The Underrepresentation Of Female Athletes

Mia Hamm is the most talented women’s soccer player in the United States of America to date. She is one of the most recognizable soccer figures for both genders. She has dominated the soccer world since the late 1980’s, inspiring athletes across the United States and as well as the world. During her years on the U.S Women’s National Soccer team, she received numerous awards most notably the title for best all-around female soccer player. Because of these successes, she has developed one of the biggest fan bases across the world. Mia Hamm serves as a model for all collegiate and professional athletes combining her celebrity and passion for the

It is true that before Title IX, any positive images of female athletes were relatively few and far between, except for the rare Olympian such as Peggy Fleming or Nadia Comaneci. Title IX has substantially increased the availability of equal resources for female athletes relative to males on campus. However, parity has not been achieved in terms of the public's interest and respect for women's sports. Even today, the main excitement is over the NCAA men's tournament, not the women's. Team sports where women are celebrated in the U.S. are in low-priority sports like soccer; while some women in individual sports have certainly received media

Women in professional sports fits into the Sex and Power: Global Gender Inequality class because many female athletes have experienced the inequalities in a professional sports setting. Female athletes are being put down by gender inequalities, causing less females participating in athletic programs. Women athletes are being paid less than their male counterparts. Along with being paid less, female and males are receiving unequal benefits in the form of scholarship, media coverage, transportation, and stadium conditions. The professional sport’s world is filled with the obsession of body image and sexuality. Through this obsession, female athletes have been abused from the people they trust the most. There is an increasing inequality in women’s professional sports in the form of pay, sexuality, and abuse.

This article talked about the daunting unequal media coverage in sports of male sports teams in comparison to females.They researched the true differentiations of coverage between men and women sports. The actual percentage difference of coverage of male vs female sports discovered in their research truly is unfathomable. Men’s sports receive 96.3% of the airtime, women’s sports 1.6% and gender neutral topics were 2.1%. When you think back about twenty years ago and the coverage of media people tend to think that America is generally trending positively forward, however that is not the case for the coverage of women's athletics. It has actually gone down since then. Although on the scarce occasion that they are feature in the news, more often than not they are conveyed in the stereotypical way: as wives, girlfriends, or mothers. When media is highlighting these aspects instead of their talent, hard work or success it takes away from their image as an athlete and it demonstrating that it is acceptable to do so in society. However if male athlete achieved equal success and he was a father, that

Over two decades have passed since the enactment of Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, including athletics. As a result of Title IX, women and girls have benefited from more athletic participation opportunities and more equitable facilities. Because of Title IX, more women have received athletic scholarships and thus opportunities for higher education that some may not have been able to afford otherwise. In addition, because of Title IX the salaries of coaches for women's teams have increased. Despite the obstacles women face in athletics, many women have led and are leading the way to gender equity.

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.

Mia Hamm was a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, two-time World Cup Champion, FIFA Women’s Player of the Year, and is arguably the best women's soccer player of all time. She was born March 17, 1972 in Selma, Alabama as Mariel Margaret “Mia” Hamm. She scored the most international goals in women’s soccer history until 2013, and has one of the biggest fanbases in sports. How did she become one of the best women’s soccer players in history? This essay will demonstrate how Mia Hamm made waves in the soccer world.

Women’s equality is an issue that has been around for awhile. While women have been given many rights to increase equality, including the right to vote and go to college, the problem hasn’t completely vanished. One area that still sees this is in sports. Women’s sports do not draw nearly as many fans and are not covered in the media as much as men’s sports, pay differences between male and female athletes are large, and female athletes have to wait longer to start their professional career than men, which risks their professional career before it even starts.

The Harsh reality of the treatment of Female Athletes Professional female athletes are some of the most talented people in the world, though they are often not treated like it. The harsh treatment of professional female athletes in our society, reflects what our society thinks about women, that they are the weaker sex and are not as capable as men. The amount of sexisim female athletes have to face on a day to day basis proves that in 2017, we are still living in a very sexist and male dominated society. Although, some might argue that professional female athletes and their male counterparts are treated equally, the startling difference of pay, the unfair media coverage, and the lack of respect directed towards female athletes proves otherwise.

A discussion that is always current is how much attention women’s sport and female athletes gets in the media, and what kind of attention that is. In a lot of cases the questions women are asked in interviews revolve more around appearance and looks than their game and achievements. For example, Swedish soccer star Lotta Schelin, who played in the French team Lyon between 2008-2016 , has said that she has at a numerous occasions received questions from the French press regarding how she has the time to paint her nails before a game and that they are very fascinated with how these women has the time to both play soccer and be “real women” .

The book “Black tights” written by a sports journalist combines in depth research, and professional experience to tackle questions about women in sports. It mainly explains how gender impacts women in both a personal and a professional level. There has always been a debate to whether female sports are a lucrative way to publicize sexuality, or it is just genuinely about women playing the sports while training very hard, to be the best they can be. Also, this book takes a hard look of how media exploitation of female athletes is growing in sports this day and age. Ironically, this tells us that in order to further the interest of women’s sports, female athletes would have to be sexually exploited by media just to gain recognition. This raises more questions to how we can overcome the obstacle of

Women’s soccer has also had many notable achievements. Mia Hamm from the United States, who was born with a partial club foot, overcame her disability to become the youngest player ever for the U.S. women’s team at the age of fifteen. Hamm won two Olympic gold medals and one silver. She was the leading scorer in history of women’s international soccer, being the top star for ten years

The problem here extends even further to the fact that most of sports editors and authors are male. The inequality present in Canadian athletics is not new; it has been noted that between the years 1954 to 1987, 90.8% of Sports Illustrated articles were of discriminatory nature and tended to focus on white male athletes by writing lengthy articles and consequently resulting in shorter and biased articles for females and black athletes. With restraints from the media - an important medium of athletic information for the public and sports scouts - females have faced a difficult past in regards to successfully promoting their achievements and careers. Furthermore, it has been noted that females are more often to be considered for coverage if they were participating in aesthetic sports, rather than men.

Over the years the perception of women in sport has changed considerably. In this course we have viewed several films all dealing with the depiction of female athletes in an attempt to gauge society's current perception of women in sport. I will briefly summarize each film and the main themes of the films before providing a description of the female athlete which I will infer from commonalities between the films.

In the “These women are Olympic athletes…” article, it shines light upon several social issues occurring during the olympics in regards to women’s sports. It discusses how female athletes have incredible