It has been two generations since the Education Amendments of 1972 were signed into law, which includes the landmark Title IX, designed to bring gender equity at educational institutions that receive federal funding.
Van Rheenen is a critical studies scholar who examines sport as political struggle and how it both influences, and is influenced by, historical patterns of alienation, discrimination, and inequity in schools and our broader society.
His research is also partly informed by personal experiences. Born in Nigeria and raised in California, Van Rheenen played professional soccer and was a student athlete at Berkeley. He earned his bachelor’s in Political Economy and German, master’s in education, and PhD in cultural studies from Berkeley. His critical perspective examines how sports, beyond the physical and mental health benefits for athletes, and aside from its entertainment and business value, are often grounded within the dominant interests of the wider community. In this context, sports are not immune to social divisions inherent to reigning race, class and gender relations.
Cutting across all of his research projects is a passion for cultural critique and a corresponding commitment to social change.
Van Rheenen calls himself hopeful, even utopian, as he envisions sport as a potential platform for social and environmental justice and activism.
Van Rheenen’s paper chronicles the game preferences of American children during the twentieth century, documenting the results from four studies between 1898 and 1998. Findings revealed that the game preferences of boys and girls have become markedly more similar over the course of the 20th century.
In fact, seven of the ten favorite activities self-reported by girls were shared by boys. These activities included basketball (#1 for boys, #3 for girls), computer games (B #2, G #7), soccer (B #5, G #5), swimming (B #6, G #1), tennis (B #8, G #9), bike riding (B #9, G #10), and cards (B #10, G #8). This similarity between the genders in their reported game preference was particularly striking as these activities were selected from a list of 190 games and activities.
The dominance of sports and electronic (computer and video) games at the end of the 20th century not only reflected the technological advances of American society; it also indicated an increased desire for games that demand greater skill and promote role specialization.
As Van Rheenen argues, “the shift in game preferences to skilled, organized, and adult-supervised activities and the erosion of gender-specific game activities are two of the most resonant themes from this comparative study. Taken together, they suggest that the gender divide among children has become less marked or institutionalized within American society” (411).
Van Rheenen’s work challenges the idea that there exist “boy’s” and “girl’s” game. Hopscotch, for example, perceived within the mid- to late- twentieth century to be a “game for girls” was similarly regarded as a “game for boys” throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and most of the nineteenth centuries. As such, findings that report seemingly “natural differences” between the sexes based upon play preferences more likely reflect the cultural construction of gender at a particular historical moment.
Despite the increased similarity between the sexes in game preferences over the course of the twentieth century, it would be misleading to assert that children’s games have become gender neutral. Chi-square analyses revealed significant statistical differences (p < 0.01) in the frequency of response among boys and girls on several activities. In particular, at the turn of the twenty-first century, boys preferred computer and video games, football, baseball, and wrestling, while girls preferred dolls, dance, jump rope, hopscotch, and drama.
However, the most striking result of the twentieth century in terms of children’s play patterns has been the convergence, rather than the disparity, among the sexes in their game preferences.
