Turn your television to ESPN, Fox Sports, or any sports network, and you are sure to hear stories on male athletes, see a game of a male professional sport, or even catch an NCAA basketball, football, or any other male sport game. Conversely, what do you think the chances are of you catching a story of a female athlete, or even catching the final minutes of a women’s professional sporting event? There is no reason why male athletes should be treated as if they are superior to female athletes. There is no evidence which proves male athletes work harder, or deserves more recognition than female athletes. There are many steps that can be taken to ending this setback in athletics, including a law can be created limiting and regulating the amount of airtime male sports receive so more female sports can be shown during their timeslots, more promoting of female sports by the schools, and even more specific regulations in Title IX, which include, regulating the amount of benefits, money, and media time college athletes are allowed regardless of gender and sport.
A six week study of local sports coverage on a Los Angeles television station was conducted by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. Sadly, the study exposed how badly women’s sports are underrepresented in the media, “…men’s sports received 92% of the air time, women’s sports 5%, and gender neutral topics 3%” (Duncan, Messener, & Williams, 1990). Women face more inequalities in sports, and being underrepresented in the media is not the only equality.
Unfortunately, women professional athletes face another inequality this time regarding their salaries. Most female athletes do not have the luxurious that most male athletes have; especially, professional male athletes. Professional female athletes do not sign multi-million dollar contracts just to play the sport they love, like professional male basketball, football, baseball, etc. have the luxury of doing. According to AskMen.com, majority of the women in the WNBA have side jobs like playing in other leagues and helping with the WNBA marketing, or they try to make their money through endorsements.
AskMen.com stated that from 1996 to 2000, in the world of professional sports for every dollar a professional male athlete earned, a professional female athlete earned only seventy-five cents! The average professional male basketball player makes a salary of about $5 million a year; while the maximum salary a professional female basketball player is only a measly $87,000 (“Salaries of Average Professional Athlete”, 2006)!
However, there have been efforts to try to create some kind of gender equality within sports, more specifically college sports, with the creation of Title IX. Title IX of the Education Act Amendments established a law stating women should be equally represented in sports as their male counterparts are (Scraton & Flintoff, 2002). For example, a university that contains a football team of 50 members must have at least 50 female athletes to counter that. On the other hand, Title IX does not specify the benefits of media, or money that can be spent for each team.
In all, there should be a greater effort in the attempt to try to close the gap of inequalities between male and female athletes. As individuals witnessing these inequalities women face, we should take a stand, and put in the effort, and by this, I mean making the effort to watch more sports will they do appear on television; try not to only attend big male athlete competitions, such as the homecoming football game, or the big male basketball game against your school’s rival. Make an effort to attend some female friendly sports, such as volleyball, softball, soccer, etc. The way this actions can occur smoothly, is with the help of the schools themselves. For example, I would like to see more student bodies’ of schools promoting and broadcasting female sports as much as their do male sports. Lastly, as stated before, I’d like to see more involvement and effort from the media as well by balancing the airtime between female and male sports equally, as well as updated and specifying the rules and obligations stated in Title IX . The more involved we are into women’s sports as we already are into men’s, the closer the gap of inequalities will become, until there is final justice, where men and women athletes are treated as equals.