Gender has been a huge divider in society since time can remember. The way men were raised was completely different than how women were raised. Women were raised to be gentle and also how to be a housewife while men were the ones who were brought as being better than woman simply because they were stronger and could do more. Over the years some of those things have changed however women are still being mistreated and brought up in a different way.This upbringing can also be translated over to the sports industry. For one, the general idea that comes to ones head when sports are mentioned is men. This could be because women have been excluded from sports until fairly recently, or because sports is not a “lady like” thing to do. Due to this women in the sports industry have not been getting equal treatment and have had to work much harder just to get noticed. Women in sports do not get paid as much, do not get nearly as much scholarships, and also do not get nearly as much televised games as the men do. Another issue that needs to be focused on more is the fact that many men don’t believe that activities such as gymnastics and cheerleading should be considered sports.
One aspect of inequality that women face in the sports industry is the pay gap. In recent times it has been well documented that women in sports aren’t getting paid nearly as much as the men. For example, in the WNBA, women are getting paid 20% less than the men in the NBA are. So people might say that for one it’s because there aren't that many games to be played however, for each game played the average NBA player still makes a lot more than the average female player. There are also people who argue that this is because NBA pulls in more revenue than the WNBA does. However, that explanation can not explain why the estimated WNBA player salaries make up 22% of league revenue, while NBA player salaries make up about 50% percent of league revenues. The highest paid WNBA player is allowed to make only one hundred and ten thousand dollars while NBA players can make up to forty million dollars a year. Even though the WNBA makes less revenue than NBA the NBA players get more of a share in their revenue. This is unfair because there are a lot of expenses on the road and the WNBA players are making a little better than salary of an average human while the NBA players make over 39 million dollars more than the WNBA players. This can be applied to all sports. Another example is the tennis industry. In this industry, the top women player makes 54% less than the top male player.
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Even female coaches make less than the average male coach which doesn’t make any sense because no one is paying to see the coaches so they should at least get paid the same amount of money. “Coaches of men’s sports at colleges receive an average annual salary of $1.78 million, while coaches of women’s sports receive on average $850,400.” This is almost a one million dollar difference which just isn’t fair because they are both doing the same job and not making anywhere near the same amount of money.
Even at the collegiate level women still go through a lot of unfair treatment. For instance, women will get less scholarship money which is completely unfair. Today “In colleges across the country, males receive around 55% of the scholarship funds, leaving 45% to women, which does not seem like a lot, but the gap becomes more apparent when looking at budgets.” This gap in very large and it's unfair because in college women and men don't get paid however, they are playing the same sports and still don't get the same amount of scholarship money which is unfair. This is something that is rarely talked about because people don’t see it as them racially discriminating against women. In addition women's sports don't have nearly the same budget the men's sports have when recruiting. “When coaches go to recruit new athletes for their college teams, women’s sports only get 33% of the budget to recruit.” Compared to men females don't get the same opportunities because there is less money for them to get. No matter how hard women work it will still be very hard for them to be as equally represented as men in sport. This is something that may continue for years to come.
One issue that no one seems to talk about when talking about women is televised sports. Women don't get nearly as many televised games to show their skills. “SportsCenter devoted a scant 2 percent of airtime to women’s sports, a number that has remained flat since the study began tracking the nightly cable broadcast in 1999.” This number has stayed the same for about 20 years which just shows that they have no care for women's sports. The whole point of being televised is to show off your skills, promote yourself to be marketed, and also to have people watching you play. Women don’t get to do that nearly as much as men which is just gender discrimination. This is another way of stopping their money because when men get televised games it gives them a chance to market themselves and potentially get sponsors which is where athletes get most of their money.
Another aspect of inequality for women in sports is that for activities such as gymnastics no one seems to see them as sports even though they are both team based competitions just like sports are. Those sports also require a lot of training and athleticism. Many men don’t believe that gymnastics is a sport because it’s not really manly which just an ignorant belief.
“Ballroom dancing is a demanding physical activity that requires an enormous amount of talent and practice. Despite this, it is also is not considered to be a sport. The competition is forced. In football, baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer, anyone watching knows who won. Races—sprints, marathons, you name it—you have a clear winner. If you need judges from seven countries to vote on who won, your activity is not a sport.”
This seems to be ignorant idea because all of the sports listed are mainly sports that are well know for men. Gymnastics may have judges however, so does boxing with that article doesn’t mention. This seems to be a common beliefs amongst other that just because the sport isn’t know for men that means that it isn’t considered a sport.
Another activity that people don’t consider sports is cheerleading. Cheerleading meets all sports requirement which is “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” Even though those are the requirements some people still believe that it is isn’t sport simply because men don't do it as much. They believe that they are only there to hype the crowd up which is only true to an extent. They still have to put in hours of practice, and have to train to be in shape to be ready to cheer.
It is 2019, it should be about time that women get treated equally. On and off the field/court. Although America has come a long way than majority of other countries, it still has a long way to go. Women need to get payed the same, get the same amount of scholarships as men, and also get the same amount of televised games. Their activities such as gymnastics and cheerleading should also be considered sports. Women have worked very hard and they deserve more. From this day forward women like Serena Williams have been breaking barriers to make everything more equal and with the help of other women things will hopefully continue to get better and gender discrimination against women in sports will go away. There is still a lot of things to work on however, hopefully over the next few years women will start to get treated as good as the men get treated.
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