Commentary
In London and elsewhere, women athletes have made this a year to shine
by Nicole M. LaVoiNicole M. LaVoi, Ph.D., is associate director of t The Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota.
Three significant milestones have occurred for women in sport in 2012.
The first milestone marks the 40th anniversary of the passage Title IX — landmark U.S. federal legislation that dramatically increased sport participation opportunities for girls and women. In 1972, when Title IX was passed, 1 in 27 girls played high school sports. Today that number is 1 in 2.5, and females make up nearly 40 percent of all interscholastic and intercollegiate sport participants.
These historic participation numbers have helped create a broader U.S. cultural context in which female athleticism is increasingly commonplace and celebrated. Undeniably, the effects of Title IX can be directly and indirectly witnessed at the 2012 London Olympics.
The second milestone — related to the first — is that for the first time in U.S. history, female Olympic athletes outnumbered their male counterparts. It is hard to fathom that, less than a century ago, women were banned from competing in the Olympics. Today they constitute 45 percent of all athletes in the London Games.
The third milestone reflects progress (albeit limited) for women in sport outside the United States. For the first time, Saudi Arabia and Qatar allowed female athletes to compete in the Olympics. Sixteen-year-old judo athlete Wojdan Shahrkhani became the first Saudi Arabian woman to compete at the Olympic Games and Qatar's Olympic delegation of 12 included four females (in shooting and fencing).
As much as these milestones are cause for celebration, females in sport contexts are far from enjoying equality.
Females still lag behind their male counterparts in opportunities to coach and lead, in distribution of institutional resources and in media attention. For example, females in coaching and administrative positions in women's sport in the United States was around 90 percent in 1972. Today, the number of female head coaches of female college athletes is near an all-time low (42.9 percent) and only 19 percent of collegiate athletic directors across all NCAA divisional levels are female.
In many sport organizations, female athletes recieve less institutional support. For example, at a typical NCAA Division-I school, female athletes receive 28 percent of all money spent on athletics, only 45 percent of college athletic scholarship dollars and only 31 percent of recruiting funds. In 2010, coverage of women's sport was at its lowest level in 20 years — accounting for 1.6 percent of televised news coverage. In the scarce instances when female athletes are covered in print and broadcast media, they are too often portrayed in ways that highlight femininity and sexuality, rather than athletic competence.
In many sport contexts, females are criticized, scrutinized and marginalized rather than celebrated for their amazing athletic feats. If one needs concrete examples, look no further than Ye Shiwen, Brittney Griner and Caster Semenya. These examples and many others provide evidence of the pervasive persistence of enduring gender stereotypes, sexism and male dominance in sport contexts.
Despite the good reasons to celebrate the achievements of female athletes and Olympians in particular, gender equality in sport remains contested and incomplete.
Comments (4)
So, Nicole, the taxpayer is funding a Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota?
Wow, that's impressive. Tell us, Nicole, how many millions of dollars is this fancy & unnecessary "Research Center" costing us taxpayers every year?
How much are we paying you every year? To whine and complain that even tho we gave you everything, it still isn't enough to satisfy your greed?
You want want want......everything.....but you don't want to EARN it. You want it given to you for free.
Did it ever occur to you that head coaches are hired (and retained) on the basis of how likely they are to produce a winning team?
Has it occured to you that television covers sports based on what their viewers want to see covered?
You bullyed the government into giving you copious amounts of taxpayer money, but you can't figure out how to bully the citizens into buying tickets to sports events they don't want to see.
If you want to put butts in the seats, get out there and EARN it.
Develop a following that will gladly pay to see the product. More than just the few guys who will go to a volleyball game to see the nice legs and rears in silk panties.
Quit whining. There is no whining in sports. Sports is a competition. You earn what you get. The government cannot buy it for you, no matter how much you whine and bully.
You are that wife every man wishes he had never been suckered into marrying. She pushes & bullys & whines and you give her it all, yet she wants more.
40 yrs ago, Title IX was made law.
35 yrs ago, I played on my first soccer team. And my pee-wee hockey team was runners-up for nat'l champs.
30 yrs ago, I was asked to try out for the men's hockey team at my high school; and played on it's first women's soccer team. Until then, I played for the mens soccer team -- the only one available.
Three years later my school's first Women's Hockey team was started; it was state champs, as did the school's women's soccer team.
To their tremendous credit neither my coaches nor male teammates ever complained. Even when I earned the starting full-back position that a boy I would end up later dating didn't.
These guys, like many I've known, were men of dignity.
What they knew that Mr. Franklin clearly doesn't is men like him ruin sports for us all: regards our gender or shape.
Indeed, I'd say Mr. Franklin makes an excellent example of why more women should be given more position and power in sports.
And brings to mind my son's football program, which experienced a sharp reduction in sign-ups last year due to the brutal attitudes of adults like Mr. Franklin.
The good news? These young Gopher football stars from agree with Dr. LaVoie.
http://dynamicshift.org/archives/football-players-teach-professors-"man-mentor"
So does my son. Who says watching US women's soccer is far more exciting then watching mens. I asked him why. To which he said "Because they are way better!"
Andrea Morisette Grazzini
Founder, DynamicShift
Mr. Franklin,
Thank you for submitting your opinion, as your comments help to prove my point above that women in sport (myself included) who have earned, achieved, and succeeded "are criticized, scrutinized and marginalized" rather than taken seriously as scholars, athletes, coaches, or administrators. Sharing evidence-based knowledge is considered (by many) to be educational and forwarding public discourse on an important topic, not whining and bullying.
Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi
Mr. Franklin,
Thank you for submitting your opinion, as your comments help to prove my point above that women in sport (myself included) who have earned, achieved, and succeeded "are criticized, scrutinized and marginalized" rather than taken seriously as scholars, athletes, coaches, or administrators. Sharing evidence-based knowledge is considered (by many) to be educational and forwarding public discourse on an important topic, not whining and bullying.
Dr. Nicole M. LaVoi
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