Why doesn’t IASAS include tackle rugby for girls and touch rugby for boys? (ISM)

The paralympics take place every four years and have started since 1960 with around 400 players who all were in wheelchairs. Taking place in Rome, Italy with representatives from 23 countries. The Paralympics both have a Winter and a Summer version which opens up the sports available to a variety of players. The next round of the Summer Paralympics will take place in Paris, France from August 28, 2024 to September 8, 2024 with over 4400 participants from 184 representative countries.

But why not for rugby? The rugby teams are separated by gender as well, but they are both different kinds of rugby. The boys play full-tackle rugby, whereas the girls play light-touch rugby. Not only this, but the IASAS webpage doesn’t even mention tackle rugby for girls and touch for boys at all. 

Because of the lack of information about them, it almost seems like the IASAS program is actually trying to segregate these two playing styles using gender stereotypes such as “men need to be strong, arrogant, and violent” or “women need to be lighthearted, careful, and gentle”.

One of the six schools, International School Manila (ISM), is following the play of sports in IASAS and has a fair variety for both genders to take part in, which is why their rugby “division” is confusing. ISM includes a rugby program for both boys and girls, except they don’t play together, whereas the school right across from them, BSM, includes tackle rugby except both genders play side by side.

There are a few types of rugby, but they all have the basic kind of rules: block the ball from your goal if you’re the defender, or have the ball make contact with the opposing team’s goal without getting ‘tackled’ a certain amount of times.

For this article, we’re really only looking at the main/original form of rugby-- Tackle Rugby and an alternate form of rugby-- Touch Rugby. They both are fairly similar, except in tackle rugby, you have to physically tackle somebody down to the ground in order to take the ball, of course with some rules alongside of it, whereas in touch rugby, you only have to tap the opponent and they’d have to put the ball down. If a team gets touched 6 times, the ball gets switched over.

Overall, many times in sports, men usually play tackle rugby and women, if they were to want to or be allowed to play sports at all, would most likely be encouraged to play touch rugby instead.