Equality In Sports In The World Of Sports

Before Title IX was signed by President Nixon on June 23 and went into effect on July 1 of 1972, both women and young girls were excluded from many activities that men and young boys were allowed to do. Since the passing of Title IX, women have excelled in all sports tremendously. This essay will argue that because of Title IX, women can now participate in various activities and sports. Title IX of Educational Amendments prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving any type of financial aid, and because of this enactment made by Congress in 1972, women have left their mark on sports history.

Title IX has a tremendous effect on whom will be allowed to receive an education. It affects to whom is admitted into universities, who is granted scholarships, and it also directly affects the financial aspect of most universities due to the fact that they must now alter their systems and funding plans to comply with its rules. Athletes should not be discriminated against because of their sex. If one athlete or team is more deserving of being funded because they doing well, and are contributing to the overall success of the university, then sex should not be the reason why they cannot be rewarded.

Although some movements are being made to try and help this issue, such as Title IX, stating that no gender should be discluded from any education program or activity, helping sexism in youth, high school, and college sports, it is not being enforced strongly, not making many changes to some of the still standing issues in the sports world today.

The idea of equity in society particularly in athletics has been a major topic in athletics for many years. However, in spite of the long and storied history of the fight for equity in athletics we still see a lot of misunderstanding especially involving one particular law. This law is Title IX which has a number of awful misconceptions associated with it even from female athletes themselves. One misconception that is very popular especially among the critics of Title IX is the idea that “Title IX exists to force to schools to drop men’s sport’s”(Kane, pg. 3). This is something that was reinforced by an report authored by Dr. Mary Jo Kane who is a Professor at the University of Minnesota regarding the 40th anniversary of Title IX. Dr. Kane indicated that she opens her sport sociology class discussions on Title IX by asking her class what they know about this subject. Dr. Kane indicated in her report that Title IX “remains a mystery to the vast majority of her students, both male and female” (Kane, pg. 3). Dr. Kane goes on to point out the misconception mentioned above is commonly said by her students including her female D1 scholarship athletes who are the ones that have benefitted most from this law. Overall Title IX is a great law even if it is a law that takes a lot of bad press although this is largely due to the actions or in some cases lack thereof from the leaders who reside in college athletics.

Women in sports, over the past 100 years, has become a topic of intense interest in society. Men have long argued that women have no right to play in the same arena as men do while on the flip side, women argued that they possess the right to the same physical activities that men enjoy. Women participation in sports, up until that time, had been frowned upon universally. Women were eventually granted the right to play sports in the collegiate setting however there was no equality to the treatment within the athlete’s school and no treatment outside of it either (History 1). Until title IX was passed, women’s collegiate athletics were given no scholarships to award to exceptional high school athletes and those programs were given very little budget to fund their programs (Ibid 1). As a result of these shortcomings, in 1972 only 30,000 participated in athletics as opposed to the 170,000 men who participated in athletics (Ibid 1). Title IX was designed to correct those imbalances within athletics. Since then people have formed their own mixed responses about the success of Title IX, both good and bad. While there are both good and bad beliefs concerning Title IX the overall consensus is that Title IX, by and large, was needed and vastly improved the state of women’s athletics.

While women continue to thrive in sports, the opposite is true for men. The cutting of wrestling teams, men’s tennis, men’s swimming, and male gymnastics has become a common phenomenon. Thousands of male athletes have missed out on an athletic career because the title IX law has resulted in a limiting way of establishing equity. The law is an indication of the general misconception of what gender equality means and the manner in which expensive bills and laws create bigger problems instead of solving the initial problem.

Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational programs, but it had the greatest impact in increasing the opportunity for females in sports. The participation opportunities for females in sports are at its highest rate ever with 9,581 women’s intercollegiate teams in the NCAA in 2014, an increase of 307 since 2012 (Acosta & Carptenter, 2014). Despite the increased number of female

There are many instances in our nation like Mack Beggs who have broken the stigma and excelled in the league despite their change. One example is Kennedy cooley. A teenager who transitioned from Female to male is excelling on his high school football team despite being transgender in a sport absolutely dominated by males and considered dangerous is excelling even making the schools' varsity football team. One example is seen as a bit more controversial where a 15-year-old Gender nonconforming track star is dominating in the girls league with the second fastest 100M time in the state. Many athletes attribute her success to the fact that she takes no hormone supplements and is a male who identifies as a female which means that she has extremely high levels of testosterone, 16 times more to be exact, which means increased muscle mass, bones and much more as well as lower body fat. this gives her a significant advantage when prepping and competing. Against girls who aren't able to produce such high testosterone levels. This has led to controversy within sports and the question whether the quest for equality has damaged the integrity of scholastic sports being brought up many

Women’s sports were not always treated equally. Rader explained that “in the beginning intercollegiate sports tended to reinforce gender stereotypes,” (95). It wasn’t until the creation of Title IX, that men and women’s sports became “equal” at the college level. This allowed for more opportunities and resources for women in sports. However, men’s sports still prevail. Cahn’s article talks about how this lead to the decline of women’s leadership in sports. Today, women of color are disproportionally represented in college sports. Even though Title IX might allow for the equal treatment of women in sports, women were for so long discouraged from participating because of their gender or race that there are not enough who compete. Lastly, it is important to note that while women’s sports may be equal, the commercialization of men’s sports like football and basketball have been so predominant that the emergence of a women’s sport as something as big as football is probably never

Gender equality is an important part of society. In an article on why everyone should be concerned about what is happening with equality and should be supportive of advances in equality, the article emphasizes how important equality is to the future of young women and girls for their careers (Huhman). Female employees can sometimes be treated unfairly or be held to a higher standard than their male colleagues. Women who take on leadership positions in their companies or careers are able to help make improvements in gender equality and in the workplace. Additionally, in another article, women work together to be activists for equality in sports and work to normalize the participation of girls in sports often dominated by ale participants (Yi and Bhalla). By working to make seeing girls in sports more common, girls are inspired to join sports by other female athletes. This creates a ripple effect and eventually causes more girls to take on leadership positions on teams and higher roles in their sports. Many of these girls can carry on these leadership qualities at school and eventually as young women in the workforce. By inspiring these young female athletes to take on these roles and to inspire others, they can promote gender equality and normalize the idea of females playing contact sports.

Title IX is a piece of legislation included in the Education Amendments 1972 that requires schools that receive federal funds to provide girls and women with equal opportunity to compete in sports. So, fast forward into the early twenty first century, a lot of things have changed and notably in the way people think. However, things have not changed so much in the sports industry. In fact, some people still mock the idea that sports should have no gender boundaries, even though certain women have obviously succeeded at proving the industry and society wrong. Female athletes like, Lea-Ann Ellison, and Jen Welter have done an exceptional job, but the odds remain that they will still face

“The rights we want: we want to choose our husband, we want to own the land, we want to go to school, we don’t want to be cut anymore, we want also to make decisions, we want respect in politics, to be leaders, we want to be equal,” – Rebecca Lolosoil. This quote is acknowledging how women should be equal in everything. Women have been fighting for their rights since the late 1960’s and early 1970’s demanding equal rights for athletic sports. “Due in large part to title IX, successful female-athletes are no longer looked upon as anomalies, but rather as athletes in their own rights”, stated “title IX and the growth of women’s athletics.” Women were never valued as much, compared to men in athletic sports until now.

Sports has become one of the leading avenues for worldwide entertainment. Sports possesses the ability to join vast groups of people through those people being able to discuss why their favorite team is better. Although sports unify its audience, within sports specifically basketball, there is a divide between male and female athletes. Females have to work twice as hard as males to be noticed by society even though the sport is the same. Female athletes receive less recognition for their accomplishments which lead to inequalities such as lower salary, less media coverage, and scarce endorsement deals. These inequalities cause controversies that make male and female athletes differentiate between each other.

Gender roles resurfaced as a pivotal factor in my life during my late adolescence. In our culture different sports are considered to be male and female dominated respectively. Unfortunately little is done to challenge or resist these societal norms and I experienced this first hand during my senior year of high school. Volleyball, which is considered to be a sport primarily for girls and women, was not offered to boys at my high school. Subsequently, I was forced to petition for approval towards the creation of a male volleyball which ultimately went unsuccessful due to time constraints and unwillingness to help from staff and administration. While this example pertained to male exclusion countless female friends of mine struggled to participate in male-dominated sports throughout high school including wrestling and lacrosse. “Part of what schools are supposed to be doing under Title IX, and often are not doing, is regularly assessing girls ' interest, looking to see what sports girls are playing and asking girls what they want to play that is currently not being offered” (Wallace). In this instance my districts athletic director directly impacted the sporting experiences for the entire student body by failing to adhere to sufficient standards with respect to gender norms.

The significance of this topic of inequality in sports is that it does not just occur in sports. It happens all around us, you see social inequality happening at work places, schools, restaurants and many other places. Many people don’t see if because they don’t know what it is.