I Am A Woman in Sports

By Ellie Heyerdahl

Opinion Editor

February 2022

The issue of inequality between men and women in professional sports has been a rising topic of debate in our society for many years now. It goes deeper than just professional sports. It is visible every day at our own high school. According to Education Week, in high school sports alone women make up 43 percent of the players, and this number is only increasing as time goes on. But why is it that men still receive more media attention, game attendance, and money for scholarships when women are almost half of the athletes?

At our own school, sports like soccer, swim, and hockey receive more attention when it is the boy's team. “The main difference I see is the value between the sports,” said senior and hockey player Sara Loerke. “People value male sports more.”

The difference between male and female sports and the attention they receive is not the only issue though. It is directly affecting the girls who participate in them. “It always affects your behavior," added Loerke. "You have to do more to prove yourself. It can diminish your spirit and cause you to not want to play.”

When playing in a male-dominated sport, women are constantly pushed to their breaking point in terms of mental and physical health. The attention that women’s sports receive is only when something controversial happens or when they become successful. Our own girl's hockey team went to state in 2020. “There were people at the State game I don’t think had come to a single game all season, " said Loerke. "We were one of the four teams out of the entire state that got to go there. Some of our sports at the high school don’t even make it to the playoffs. It is just upsetting that people doubt us all season and then try to support us at the last second.”

With women working harder in their sports they are also forced to reach a higher standard than men. With the current 2022 Winter Olympics, we see this sexism aligning with the female figure skaters who are not allowed to do quadruple jumps in their short program, while the men are. Women work just as hard as men, if not harder, and are constantly diminished for it due to their gender. “There is always more expected from us. The boys are allowed to goof off and make mistakes that make the team look bad, but if the girl's team did that we would be punished with hard sets,” said another female athlete.

Another prime example of this sexism would be when the NCAA gave the women's basketball team smaller facilities with less equipment during March Madness. NPR states, “While the set-up for the men's teams included a number of power racks with Olympic bars and weights, the women were provided with a set of dumbbells and yoga mats for the three weeks they will be in the tournament bubble.” So the women’s basketball teams have now received less equipment and less pay than the men's teams, which according to The Atlantic is 7.1 million less.

Women also receive more negative publicity than males. In 2009 Michael Phelps was caught smoking marijuana out of a pipe and received little to no publicity, but Sha’Carri Richardson’s smoking incident was covered on almost every media platform. When Simone Biles dropped out of the Olympics she was called “soft” by men. Her decision to drop out in order to benefit her mental health was seen as a form of empowerment by female students at our school, but to a certain male cohort, she seemed weak due to their lack of understanding.

As a school, we need to shed more light on our female sports and their accomplishments in order to fight off this stereotype and promote positivity within our female athletes. Just because this is seen as a “bigger issue” does not mean that it isn't affecting our students directly. The addition of Title IX does not stop the harassment and belittlement that women deal with in their sport. As Loerke put it, “Sexism in sports is everywhere, and our school is not vacant of that.”