Have you ever gone to a USI basketball game and watched as Liberty Arena slowly filled up only after the women’s game was finished? Despite the women’s basketball team having a record of 22-12 and the men’s record of 10-20, still more people attend USI men’s sports than women’s.
While women’s sports have recently risen in popularity, thanks to women like Caitlin Clark and Coco Gauff, female athletes still face many obstacles. Male athletes receive more fame, money and coverage, while their female counterparts receive the opposite.
For a long time, women have been excluded from sports or only allowed to do ‘feminine’ sports such as figure skating or gymnastics. In the twentieth century, with the introduction of Title IX prohibiting discrimination based on gender, the number of women in sports rose drastically to hundreds of thousands, although some schools still resisted the Title IX legislation.
Now, there are millions of female athletes all over the world. However, there is still inequality in the funding and coverage of women’s sports.
To start off, women remain underrepresented in administration roles in sports. Even in women’s sports, most coaches are male. The situation is much the same for women wanting to advance in the corporate world, facing biases, lack of opportunities for mentorships and not being handed the chance to progress in paths to leadership.
Recently, Jessica Campbell became the first female coach in NHL history with the Seattle Kraken. This was such big news that it made national headlines. Campbell marks a significant step forward in the sports industry for women, demonstrating that women can and do belong in important leadership roles, such as coaching, even male sports. Women in leadership roles are crucial to them becoming mentors, pulling other women in male-dominated fields, such as sports photography, into the industry.
Another significant issue in women’s sports is the pay gap. Even at the highest levels, male athletes earn more than female athletes. A great example of this is the U.S. women’s soccer team.
In the 2023 Women’s World Cup, the female soccer players earned only 25 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned at the World Cup the previous year. While having over one million viewers, the women’s team continued to receive $330 million less than the men’s soccer team.
This pay gap directly affects the lives of female athletes, leading to financial struggles, having to get a second job, or even leaving the career due to lack of funding.
The lack of investment in women’s sports is tied to disparities in media coverage and gender bias in journalism. As mentioned in the beginning, women’s sports receive far less attention than men’s sports. This means less visibility and, overall, less investment. Even when women’s sports are covered, they focus on the athletes’ personal lives and not their athletic accomplishments.
The first step in bridging the gap toward equality is acknowledging these issues so we can learn how to fix them.
There have already been steps taken to develop organizations designed to help women break into male-dominated sports, such as F1 Academy, the PWHL and the Trailblazer Series. However, there needs to be a persistent effort to acknowledge the disparities female athletes face. The work is not done yet.
