Experts warn: Women face greater risk of concussion
Women are at greater risk of concussion than men, head trauma experts warn as the major codes ramp up their focus on women’s leagues.
A growing body of research internationally suggests female athletes are more likely to suffer concussion from less brutal blows and report more symptoms than male athletes.
As football codes embark on a massive recruitment drive for female players, their organisations and the broader community need to improve the surveillance and responses to concussion at every age and competition level, said Dr Alan Pearce at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia.
Every major football code in Australia is chasing the hearts and minds of young women and girls. In the space of two years, rugby union, rugby league and AFL have either launched or announced new domestic women’s competitions, in the form of the Aon7s universities competition, Super W, the NRL Women’s Premiership and the AFLW.
Dr Pearce said it was crucial that women’s leagues do not repeat the mistakes their male counterparts did in the 1980s and 1990s, when concussion was seen as a ‘‘badge of honour’’.
‘‘The anecdotal evidence we’re getting from AFLW observers is that the players are trying to impress and show how strong and athletic they are.
‘‘They’re great athletes, but they’ve had less of an opportunity to [develop safe] tackling skills than the boys, who started at much younger ages,’’ he said.
Last year, AFLW star Daisy Pearce said she noticed an ‘‘unprecedented physicality and intensity, almost at the expense of regard for personal safety’’ in the early rounds of competition.
‘‘My guess is many players felt they had a point to prove,’’ said Pearce, who last year publicly spoke of her own ‘‘nasty concussion’’ and why the physicality of AFL was a big part of why she loved the sport.
Dr Adrian Cohen at the University of Sydney said a lack of robust concussion research overall meant it was not clear what caused the reported gender disparities, but researchers suspected genetic predisposition left women more susceptible.
The fact that women often came to contact sports later in life than male athletes meant they had less time to develop protective musculature – particularly at head and neck – and had fewer opportunities to hone safe tackling techniques.
Emerging evidence also suggested women were more likely to report concussion symptoms, whereas men were more likely to play them down.
An increased risk of concussion should not deter women and girls from playing contact sports, Drs Pearce and Cohen said.
Quite the opposite. Attracting girls at younger ages to the sports would give them more of an opportunity to develop the protective musculature and tackling techniques that could help ameliorate the risk.
But organisations at every sporting level needed to ensure women and girls were given the same focus on protection and responses for concussion as their male counterparts, they said.
Dr Cohen said the top-level female teams usually had comparable protocols and medical personnel to those of the elite male teams, but that support fell away in the lower-level and amateur female competitions.
‘‘Where we are for women, it’s not close to the same level as the men,’’ Dr Cohen said. ‘‘We can do more by being aware of concussion and design programs to increase education among players, parents, coaches, organisations, schools and viewers.’’
A Rugby Australia spokesperson said rugby’s laws reinforced the rule that the ‘‘head is sacred’’ and the sport had strictly enforced high tackle rules.
This year the code will introduce the Blue Card System for all Rugby Australia competitions that gives referees the power to remove players from the field who they believe may be showing symptoms of concussion.