The report from the Center for Sports Research, which is submitted to the government on Tuesday, does not discuss the reasons for the gender differences in particular. But in a previous study from Marie Cederschiöld University, two researchers interviewed parents, children, young people and coaches in a Stockholm area about this.
– The decisive variable for whether you play club sports is that you have a social network, that is, that you have friends who play sports. You have to have that network to get into club sports, says researcher Anders Kassman.
The researchers interviewed parents who were born in Sweden, Somalia, Syria and Eritrea – and discovered that there were many similarities between parents with Swedish and foreign backgrounds. All parents – regardless of background – had different views on girls’ and boys’ sports.
See more about this in the video.
“You care about girls”
In this study, the researchers did not receive any answers that dealt with any form of honor culture or the like, according to researcher Åsa Kneck.
– No, we received no such answers. It is more about the fact that you are very concerned about your girls and think that the girls are more vulnerable. Therefore, it is thought that the girls are not safe with getting to and from training by themselves. This applied to all parents, regardless of background. But the interviewees were very positive about the sports activities themselves once the children were there.
