A brainstorm with strong women

October 2015

This project was devised as a means to collect experiences and comments from women involved in the strength sports. It is a short questionnaire (14 questions) exploring what it was like to be or become strong, the meaning of strength to the responder and the relationship with their social environment (family and friends and society at large).

One question is posted each week on social media and the answers are collected. None of the previous questions is deleted, so that they are always available for more comment. If anyone prefers to answer them all at once (and not in interactive form), they can just download the file and do it.

1. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your existence as a strong woman (athlete, coach, neither)

2. Tell us a little about your relationship with strength in your early childhood. When do you remember being aware of gender roles as applied to strength? Have the adults around you attempt to deviate you to a route with less physical challenges or confrontations because you were a girl? Did you have support from adults while growing up strong (if you did) and who were they?

3. If you did not grow up as a strong little girl, when did the shift to a “strong perspective” happen? How was it?

4. When you started to manifest your strength, what was the reaction from the immediate surrounding? Were people supportive and excited or not?

5. If you had to associate strength with other qualities, such as boldness, determination, violence, trauma, happiness, love, destiny or whatever (notice that the examples contain positive, negative and neutral qualities on purpose), what would that be and why?

6. If you are a coach or even if you are not, but you are helping people become stronger, do you perceive this role as different from that of a male coach or helping person? In which ways?

7. Scientific data show there are differences in strength and power output between men and women. Should this information be discussed with women who want to get strong? Does it make any difference?

8. Why do people in general need to recover their strength? How do you see your role there?

9. Do women have different needs in recovering and maintaining their strength then men? Considering aging related strength losses, do we have a special role in the lives of aging women or do you think it makes no difference the gender of the person helping this aging woman?

10. Do you feel prejudice because you are strong? If so, can you share some examples?11. Do you feel encouragement and admiration for being strong? If so, can you share some

examples?12. A man being aggressive or sarcastic is a man being a man, while a woman doing the

same is a bitch. Elaborate on the topic if you wish.13. Sports economy and marketing: are strong female athletes becoming more valuable

for the sports industry? If so, did you feel the change or have some anecdotal evidence you can share? How do you feel about yourself in this context (sponsorship, public support, etc)?

14. What are your plans for the future?