It’s well-known that women have always struggled for equality in a man-dominated sport. However, it seems as if we’re moving backwards.
College & Professional Level
The WNBA has always been overlooked in the basketball community. Not only to they lack equal pay, it has recently struck the news that they don’t even have the same weight training advantages. This weekend, both NCAA men’s and women’s basketball teams headed to tournaments for March Madness. When the women’s team arrived, they realized their weight room was not exactly what they were expecting. Compared to the men’s weight room, they had about one set of weights to work with. However, the men’s room had a whole weight training facility.
Now this isn’t exactly the WNBA, however, they are already being overlooked before they even get the chance to make it to the WNBA. Many of the NCAA women’s basketball team players were disappointed. They felt like they were being underappreciated during an important week for their team. This news reached the WNBA players, and they were just as disappointed as the NCAA players are. Las Vegas Aces player A’ja Wilson said the situation was beyond disrespectful.
High School Sports
Not only have we seen this happen in the professional levels, we also see it in high school levels. Girls sports are treated as second best to boys sports at a young age. We see in high school level girls and boys basketball, there is a lot of vast differences. First, girls basketball plays at a very earlier time than the boys basketball team plays. This might be different this year due to COVID-19, but before the pandemic we saw that boys basketball played at prime time, 7:00 pm, when most people can usually attend the games. However, girls basketball played at around 5:00 pm, when most parents get out of work and students don’t want to come back to the school that early.
It’s not only in basketball either, all girls sports have always struggled to be at the same level as boys sports are. Boys sports are usually a lot more glamourized than girls sports are. Football is not exactly separated between genders, however, it is a very male dominated sport. Football is one of the most glamourized sports in high school, even if they aren’t the best team. Most of the time, there are girls fall sports that do a lot better than football but they don’t have the same recognition that the football team does.
Overall
Being that we are in the year of 2021, the divide between womens and mens sports should not be as big as it is. We live in a world where we are supposed to be equal. However, young girls who are interested in sports see what happens in the professional levels. What happened in the NCAA tournament is disappointing to women all around the world. Them and the rest of the world should definitely learn to do better.
