Happy International Women's Day 2024
Happy International Women’s Day to all my readers. I’ve been really enjoying seeing all the posts from teams today celebrating their teammates and idols.
I always appreciate the day as a chance to assess what I can do to help the push towards gender equity*. Helpfully from an ultimate perspective it’s right before the start of the new season so a perfect time to make plans.
Since I haven’t been able to coach over the past year and have had to concentrate on blogging and other media instead I’ve been thinking a lot more this year about who is represented in the Ultimate blog/podcast/youtube sphere and unfortunately it's still overwhelmingly male voices blogging, podcasting and youtubing about Ultimate, particularly in a teaching capacity.
Reflecting on this I have a similar internal conflict as when I coached in the women’s division - I like what I’m doing but I’m conscious that I’m yet another male voice taking up oxygen and maybe crowding out female voices. The least I can do is bias my own materials towards examples from women's divison/female matching players. Especially as I’m dipping my toes more into the Youtube waters I’m definitely trying to use examples from the women’s division.
I don’t mean this to sound like that’s in any way a struggle - I have for many years preferred watching the women’s division so it’s where I tend to think of examples first anyway. But I want to ensure that continues.
As well as that I’d like to commit to:
Dipping my toes back into coaching, hopefully primarily with women’s teams (assuming any will have me!)
Signed up as a multiplier for the play.coach.grow project (and I think signups are still open!)
Offering a platform for more FMP through podcasts and guest posts
If there’s anything more you’d like to see me do, I’m very open to suggestions so do let me know.
*read my 2023 post here with more background on my history with the women’s division and gender equity