Gender Equality In Sports Essay Research Paper

Gender Equality In Sports Essay, Research Paper

How is it fair that a men.s college basketball team is able to be transported on planes and dine on steak, while a women.s team from the same college, travels in a van and eats fast food. It.s not, but this occurs often nowadays even with laws passed preventing this type of discrimination. In 1972, Congress passed Title IX, which prohibits discrimination against girls and women in federally funded education, including athletic programs (Kiernan 3). Many schools and colleges have not been able to comply with the Title IX standards mostly because of money. Some of the problems in high schools and colleges consist of insufficient scholarships for girls, not enough coaching jobs, a lack of equipment, and a limited amount of supplies. Not only does this inequality in athletic programs exist in both schools and colleges, but it is also prominent in many professional sports. After more than 25 years since the beginning of Title IX, there still is no gender equality among men and women in high school, college, and professional sports.

Passed in 1972 by United States President Richard Nixon, Title IX was supposed to give women equality in sports, yet in the year 2001 there is still little difference in the way women are treated in sports. No legislative act has had a more powerful impact on the world of sports other than Title IX. Before Title IX was passed, only 31,000 women participated in sports, but in 1997, 120,000 women were active in sports around the country (Wulf 1). Title IX is now synonymous with women trying to find equity in athletics, but it originally had nothing to do with sports. It was a part of a larger legislative act passed to avoid any type of discrimination in the school system (Kiernan 1). Since 1972, the original purpose of Title IX has been clouded by media battles and a whirlwind of misinformation. Until the law required compliance, many schools did not take Title IX to be a serious legislative act.

Compliance was not required until 1978, that.s six years after the law was first instilled into the American culture. The department that leads the battle for compliance was called the Department of Education.s Office of Civil Rights, or often called OCR for short (Wine 1). All institutions receiving federal funding must comply with at least one of three specific criteria. One of them that they could choose is identified as .proportional representation.. Another is that the school shows a .continual progress. towards gender equality. The third one that a school could prefer to follow is .accommodation of interests. (Almond 5). Even though institutions are required by law to meet one of those terms, a school rarely complies sufficiently with Title IX. In fact, at a few schools certain opportunities have diminished for women. Since Title IX was passed, women.s teams, at some schools, have shrunk due to death of field hockey in 1991 (Pinney 2). Although it is not required for schools to comply, funding for women.s teams have not been equal either.

Money is usually a problem with many things in life, one of them also happens to be gender equality. Colleges and universities spend an average of $1.6 million on the men.s athletics program. Yet, the women.s athletic teams receive nearly half that amount (Almond 2). Women should not be receiving half the amount that a men.s team gets just because their sports are less .popular. than men.s. A school.s main objective may be to promote the men.s team first, to get out of a deficit. Then they may be able to finance the women.s team with the money they make from the men.s sporting events. That is not an equal or fair solution. It would take years to pay off a deficit and then sufficiently finance the female athletic programs. Numerical equality would take a vast quantity of public tax money in addition to the financial assistance that now pays for most of women.s sports. Universities increased its support of women.s athletics over the years but according to Ellen Voelz, a women.s head coach at the University of Minnesota, that.s not enough. .The excessive spending in the men.s athletics must be addressed. (Pinney 5).

If the excessive spending for the men.s teams is not being addressed, the least a school could do is offer the women more programs. The opportunities for women in colleges have increased somewhat over the past 25 or 30 years. In 1977, women were offered an average of 5.6 sports teams per college. In the year 1996 women had an opportunity to participate in an average of 7.5 teams (Wulf 1). Women now are able to look for a professional career in some of those sports. Although, two sports is not much to look forward to when there are at least a hundred female sports. Basketball and soccer are the only two women.s widely known professional sports. The WNBA and the Women.s World Cup winning Soccer Team are the only two current professional sports. Women who seem to earn less respect than the players, are the coaches of the female teams.

A coach for an average college women.s team earns, on average, about $32, 736 per season. Once again, the men.s teams get twice as much as the women.s team does. A coach of a men.s team earns about $66, 953 (Almond 2). How is that fair. Any coach, who takes time out of his or her life to assist and teach a young group of kids, deserves respect. It doesn.t matter if their team makes more money than a