Women’s Progress in Sports

Almost 50 years ago, in 1972, only 1 out of every 27 girls played a sport. At that time, girls weren’t able to play sports as easily as boys could, because the stereotype was that sports were for boys, and not girls. Most teams and organizations were only for boys, there weren’t as many opportunities for girls to join sports teams even if they wanted to. Colleges didn’t usually have any girls teams for sports like soccer, basketball or hockey before the 1970s, and even professional sports leagues didn’t have a women’s side; there were only men’s teams.

But in 1972, Richard Nixon signed a law that changed many rules surrounding the divide between women and men in sports. The law was called Title IX (nine) and it was created in order to ensure every program or activity (like sports teams) that receives Federal Financial Assistance were legally required to provide girls and boys with equal opportunities. It is because of this law that we have girls sports teams at Needham High School, and all the other High Schools with athletic departments. If not for the Title IX act, we may have never gotten to see incredible female athletes, like Serena Williams and Alex Morgan. Title IX forced sports organizations to create teams for girls to join, and over time, more and more girls started playing sports. After Title IX passed, other rules began forming to ensure equal opportunities for girls, and the gap between girls and boys sports began to shrink.

The average number of girls athletic teams offered in College/Universities was only 2.5% prior to the Title IX law, and in 2004 it had risen up to 8.32%, which may not seem like a huge difference, but that is a lot more girls playing sports. At the High School level, girls’ athletic participation increased from 295,000 girls playing sports in 1971 to 2.8 million girls in 2002, which is an overall increase of over 840%. The Title IX act encouraged girls to become more active and involved in sports, before the law passed girls weren’t able to play sports, even if they wanted to. While it is easy to prove the impact of Title IX on women and girls’ involvement in sports, the Title IX act alone was not enough to ensure equal opportunities for girls in sports at all levels of competition; it took more rules and regulations through different leagues to truly open up sports for women to play.

As time went on, more and more opportunities opened up for women across. The Women's National Basketball League began in 1978, and the Women’s National Soccer League was founded in 2012. Although the Olympics have been around since 1896, there were not many women at the Olympics, and the women who did compete were only in five smaller sports. In 2012, women finally competed in every sport available at the Olympic Games, and just five years ago in 2016, female athletes made up 46% of the athletes competing at the Rio De Janeiro Olympic Games.

Although these statistics may seem promising, there is still a lot of discrepancy between men and women’s sports today, especially at the professional level. In April 2017, the Washington Post calculated that a player on the Women's National Soccer team earned about $28,333 less, or about 98 percent of a player on the Men’s National Soccer team. This is particularly alarming because the women's team actually brings in more revenue from their games than the men’s team so it doesn’t make any sense that they would be paid less, if anything shouldn’t they be paid more? There are similar situations regarding unequal treatment and pay in almost every women’s professional sports team.

We have made lots of progress from womens athletic opportunities in 1972, but there is still a lot more progress to be made. From the Title IX law being passed, and the Olympics opening up to more women's teams, there are more opportunities for female athletes, but there are still a lot of disparities between the treatments of male and female athletes that we need to work on fixing. That starts by ending the mindset that women are weaker. This mindset comes from the past, when men were in charge of everything, and women were not as valued in society. But today, we know women are just as important as men, so why are women still treated as less than men? In the future, women's sports should be just as valued as mens, and there should be equal opportunities for everyone in athletic organizations.