A research abaut the perception levels of their bodies of female athletes and gender roles

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It is observed that female athletes have behaved like masculine which is known sport branches special to males participation with females. This research is done with the aim of determining the gender roles and perception levels of their bodies of female athletes who are involved in individual and team sports with the ones, who are not; exploring the effects of the state of doing sports to the body perception – gender roles and determining the relationship between them.
180 elite female athletes constitute the precedent of the research, who participated in 6 sports of different sports branches (wrestling, boxing, weight lifting, volleyball, basketball and football) during 2006-2007 season in Ankara, İstanbul and İzmir with 180 female university students who do not have sports and are chosen by random selection from Gazi Universities, Scıence and Literature Faculty and Selçuk Universities, Veterinary Faculty, Social Science Faculty.
In the research, “Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire”, was used to determine the perception levels of female athletes; “BEM Gender Roles Inventory” was used to determine the gender roles; and “Personal Information Form” was used to determine the characteristics of the students which is improved by the researcher as data collection means.
In order to examine whether the gender roles and perception levels of their bodies differ from each others’ according to their characteristics simple descritive statistical analysisi techniques were used. During the comparison of multiple groups, examination of characteristics of gender roles according to the state of having sports and sports branches ANOVA was carried out.. 0.05 was usedas the cut of singificance level in the research..
As a result;
A meaningful relationship between the body perception and gender roles has been determined,
Visual orientation points and physical sufficiency orientation points of the female athletes who are involved in team and individual sports, in point of body perception levels, have been found lower than the ones who are not.
Meaningful differences have been determined between the masculinity characteristics of females and state of having sports, besides, masculinity points of the females who do not have sports have been found meaningfully lower than the ones’ who have sports.
When we observe the relationship between the body perception and gender roles; meaningful differences have been found between of the females who have sports and the ones who have not. Masculinity characteristics of the females who have individual sports have been determined higher than the ones who have not, on the other hand, femininity characteristics of the females who have not do sports have been determined higher than the ones who have. It has been found that there is a difference among all groups in point of Social (plaudit) acceptence characteristics. But it has been determined that the Social Acceptence points of the females who are involved in team sports have been higher than the points of rest of two groups.