Female Athletic Trainers

 Listening to Barb’s story and her experience as an athletic trainer made me think of feminine expectations. At the beginning of this process, only males were seen in her position. Today we see an increase in women in this field but it is still not female-dominated. The reason mostly being a personal restriction, women are not 100% welcomed. Although women have been taken as the caregivers they were not respected in a professional field. The double standard mixed with social expectations is why women were and still are held back. 

Found to be “unreliable” or “inconsistent” due to their personal lives as mothers, women are not expected to thrive in an athletic space. Bard spoke on the travel times while being a mother and it emphasized the female neglect in a professional position. She said something along the lines of, if the child was sick, the mother took them to the doctors, not the man. If the child needed to stay home, the mother needed to stay home. So there wasn’t flexibility for the mother. Although I can understand the reasoning, it is also slightly sexist. 

As a young woman who might want to be a mother, I realize that my options in life might be limited. Never would I limit myself, but society would try to restrain me to one specific role. It’s either the home or the office. As Bard listed names of young women stepping into these positions I thought of the Packer’s new athletic trainer. She is the first female athletic trainer for their team and it made headlines. Although it is a great achievement I wonder when will be the last time we hear, “the first woman to ever”?