Time to value skills over gender
This article was co-written with Celia Golod.
Cardstock posters line the hallways and stairwells a week in advance of game day to promote the boys’ and girls’ double-header basketball games. At first glance, it seems like a tribute to Title IX’s success, a federal law enforcing gender equality in public school’s athletic programs. But, looking deeper, the inequalities seem to persist despite the enforcement of this law.
On paper, the teams receive virtually equal treatment. Their equipment is the same; their courts are shared; their practice schedule is balanced. Yet, with such equal treatment, what explains the throngs of people in attendance at the boys’ games and the lack of crowds for the girls? This question is further convoluted by the teams’ records: 18-2 for girls and 5-13 for boys. Considering their records, what might explain the vast differences in attendance?
Title IX requires that male and female athletes receive the same benefits in sports participation. This includes “equipment, uniforms, and supplies, and equal access to games during prime time,” as the Women’s Sports Foundation explains. However, boys consistently receive the prime time slot, technically violating this provision in Title IX. In the case of basketball, the girls take an earlier block than the boys, with a 5:30 start, and the boys start at 7:00, a time that garners more attendance.
Even so, the girls prefer this earlier time. Girls basketball (and former coach for the boys’ team), Glen Magpiong said the game times were decided at the beginning of the season and he and the girls preferred the earlier slot. “I didn’t mind it because the girls actually like being the earlier game,” he said. “What often happened was that near the end of the girls’ game, fans for the boys’ game were starting to come in. There was a greater turnout than if we were the featured game because [if boys were first] fans would leave [before the girls played].”
Basketball captain Dorian Cohen ’17 reflected Magpiong’s sentiment. “I actually prefer having the earlier game because the team can sit back and relax while watching the boys game rather than being stressed about our game. However, I think that the one downside is that people usually tend to come to the boys later game and will only watch the last part of our game,” she said.
While this case is specific to basketball, the story is familiar to athletes across the school. According to athletic director John Brown, boys hockey sees 177 people per game while girls hockey sells a mere average of 71 tickets per game. Although there is no gate and thus no attendance tally at soccer and lacrosse, trends show that attendance is greater at male games than female games for these sports as well.
Since the problem isn’t with scheduled times, it most likely has to due with the community’s attitude regarding girls sports. Where does this cultural disregard of women’s sports begin?
As with many things, the media guides what a community values. The Women’s Sports Foundation conducted a study that found in both 1999 and 2004, ESPN’s Sports Center devoted only 2% of air time to women’s sports. In the 2000 Olympics a mere 29.3% of articles and 38% of photographs focused on women’s sports; there is a local, national, and even international sentiment undervaluing women’s athletics. Even Wellesley’s own Wellesley Access channel focuses their Sports Highlights segment on boys’ sports. With a look at their videos, it is evident that roughly 60% of winter sports updates begin with updates on boys’ teams.
Game time isn’t where the disregard of Title IX ends. The law states that girls’ and boys’ teams should have equal practice facilities and times. Yet, girls volleyball often gets the short end of the stick for practice space. The girls volleyball team isn’t trumped by the boys, whose season doesn’t coincide with the girls’, but instead are trumped by the football team. Volleyball player Lindsay Canaday ’17 explained that when it rains, the football team takes over the gym, leaving the volleyball team with only one third of their original practice space and forcing them to practice on JV courts.
“It kind of feels like second class treatment,” said Canaday.
However, the rationale for giving the football team the larger space is that they have a larger team; their games bring in more fans and thus more revenue for the athletic program. However The Women’s Sports Foundation explains that just “because a sport is revenue-producing or has more spectators, [schools] cannot [use this] as an excuse for treating male athletes better than female athletes.”
Despite these legal outlines for gender equality in the gym, forty-four years after Title IX, athletic departments still slant to favor male athletics, and fans and media follow (and it’s cyclical; if fans and media favor male athletics, then departments do the same). It is time for an attitude adjustment and for appreciation of sports for the team’s skill, rather than their sex.
This article appeared in the March 2016 print issue of The Bradford.
On paper, the teams receive virtually equal treatment. Their equipment is the same; their courts are shared; their practice schedule is balanced. Yet, with such equal treatment, what explains the throngs of people in attendance at the boys’ games and the lack of crowds for the girls? This question is further convoluted by the teams’ records: 18-2 for girls and 5-13 for boys. Considering their records, what might explain the vast differences in attendance?
Title IX requires that male and female athletes receive the same benefits in sports participation. This includes “equipment, uniforms, and supplies, and equal access to games during prime time,” as the Women’s Sports Foundation explains. However, boys consistently receive the prime time slot, technically violating this provision in Title IX. In the case of basketball, the girls take an earlier block than the boys, with a 5:30 start, and the boys start at 7:00, a time that garners more attendance.
Even so, the girls prefer this earlier time. Girls basketball (and former coach for the boys’ team), Glen Magpiong said the game times were decided at the beginning of the season and he and the girls preferred the earlier slot. “I didn’t mind it because the girls actually like being the earlier game,” he said. “What often happened was that near the end of the girls’ game, fans for the boys’ game were starting to come in. There was a greater turnout than if we were the featured game because [if boys were first] fans would leave [before the girls played].”
Basketball captain Dorian Cohen ’17 reflected Magpiong’s sentiment. “I actually prefer having the earlier game because the team can sit back and relax while watching the boys game rather than being stressed about our game. However, I think that the one downside is that people usually tend to come to the boys later game and will only watch the last part of our game,” she said.
While this case is specific to basketball, the story is familiar to athletes across the school. According to athletic director John Brown, boys hockey sees 177 people per game while girls hockey sells a mere average of 71 tickets per game. Although there is no gate and thus no attendance tally at soccer and lacrosse, trends show that attendance is greater at male games than female games for these sports as well.
Since the problem isn’t with scheduled times, it most likely has to due with the community’s attitude regarding girls sports. Where does this cultural disregard of women’s sports begin?
As with many things, the media guides what a community values. The Women’s Sports Foundation conducted a study that found in both 1999 and 2004, ESPN’s Sports Center devoted only 2% of air time to women’s sports. In the 2000 Olympics a mere 29.3% of articles and 38% of photographs focused on women’s sports; there is a local, national, and even international sentiment undervaluing women’s athletics. Even Wellesley’s own Wellesley Access channel focuses their Sports Highlights segment on boys’ sports. With a look at their videos, it is evident that roughly 60% of winter sports updates begin with updates on boys’ teams.
Game time isn’t where the disregard of Title IX ends. The law states that girls’ and boys’ teams should have equal practice facilities and times. Yet, girls volleyball often gets the short end of the stick for practice space. The girls volleyball team isn’t trumped by the boys, whose season doesn’t coincide with the girls’, but instead are trumped by the football team. Volleyball player Lindsay Canaday ’17 explained that when it rains, the football team takes over the gym, leaving the volleyball team with only one third of their original practice space and forcing them to practice on JV courts.
“It kind of feels like second class treatment,” said Canaday.
However, the rationale for giving the football team the larger space is that they have a larger team; their games bring in more fans and thus more revenue for the athletic program. However The Women’s Sports Foundation explains that just “because a sport is revenue-producing or has more spectators, [schools] cannot [use this] as an excuse for treating male athletes better than female athletes.”
Despite these legal outlines for gender equality in the gym, forty-four years after Title IX, athletic departments still slant to favor male athletics, and fans and media follow (and it’s cyclical; if fans and media favor male athletics, then departments do the same). It is time for an attitude adjustment and for appreciation of sports for the team’s skill, rather than their sex.
This article appeared in the March 2016 print issue of The Bradford.