Do girls have to play more fairly than boys?

Recently, Elizabeth Lambert, a University of New Mexico soccer player, was suspended indefinitely from her team because she punched and pulled the hair of a girl on the opposing team. (The video is posted in the article.)

In “Who You Callin’ A Lady?” Newsweek’s Kathleen Deveny writes about the incident and claims that women athletes are held to a higher standard than their male counterparts. She writes, “If it had been two men in a Division 1 college game, I doubt we would have gotten so exercised. …Even Michael Vick is playing football again—and he killed puppies!” Deveny goes on to say that society pressures women to be “nice” – on and off the field. She gives the example of female executives. We don’t have many in the United States because the standard is that executives should be aggressive, and women do not fit into that definition if they are living up to society’s ideal image of them.

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