Amidst some uneventful soccer practices, I often catch a glimpse of the middle school track team—an odd amount of them clad in jeans.
On the opposite side of the turf, the girl’s lacrosse adheres to their mandatory dress code: most notably, skirts.
Apparel rooted in tradition rather than functionality, this arbitrary rule is only one example of an affliction on women’s sports. From dress codes and equipment regulations to entirely different modes of play, women’s sports have long been subjected to a variety of outdated and unnecessary rules that prioritize notions of femininity and faux-safety precautions over the athletes’ actual capabilities. Many of these rules do little more than undermine the athletes who are, in many cases, competing under the same demands a male athlete would.
This is vastly evident in both women’s ice hockey and lacrosse, two sports that are hailed for their physicality in male divisions. Female ice hockey leagues—not only in America but in virtually every country with girl’s ice hockey—are prohibited from body-checking. This means that any female player who exercises the same athletic intensity that their male counterparts pertain will be subjected to a two-minute penalty (times vary depending on the length of game periods and severity of the penalty).
The purpose of this rule is nonexistent. Supporters of stratifying the rules between women’s and men’s ice hockey have argued for decades that allowing women to body-check would be a breach of their safety and be hazardous to those participating. The baselessness of these claims is immediately disproved when one takes into account that—in an all-female league—women are going up against fellow women of similar size, stature, and biological abilities. This is verbatim to the way men compete against fellow men of the same athletic means and potential to defend themselves against contact.
The effect of this rule has since proved to bring adverse implications. Body-checking teaches players to be able to keep their heads up whilst on the ice, ensuring they are aware of any surroundings that may be in the vicinity. However, by prohibiting women from being able to body-check, many are not conditioned to play the same level of “heads-up hockey.” This can be a major point of hazard as female competitors—especially in youth girl’s leagues—are subjected to increasing rates of concussion, blind collisions, and other injuries that one might sustain without warning due to a system that places more pride in upholding outdated rules than protecting all their players.
This is not the only differentiation between opposite-gendered rulebooks; it was not until recently that USA Hockey officially allowed girl’s leagues of age 15 and above to implement delayed offsides and the ability to ice the puck whilst shorthanded, two rules that, when not ordained, disrupt the flow of the game from both a defensive and offensive standpoint (effective beginning in the 2025-2026 season). This decision came only one year after all youth leagues, female and male alike, began to require mandatory neck protection, a long-overdue safety precaution that highlights even more excessively just how obsolete and old-fashioned female rulebooks are and how far some are willing to go to instill pointless safeguards rooted in uplifting men’s sports and muting women’s sports.
In women’s lacrosse, there are similar—if not even more—restrictive gender guidelines that impair the spirit of the sport. Just like ice hockey, body-checking is completely banned. Additionally, stick-checking is highly restricted and physical contact is regulated to an unnecessary maximum, an impediment to fundamental parts of lacrosse that make the game what it is. An excessive amount of ordinances makes it increasingly easy for a female player to violate one of the many counterproductive rules that obstruct smooth gameplay, such as shooting space violations that limit defensive strategy and assume that female players cannot stomach the same aggressive nature of the game that male players can.
As mentioned previously, equipment and uniforms are also strictly policed. Many female leagues still require the use of a skirt rather than shorts whilst playing. Due to the heralded idea that female players should not practice intense physicality, they are required to wear very minimal equipment—only a mouthguard and goggles—to protect themselves, while male leagues must wear a myriad of chest and elbow pads, a helmet, a mouthguard, and more. Male players also have specialized lacrosse sticks depending on the position they play (ex. attackers typically have shorter sticks, defenders have longer sticks, and midfielders vary), while females all have the same length stick aside from goaltenders. While this is often marketed as a facet of “simplicity,” it is, in reality, insulting to the complexity and demands of the sport.
Even in sports deemed non-contact, unnecessary guidelines work to enforce the idea that women’s sports are “softer” alternatives to men’s sports. This can be seen heavily in the dress code, in which female athletes are often sexualized by being forced to wear scantily-clad uniforms without any evidence of practicability. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Nike designed the USA women’s track and field uniforms with an unnecessarily high bikini line that many deemed as too revealing, causing a wave of anger across many athletes who were uncomfortable wearing a uniform so unprofessional and outright disrespectful. Similar debates occur routinely in beach volleyball, where the average uniform is only a bikini.
These futile hindrances, pervasive in every way, shape, or form across all women’s sports, reveal that governing bodies in athletics seek not to protect and uplift their athletes, but rather to devalue the pillars of female athletics as a whole. If sports are truly meant to harness competition—regardless of gender—then why is this competition dependent on outdated gender roles? These archaic restrictions don’t encourage opportunity; they restrain it.
In a society with an agenda that women’s sports need rash modifications to be played efficiently, female athletes mustn’t have to fight for the same updated norms that male athletes are guaranteed automatically. This is far beyond an issue of fairness; it is an issue of progress. The status quo must be challenged if athletes, fans, and advocates alike want to see female athletes thrive to the same extent as males.
