By: Makinna Winterton and Jadie O’Bray
Since the beginning of sports, there has been a constant battle between men and women, for both equality and opportunity. Physically, men and women are built differently. But, that means virtually nothing when it comes to the opportunities offered in different sports. As much as one can argue that men’s sports are more exciting, engaging, and even more enjoyable to watch, none of these points can be backed up. These arguments are a stereotype that has gone on for too long. Frankly, women are sick of hearing these excuses.
When talking about the struggle for equality in sports for women, it is important to not discredit the numerous leaps that women have taken to get to a point where they are at today. Take the Boston Marathon of 1966 for example, at the time an all-male event. Bobbi Gibb had to hide in the bushes and disguise herself as a man in order to participate. Or Kathrine Switzer who, a year later in 1967, signed her name as initials so that she wouldn’t appear as a woman. Later on in the race, her bib was ripped from her during the race. These feats do not go unnoticed, as they are steps towards pushing women to where they are today, not only competing in, but winning national titles and championships.
Bobbi Gibb, Kathrine Switzer Reflect On ‘Life-Defining’ Boston Marathon – FloTrack
As much as these wins should be celebrated, there is still significant room for improvement on every level of sports; whether it’s middle school, high school, or college. One perfect example of recent discrimination is the 2021 March Madness Women’s Basketball Tournament. March Madness is the highest level tournament that can be played by NCAA Division I women’s basketball teams. It is the final tournament that determines the national champion team each year. Not only is March Madness hosted for women, it is also hosted for men. Statistically speaking, there is a greater emphasis on the men’s bracket than the womens.
However, in recent years, this emphasis has changed greatly. From the number of fans and attendees rising each year, to women getting more exposure on social platforms, March Madness has gone from a tournament that only encompasses and focuses on men, to one that is inclusive to both men’s and women’s teams. One change that was arguably the most significant in the progression towards equality took place during the 2021 March Madness.
With the 2021 March Madness tournament underway, Sedona Prince, forward for the Oregon Ducks Women’s Basketball team, posted a TikTok that took off and changed the face of the NCAA tournament for women. In said TikTok, Sedona displayed the “weight room” that the women were given; one rack of weights for every team to share. She then pans over to the mens weight room, a complete facility equipped with fully stocked racks and weights for every team. This TikTok, which went viral overnight and now has over 12 million views, finally gave a true and raw insight into how women are still fighting for equality.
Until this, it was easy to just push women to the side and sweep them under the rug. This kind of discrimination has been going on for years. It wasn’t until a discriminated team member spoke out about the treatment that the outside world began to realize what women truly faceD. It struck a chord with numerous individuals and within the next couple of days, the NCAA had responded to the backlash by equipping the women’s teams with proper training facilities to match the ones already given to men.
As much as we see these discriminations broadcasted to the world at a high level, these discriminations are still a real thing for those of lower levels of performance. For example, an NCAA Division III team such as Southern Virginia University. As much as there are efforts made to combat inequalities within gender here at Southern Virginia, we are still at a point where they are inevitable and sometimes unavoidable.
Women’s Basketball Headcoach, Lynette Schroeder, talked about some of these inequalities, how there has been an attitude shift towards women in sports. Schroeder mentioned that Southern Virginia will do its best to continue to support female athletes in a nondiscriminatory way.
Coach Schroeder stressed heavily how much the Southern Virginia’s women’s basketball program has grown in the short years since she attended and played. Things as simple as a team budget for not only gear, but food and fuel for athletes was an issue. She talked about how substantial upgrades have been made to the Knight Arena. Because of those changes, the recruiting process became a significantly more enticing place for young recruits hoping to attend Southern Virginia.
Schroeder also placed an emphasis on how much the value of a female student athlete has increased in recent years.
“Womens sports has always been kind of an afterthought, and as long as the men’s sports get what they need, then they’ll take care of the women.”
She continued to talk about the insight into the women’s NCAA tournament, and gave us great ideas on how to increase attraction within womens sports.
Southern Virginia’s Assistant Athletic Director, Mackenzie Cox, shared her thoughts on this. “You can still see the inequality, but the lack of opportunity there used to be was so much worse. Southern Virginia does a great job of acknowledging women’s teams and certain players. This does not dismiss where we have to go.”
Head Athletic Director Deidra Dryden had great ideas about fixing some of these problems.
“Some ways we have been working to decrease and fix gender inequality here is finding more ways our smaller facilities could fit more fans, keep promoting good wins and good games played, and making our athletes more personable and relatable.”
Coach Lynette Schroeder said similar things in regards to the above subject:
With that, anew idea is already in the works with Southern Virginia’s social media team. They are working on content to specifically highlight outstanding athletes on teams. This will put the athlete’s story out there, making it feel like people are getting to know them personally. These highlights will create more of an excited fan base to watch athletes play.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, gender discrimination also happens on a broad a scale with many professional teams.
The U.S. women’s national soccer team holds the record of the most World Cup wins on the women’s side.
In 2019 the U.S. Women’s were given $4 million for winning the World Cup, while only a first round win from the U.S. Men’s team in the 2018 World Cup would’ve been worth $8 million, had they qualified. The 2018 champion, France, took home $38 million- more than the entire pool offered to the U.S. women in their Cup the following year.
The U.S. women’s soccer team has currently won more than the mens team, but are getting paid less. One of the ways teams make money is by through attendance of games and views online. Both national teams had huge fluctuation problems with attendance between 1999 and 2019, the men even more so. Nevertheless, they were still getting paid more. Not to discredit the men’s team, but the inequality is very apparent.
However, the pay gap and gender discrimination was rectified in May 2022. After 4 years of advocating and pushing for equal pay, the U.S. Soccer Federation announced labor deals that will unite the player pools under similar contract terms and solidify the equal pay that has been long fought over. These new contracts run through 2028 and include identical pay structures for appearances and tournament victories, revenue sharing, and equitable distribution of World Cup prize money.
Even with this huge win, there are still some discrepancies in awarding and acknowledging women soccer players.
Head to this link to test your knowledge about World Cup players: https://forms.gle/i9gHH5dCxfR9wsgi7
Just another one of the many oversights in women’s sports is when Christiano Ronaldo was celebrated in the 2021 World Cup as the first player in history to score in five World Cups, when there were two women who did it before him. While he may be the first man to do it, Brazil’s Marta Vieria da Silva was the first and Canada’s Christine Sinclair was second, both occurring in the 2019 Women’s World Cup.
Southern Virginia students and administration do a better job than most schools in our conference by trying to support all athletics regardless of gender. But, there are still problems here and there. Southern Virginia’s Head Athletic Director Deidra Dryden has been an advocate for women’s athletics since the beginning. Having coached many of the start up teams, Dryden understands the problems women have faced more than anyone. Since being intern Athletic Director, Dryden has been determined to not only make something of this school, but to make the women’s teams great and fair. She says
“the NCAA got a bad rap, there was not deliberate discrimination against womens teams but there also was not active steps being taken to combat it.”
Deidra’s first goal was getting Southern Virginia into the NCAA from the NAIA, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which she made happen in 2011.
Dryden continued to say,
“From then on, every year has been a steady incline of progress to make the specifics that were controllable equitable; meals, bus trips, uniform expenses, gear expenses, etc.”
In writing this, we are trying to emphasize shifting to a growth mindset that as a Southern Virginia community, we need to watch and support all the programs, regardless of gender. Getting rid of the fixed mindset that men’s sports are better and more fun to watch. Everyone has to be bought into this idea, it’s going to take a huge group effort. We are fighting for something greater than ourselves — The impact we have will help the generations of daughters, mothers, and female athletes to come.
Women In Sports was originally published in The Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.