The Olympics in Rio de Janeiro were a fantastic time for women in sports: phenomenal female athletes like Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky garnered worldwide attention for their unparalleled performances. And yes, the Olympics are now long gone and the summer is officially over — but that doesn’t mean we should stop paying attention to women in sports.
According to a recent USC study, the past 25 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of girls and women playing youth, high school, college and professional sports, but television coverage of these sports have barely budged at all. In contrast, men’s sports coverage of football, basketball and baseball has only continued to increase: broadcasters devoted 68% of their reports to men in these sports in 2009, and today that number is at 75%. The study is very aptly named “It’s Dude Time: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows.”
So sports are exclusively “dude time?” Dude, don’t you think it’s time for that kind of thinking to change? Women like Pat Summitt, a legendary coach at the University of Tennessee who sadly passed away earlier this summer, fought for decades to bring women’s basketball to the spotlight. In some ways, she succeeded — she first became head coach of the Lady Volunteers, the NCAA didn’t even formally recognize women’s basketball as a legitimate sport. Summitt won eight national titles and 1,098 games, which is more than any other Division 1 basketball coach, male OR female. Teams that she coached made over 30 consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament.
But in other ways, we’ve collectively failed to make the dreams of heroes like Summitt come true. 0.4% — less than one percent — of sponsorships go to female athletes. Even with that dramatic increase of female athletes in sports of all kind, women also make up less than one percent of FIFA’s voting congress. There are no women on the board of the International Tennis Federation. And the gender pay gap is painfully clear when it comes to US soccer. The women’s US soccer team received $1.8 million dollars for winning the World Cup, but had to share the bonus among 23 players. The men’s team lost, but won $8 million to share and in addition, received millions of more dollars for every point won in the Cup.
Just to circle back, while the Olympics were indeed celebratory of many female athletes, some reporters were sexist in their coverage — or lack thereof — of women’s sports. John Inverdale, a BBC host, congratulated Andy Murray on being the first person ever to win two Olympic tennis gold medals. But Murray responded: “I think Venus and Serena [Williams] have won about four each.”
So what do we do to avoid making gaffes like Inverdales? How do we take a stance against the lack of women on sports federation boards, or the minimal coverage given to female athletes?
You know how it’s often said that the first step to fixing a problem is recognizing that there is one? Well, that works here too. It’s important to understand the dynamics of sport locally, within this country and internationally. Read books like Anna Kessel’s Eat, Sweat, Play: How Sport Can Change Our Lives, which does an excellent job of investigating female sports and the power in reclaiming athletics for ourselves.
Support UC Davis ladies at their games and tournaments, including the UC Davis women’s volleyball game on Saturday. And perhaps most importantly, take time to consider your own relationship with sports and sports media, however simple or complicated it might be. When we reclaim sport for women, how much we talk about it (and how it’s talked about) we’re taking back something that was always meant to be ours. We score. So let’s play!