A Cut For Equality

An interesting post by Erin Buzuvis about Bemidji State University explains its newest idea to gain equity in their universities athletics program in terms of mens and womens opportunites. Their big move was to eliminate their mens indoor and outdoor track team from their sports department to meet the ten percent cut that the entire university is undergoing. Before this cut had became finalized an interesting number was posted. At the university, their was a 63 percent for males to have an opportunity to play sports. However, for women it was just 37 percent. There were two hundred and twenty one mens opportunities and only one hundred and twenty nine opportunites for women. Now, after the cut has been made, it lowers the percentage for men to fifty four percent and raises the womens to forty six percent. Still though, the amount of men compared to women who attend this university is split right down the middle at fifty percent each. Bemidji was even told by officials that they were "well out of alignment, as far as Title IX." When i was reading this post it made me think back to class when we were talking about feminism as a theory. We came across a word that relates to this article really well. That word is patriarchy. Patriarchy is a structured or ideological system of relationships that legitimate male power over women. This is clearly shown by many other colleges around the United States, but with this university in particular and the numbers shown that you can see that mens sports at colleges have power over the womens. Patriarchy also expresses a hegemonic male world view and the same could be said for this universities sports programs over the womens before the cut was made. I dont think that Bemidji has any room for explanations when it comes to the big gaps in the opportunities offered to play sports because the amount of male and female students who attend that university is even and without discriminating against women they have no other excuse. When it comes to my opinion I think that every university should have the same number or mens and womens sports teams. Whether their all the same or some schools offer different opportunities than others it doesnt matter, but every school should have the same number of opportunities for men and women to play sports. Its a whole different topic to try to even out who desides to watch which sport and how to close that gap, however I dont think it is fair to deny women opportunities to play sports especially when the number of women coming into your school is the same number as men.