Women's Rights In Sports

Michael Wilkins

Whitney Young Gifted and Leadership Academy

Ms. Little

AP Literature

February 11, 2013

Women are the victim of unfair treatment in the sports industry. In this paper I will discuss and inform you about unfair media coverage and unfair pay in women sports. I also will discuss the history of discrimination in women sports and how the sports industry view women in sports. The Women's Sports Foundation writes that “Women's teams receive only 38% of college sport operating dollars and 33% of college athletic team recruitment spending”. In this paper I hope to inform you about discrimination in women sports and inspire you to do something about it.
Inequitable Media Coverage
It has been many years since Title IX granted women equal rights in sports. Reporters and broadcasters in the media industry tend to focus more on female athletes femininity over their accomplishments on the field or court. male athletes are usually depicted as masculine or heroic while females are depicted as cute or motherly. The inequitable media coverage is quite evident if you watch women sports on TV specifically college basketball. “Research shows that sportswomen significantly are underrepresented in the sports pages and on television.” (Lopiano, 1996). They broadcast much more men's basketball games than women games. ESPN, ESPN2, and The Big Ten Network usually only broadcast women games if it is a championship or a significant game. Regular season games are hardly ever shown on TV.
Unfair Pay In Women's Sports Another big problem in women sports is unfair pay. Some of the best female athletes in the WNBA don't get payed more than $105,500 compared to the $21 million some NBA players get payed. The salary cap for an entire WNBA team is $878,000. Even prorated for the WNBA 34-game season it's still much less then the median NBA salary. Some people feel that it is unfair to compare a 16-year-old league to the 66-year-old NBA. Even Indiana Fever Coach Lin Dunn commented saying "Comparing the two, I do not think, is appropriate," "You have to look at how we are growing our game and where we are in the growth of our game and not get caught up in that."(Woods, 2012)
Women Discrimination Through History In 776 B.C. The first ever Olympic games was held in Greece. Of course during that time women were not allowed to participate in the games so they had their own competition. It was called the Games Of Hera. The first modern Olympic games was held in Athens, Greece in 1896 and women still were not allowed to compete. The International Organizing Committee, Baron Pierre De Coubertin felt that it would be “uninteresting,impractical, unaesthetic, and incorrect.” In 1900 eleven women were