Avery Salermo is talking about a subject that most Americans have little to no interest in: rugby.

Salermo is sitting in the driver’s seat of her parked car, occasionally running her hands over her short black curls as she talks. She’s a musician based out of Long Beach, a city that frequently gets lumped in with L.A. due to its close proximity. Salermo is not especially big or overly muscular, certainly not an obvious choice for a rowdy full-contact game like rugby.

But Elizabeth High School had a girls’ rugby team. The team, which was based in a New Jersey suburb and was only formed because the high school boys’ football team had no female counterpart, was technically the “Elizabeth Minutemen,” although Salermo felt that name didn’t transfer well to the female players.

“I really wanted to play my freshman year when I first heard about the team,” she said. “But I was dissuaded … I literally had somebody” — a classmate at the time — “tell me, like, you're not strong enough to play.”

Athletic opportunities for women and girls have expanded in the last several decades, but assumptions based on gender and sexuality, as well as a lack of funding, keep athletes out of traditionally male sports programs. Salermo didn't want to have to deal with society’s expectations for women in sports. She, like many other women and girls, just wanted to play.

THE BARRIERS TO PLAYING

Rugby union football, usually just called “rugby,” is the grittier cousin of American football, a full-contact sport played with two 15-player teams and no padding. Originally a sport for English university boys, rugby has spread across the globe since its birth in the early- to mid-1800s. It’s a rough game. It’s not unusual for players to receive bloody noses, bruised and broken limbs or “cauliflower ears,” a type of damage and deformity to the cartilage of the outer ear.

The sport is especially popular in the U.K., in Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as well as in South Africa. It has yet to take off in the United States, but in recent years, programs at all levels have been growing – for men and women.

Since the 1970s, women’s sports have made notable progress, from gaining legal protections such as Title IX in schools to securing higher pay for professional soccer players on the U.S. Women’s National Team. While many athletic programs at levels from elementary school to professional adults have grown, entrenched attitudes about competency remain: girls are weak and inherently incapable of playing; athletic women are unattractive and unfeminine; women who play sports must all be gay.

Salermo has heard this before. After playing in high school, she wanted to continue the sport but didn’t find many options for women. In May of 2015, she joined the adult Union County Mudturle Rugby Club in New Jersey, which had formed a women’s team that year.

Avery Salermo on the treatment of women players. [TRANSCRIPT]

In the very beginning, it was really like a very, not to sound corny, but it was like, kind of a magic experience where we were all like a hodgepodge team, we didn't even have cones at practice. Like, we didn't have any money as a team, we didn't have anything. Then we started dealing a little bit more with the politics of the men's team. In general, it was just a lack of respect for the women's team across the board, you could tell that like 99% of the men didn't respect us – that they would never show up to watch our games, which is something so small, you're going to Unami [Field] anyway. They wouldn't come to our games, they wouldn't be there on the sidelines, you know, it's something so small, but it makes a big impact because we were doing that for them. The micro aggressive things where like, somebody would come to guest coach or something. And they would treat us like delicate flowers, or like kids, more than women who are athletes, you know, I'm just like – the way that they would talk to us and stuff was very, like, ‘Let me break this down for you’ type of thing, right? When we had all been playing rugby for years already. And that's not to say that you can't learn anything. But it was very rudimentary the way that they would explain things, you know what I mean? A lot of the times, dealing with the men, I felt invisible. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I'm so masc presenting. And like, a lot of people will just assume that I'm queer, like only into non-men. And whether or not that's true, it was the assumption that was made. And I always had the feeling like, oh, because you can't sleep with me, I don't matter to you, you don't need to have a conversation with me. You don't need to acknowledge that I'm here. You can just walk past me and like, go talk to my pretty teammate. You know what I mean? So many of us find rugby at the lowest point in our lives, when we really need it. And we need something to kind of get us through a difficult time. There has to be something so empowering about a young girl playing rugby and learning that she's so much stronger than a lot of people told her that she was.

At first, the separation between women’s and men’s teams was clear. The two teams had little to do with each other. Salermo said that the women mostly interacted with the older men in the club, many of whom were retired. “We weren't really super dealing with the men's team too-too much. We were more dealing with the old boys,” Salermo said. “And a lot of them were actually really supportive of the women's team.”

Many of the “old boys” had teenage daughters who were playing rugby themselves, Salermo explained, perhaps accounting for the difference in their treatment of the women’s team. Over the course of the next half-decade, relations between the Union women’s and men’s teams grew more strained. Men expected the women’s team to attend their matches, but didn’t return the favor and didn’t invite them to the men’s after-game parties, also called socials.

Women’s matches were held at less favorable times – they had to get to the field at 9 a.m. on Saturdays for their match, while men didn’t have to show up until early afternoon. Weeks where the women’s team had to travel to play, they would have to leave for the match even earlier, at 6:30 or 7 a.m. Co-ed “touch” practices, ostensibly to encourage players to get extra fitness and familiarity with the sport, became uncomfortable spaces for the women to participate in. Salermo said that at touch, women players reported being harassed about who they were sleeping with and physically manhandled by male players outside of the practice.

Susan Cahn, a State University of New York at Buffalo expert on gender in sports and the author of “Coming On Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women's Sport,” has spent decades studying women in athletic spaces. Cahn said, “It's not only that [sports] was reserved for men, but it was a place where it has been, really still continues to be, a place where men develop and display and celebrate their masculinity.”

If sports is a world of masculine superiority, Cahn suggested, it follows that femininity is not encouraged in those spaces. “When women participated or tried to participate [in sports], they're often perceived as having masculine qualities, or as unwelcome because they weren't men,” Cahn said.

Because of these biases, women athletes who are successful at historically male-dominated sports are often devalued. Athletes face barriers in joining sports, even from well-meaning sources.

Molly Whitman, a player on Santa Monica Dolphins Rugby Club, agreed that the standards for men and women are different. “If a man said ‘I play rugby,’ the reaction would not be ‘Wow!’” she said. “I mean, maybe they would say, ‘Wow, isn't that dangerous?’ or something, but I would think nine times out of ten, they're not going to be shocked. They're not going to be confused, or seemingly unable to even conceptualize what that looks like.”

Molly Whitman on double standards based on gender. [TRANSCRIPT]

When you tell somebody that you play rugby, they often are like, ‘I had no idea there was women's rugby.’ Like, ‘Really? Do you wear pads? Is it the same as men's rugby? Do you have the same ball? Do you tackle?’ like, they can't kind of wrap their heads around the idea that women would play a full contact sport and that it wouldn't have some sort of modification just for the fact that they are women. And I think, so, whether or not it's intended to be offensive, it's more like their preconceived notions of what makes a woman a woman color their opinion of rugby and their opinion of women's rugby players. I mean, I think that stems from very historical traditional notions of gender roles, with the woman being the mother, the provider of life, the, you know, the feeder, in terms of breastfeeding and things like that, taking care of things. And it's like, if you are seen as the caretaker, then people have a negative reaction to you being in a position of peril or a position of risk. Like the mother, you know, even going to the Mary Magdalena type, biblical type of thing, people do not feel comfortable seeing women in battle, people do not feel comfortable seeing women – you know, all the backlash there is of women, in the military, or being in combat roles in the military. There’s still plenty of backlash against that, where it's like, oh, yeah, we're fine with them being in the military, but of course, put them in like, put them in a role, a caretaker role, put them in the medical role, put them in the behind the scenes, put them in – whatever, all those support roles. People don't like that. People don't like traditional structures being disrupted. So I think that, you know, it's – you can take women in sports, or you can take women in business, or you can take women in any context where it's like a traditionally male dominated field, and you're gonna have the same kind of backlash and the same kind of pushback, because people do not like change. They have, you know, traditional, quote, unquote, traditional notions of what roles are and when those are challenged, it makes them uncomfortable … And whatever the basis is for that, I would be interested for you to find out because it is interesting, you know, like, we're not hunters and gatherers anymore. We're not living in caves anymore.

Whitman has played rugby for 20 years as a front row player, one of the more physical positions in the game.

“The reputation of women's sports as a lesbian space … [The assumption was that] if you're really good, you must be a lesbian, and that created another barrier for women who suffered from the homophobia or didn't participate because of it,” Cahn said.

The fear of being seen as a lesbian contributes to straight women not wanting to engage in certain male-dominated sports, like rugby, tennis and softball. For athletes who are queer, these attitudes bring different challenges. For Salermo, assumptions were made about her and her partner, who also played rugby on the Union women’s team.

“A lot of the time, dealing with the men, I felt invisible. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I'm so masc presenting,” Salermo said. “And a lot of people just assume that I'm queer [and] only into non-men.”

As the community relations chair for the Union club, Salermo often had to have conversations about diversity and inclusion with the entire club, both men and women. She had meetings where she discussed avoiding using offensive language and opening up the club to more diverse players. The men’s team was openly dismissive.

“I always had the feeling like, ‘Oh, because you can't sleep with me, I don't matter to you,’” said Salermo. She said that many of the men refused to interact cordially with her or her openly out teammates. “You don't need to have a conversation with me, you don't need to acknowledge that I'm here. You can just walk past me and like, go talk to my pretty teammate.”

It’s not just the players that have preconceived ideas about the sport. Codi Fletcher, who uses she/they pronouns, said that they’ve seen parents afraid to enroll their daughters in rugby because it might “turn” them gay. Fletcher is a back, a position on a rugby union team, currently playing for the Santa Monica Dolphins but they’ve played for multiple teams in the New York-New Jersey area in the past.

“That [stereotype] is not entirely true. I've been on very straight teams.” Fletcher continued, “But I think that's also one of the things I think is not a safe space for women, because [girls] think that's going to happen, because they're young, especially if their parents told them that.”

In her studies, Cahn has especially looked at the nuances of women athlete’s gender presentation and sexuality. Cahn felt that the two attitudes — that women who play sports are somehow unfeminine and that they must be gay — are linked together.

Social attitudes aren’t the only issue. In a 2022 report based on findings from two years before, the NCAA found that colleges with (all-male) football teams receive significantly more funding than those schools without. There was still a 23% difference between the funding of women’s and men’s Division I programs, which includes all DI programs such as basketball, baseball and softball, soccer, tennis and more. There is an 8% difference between all women’s and men’s Division II and III programs, with women’s programs receiving less funding.

A discrepancy between men’s and women’s teams is especially clear when looking at women in leadership roles in sports. Research by Dr. Charles B. Corbin, a member of the National Association of Sports and Physical Education Hall of Fame, has shown that women and girls in sports often lack confidence in their abilities. One way that it’s recommended for athletes to gain that confidence is through providing role models and positive encouragement.

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The 2022 NCAA report found that women held only about a quarter of all head coaching and athletics director positions in U.S. universities. In the 2019-2020 season, men were head coaches of almost two thirds of women's college teams; in contrast, women accounted for less than ten percent of the head coaching positions for men's teams in colleges. Beyond just offering opportunities for women in the athletic realm, leadership positions can affect athletes’ performances, according to Salermo.

“There is nothing wrong with being a male coach. I never had a problem with the fact that they were male coaches. But I did notice patterns in male coaches that I wouldn't really see so much in non-male coaches,” said Salermo about her experience playing for Union. Salermo said that male coaches would lack understanding of their women players, causing players to be less motivated and slower to grasp concepts in training.

“It's so simple and obvious, but having that experience changes everything: how you talk to your players, how you address your team, how you motivate them, how you show respect,” Salermo continued.

Codi Fletcher on assumptions they find offensive. [TRANSCRIPT]

The men wanted to separate the women's and men’s colors and didn't want to be together. So the coach at the time – you know, he's a little bit old school, still not okay – he decided that the women should have red and the men should have black. And it really wasn't decided. Also with the alumni and stuff like that the men's program was more heavily funded than the woman's. And it seemed like the woman didn't really have as much as the men did. And, you know, looking back at certain things, the men would always hog the field when we practiced, and the woman had, like, a tinier space. This was all in college, it really didn't happen as much as the adult game progressed. You also have that, especially in college, too, where you think – the men think, oh, we're a bunch of lesbians. So, they didn't want us to go to their parties because we possibly could steal people from them. Direct quote on that. I think the demographic of it also comes to be a factor. I think women's rugby in some areas is perceived to be like this aggressive – well, it is aggressive, but like a very, very scary sport to join because of the tackling and everything and parents, you know, are scared. What's different from you playing it than your daughter playing it? Like I – like, I think some people perceive women still as fragile. And that's, I don't think the great outlook to look at that. We literally can play any sport no matter who we are and what our gender is. But I was not a fan of it. It definitely kind of ticked me off. I – if I ever have a child, it's, it's up to them, but I will introduce them to the sport of rugby. Everyone has a place, every single person has a place to play rugby, it doesn't matter if you've never played a sport before. It doesn't matter your body type. Anyone can play rugby. If they want to step on that field and they're in the right team, they should be able to play. Anyone can play rugby. Honestly with rugby, it really is about heart. And for – for people to push – for a woman – pushing people away, gender, sexuality, whatever, that is completely wrong to do. Rugby is a very inclusive sport. And hearing that just makes me feel not so great feelings because everyone should be welcoming no matter who they are. I'm going to keep it PG related. [laughter] ‘Cause I have many more words.

High school in particular is a time when many girls leave athletic programs, said Cahn.

“It shows in the dropout rate, where a lot of young girls play and then around 14 or 15, their participation decreases much faster or more dramatically than boys,” Cahn said. “And you can't exactly pin it to that — you don't know exactly why — but I have to think that that's a factor that, as girls are trying to kind of become a woman, they find the stereotypes around sports to be demeaning and not worth it.”

It doesn’t end with the coaches. There’s a lack of women referees, not just in the rugby world but in sports overall. Salermo said that the lack can lead to girls and women in sports facing male condescension and belittling by the ref.

“There were many times that the sir was explaining the rulebook to us on the pitch, you know, or sometimes just being really dismissive,” said Salermo. She said that male referees would dismiss problems that players were having, like misconduct and rule-breaking in the games: “Like, ‘Hey, they're kicking us in the rucks,’ or ‘They're coming in through the side’ or whatever. And [the referee], they'll be like, ‘I'm the sir.’” She shrugged.

WHY THEY PLAY

But women in sports have been making marked progress, especially in the last few decades.

“The first big bump was Title IX,” Cahn said. Title IX is legislation passed in 1972 that protects anyone from being discriminated against, excluded from or denied the benefits of any educational program or activity receiving U.S. federal financial assistance because of their sex. Since then, Cahn said, the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements have moved women’s sports forward, allowing for better treatment, better pay and more acceptance of athletes.

Given the obstacles, why do so many women play? The answers vary — from physical fitness to confidence to sheer competitiveness. Salermo found comfort in knowing that rugby was — and is — her space. She said that her resilience in life comes from her time as a rugby player.

“What I learned from rugby is that I can always get back up. I always have one more minute in me. No matter how tired you are, or how much you think that you can't do it, you always have one more minute of game time and you can always take down whoever it is,” Salermo said.

Whitman, who works as an attorney, found that rugby gave her a boost in confidence, one that was both physical and mental. She thought that was one reason that negative social attitudes about women’s sports exist; that it was society’s way of protecting the status quo.

“Men have been in traditional power roles for a very long time,” Whitman said. “Women in sports in some ways challenges that notion, because it is a power role; being a powerful woman who uses her body as a tool is intimidating to society, is intimidating to the traditional structure ... And it challenges that, and people don't like that.”

It’s not just Whitman, either. Self-confidence is a crucial benefit to playing sports, especially for young girls, according to a statement from the Women’s Sports Foundation, an organization founded by legendary tennis player Billie Jean King and dedicated to advancing girls and women in sports. In a full-contact sport like rugby, that confidence can be game-changing.

“Girls can be raised in a certain way where they're almost seen as so delicate,” said Salermo. “And there has to be something so empowering about a young girl playing rugby and learning that she's so much stronger than a lot of people told her that she was.”