In 1972, an amendment called Title IX was enacted as part of the Educational Amendments series that year.
This was the first landmark effort by Congress to ensure equal opportunity for both male and female athletes. The United States has come a long way with gender discrimination, from Title IX all the way back to the late 1800s, when women voiced their opinions on the right to vote.
Sports are no different.
Fundamentally, America is making every effort to push equality, from the little league level to professional status.
NCAA universities ensure that men and women receive equal opportunities, as institutions base the number of athletes proportionately on the number of men and women who attend the school.
But, socially, women are far behind, and there will be no catching up any time soon.
Even though educational institutions provide an even playing field, the same concept does not apply to employers, who can hire whomever they want as long as the candidate is qualified.
This is where the problem lies: When people look around the sporting world, namely professional sports, there are hardly any women.
Yes, there are women’s sports leagues, and yes, they generally stand side-by-side with men’s leagues.
However, the WNBA is not what people see broadcast during prime time on a Friday or Saturday night, it’s the NBA or MLB.
It is not Lesley Visser announcing Monday Night Football, it’s Mike Tirico.
It is not Lisa Fernandez leading the Red Sox to the postseason, it’s John Farrell. The list goes on and on.
Even the most renowned women’s collegiate coaches are male, the most famous arguably being Mike Candrea, who led Arizona’s softball team to 22 College World Series in addition to coaching the U.S. women’s national softball team.
It is hard to overlook the success, but the problem is that women have never been granted the opportunity to coach a men’s team to success.
There are men coaching women every day, yet never in the history of men’s major professional sports has a woman coached a franchise.
People can voice their opinions all they want on the issue, and it all comes down to the same question: Why is it like this?
It all comes down to a mindset that men have always been, by nature, slightly superior to women.
Historically, the world has always been a patriarchal society, and though we are changing these ideas under law, these are ideas that we have naturally adopted to become part of our everyday function.
Nothing can be done to change this perspective, because we cannot control it. And because sports have always been associated with masculinity, this is how it will always be.
Although Title IX is considered significant progress, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to change the way we were molded to think.
ks363012@ohiou.edu
