- Research compiled by England hockey player Tess Howard
- ‘Most underrated cause of low female sport numbers’
A new study has found that 70% of women saw girls drop out of sport when they were at school due to clothing and related body image concerns, with many left feeling “sexualised” by what they were forced to wear.
Published on Friday in the journal Sport, Education and Society after research compiled by England hockey international Tess Howard, the study also found that wearing different uniforms can influence the development of a fear of “masculinisation” and “butch/lesbian” perceptions in sport, and “signal the ways uniform can contribute to harmful athletic-feminine identity tensions in teenage girls”.
