Sports are the most extensively studied non-instrumental aspect of human culture. A sport, in this article, will be defined as a "subset of games that require physical skill". therefore excluding games of chance. Sports are both ornamental and competitive aspects of culture, as winning is a central component of games, and ornamental because there is no direct evolutionary function or use of sport. Sports are responsible for developing moral codes, collaborative networks, social capital, and social status. Sports also help construct collective cultural identities. The spectator Lek hypothesis shows that sports act as context in which males aggregate and compete with one another for status and alliances among same-sex peers. Patriarchal societies are societies in which female capacity for control over resources and political influence is low. But on the other hand, sports are still sources of repression, oppression, and domination of the female sex through the existence of structural control of men over women in sport.<ref name=":3" /> The existence skilled women in sport destabilizes the gender order but at the same time, sports remain a domain of masculinity and oppression, both physical and structural.<ref name=":3" /> In a patriarchal society where sport is a signifier of male power and a success, females may copy this behavior - which adheres to conformist and prestige bias, giving possibility to why females have evolved to play sports.
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