Girls and PhysEd

Girls' Experiences in Physical Education: Competition, Evaluation, & Degradation

School health nurses are often asked to participate in the health component of many P.E. programs in North American schools. As a long-time school nurse faced with the realization that girls' enrollment in P.E. was dwindling once the compulsory credits were achieved, a pilot study was initiated to explore girls' lived experience of P.E. What emerged was the reality that for many girls P.E. was a source of constant shaming regarding their athletic ability and eventually themselves. Forced competition, degrading evaluation, and sexual and sizeist harassment by both peers and teachers, led the participants in this study to opt out of any further P.E. classes. Within school-based physical education exists an opportunity to promote the health of adolescent women, and girls' allies, P.E. teachers and girls, can come together and co-construct a model of P.E. that is not competitive nor based on athletic ability, but rather one that builds a positive self-esteem, a positive relationship with one's body and is rooted in participation, fun, and female-friendship.