After seeing the video today in class I was curious about the topic of women in sports and particularly women in college sports. When I was researching online I came across the Feminist Majority Foundation's website feminist.org and found some interesting statistics.
"Male college athletes receive 36% more scholarship dollars than female college athletes at NCAA institutions. Men's college athletics receive more money than women's in scholarships, recruiting, head coach salaries, and operating expenses. Men have substantially more employment opportunities than women in college sports. Women are 16.9% of the Athletic Directors, 44% of the head coaches of women's teams, 2% of the head coaches of men's teams, and 27.8% of the full time athletic trainers."
While I'm not shocked by these statistics because everyone knows men's sports are a million times more publicized and watched than women's sports, whether it be college sports or professional sports, I still think it is crazy that there is such a big divide between them. In my opinion women's basketball is one of the biggest examples of this. Women who play for the WNBA make significantly less than those males who play in the NBA and women's basketball has no where near the air time or the crowd numbers that NBA games have. Stepping back a bit to college basketball it is the exact same thing. Men's college basketball is again much more publicized than women's college basketball. The scholarship money given to these men is much more significant than what is given to the women for basketball. The men's NCAA March Madness tournament is a highly televised event all throughout March where fans will literally watch nothing but basketball for weeks straight. Honestly, I didn't even know women's college basketball even had their own March Madness tournament until recently. Ticket sales for the Final Four for men are significantly higher than Final Four tickets for women basketball. It's crazy to think that the exact same sport played by two different genders can have such a significant difference in salaries, scholarship money, fan attendance, ticket prices, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment