,” she comments.
Regarding Sunday's event at Unicamp, the teacher sees street running as “a very motivating element that provides greater regularity in sporting activity until adherence to a regular practice”. According to the professor, as shown in scientific initiation work also supervised by her, women join the race for reasons outside the race itself, such as an invitation from a friend, the desire to lose weight or simply because it is good for their health. However, participation in competitions “provides a new meaning for this experience, which becomes seen as training and, in this case, the objectives of running become more linked to the field of running itself. It seeks to reduce time, increase the distance covered, improve performance, in addition to linking competitions to travel.”
Helena Altmann highlights the need for people to have the opportunity to practice sports and diverse activities, in the school environment, through public policies, or in the university environment.
In relation to women, she says that sport offers the possibility of establishing another relationship with the body “not a body that will be appreciated because it is beautiful but an efficient, dynamic, healthy, agile and strong body to perform well in a race , to dance, this is empowering.” Altmann also remembers that practicing physical activity is also a way of establishing bonds and dealing with feelings, whether related to defeat or success.
