Discrimination in Sport

During our class discussions this week, we learned the history of women’s education and their participation in intercollegiate sports. Although we have not talked about Title IX in full detail, this law made big changes in women’s sports when it was first enacted in 1972. The law gave women more opportunities to participate in sports. Since then, athletes and coaches have complained about the law stating that it has created problems for men’s sports because certain programs had to be cut.

When I first read the Title IX’s blog article, No Sand V-Ball in San Diego, I thought about how we learned in class that women were excluded out of sports because of their menstruation and how professionals thought sports were too rigorous for women. Today, that is not the case. Although more women attend college than men today, women’s sports still have less participation than men’s sports. According to the article, a decrease in the percentage of female students at San Diego State has relieved some pressure on the school to add an additional women’s sports program to its athletic department. Due to this decrease, the athletic department plans to hold off adding women’s sand volleyball and instead they hope that by adding only one new women’s program, lacrosse, that they can reach gender-equality. Although Title IX was implemented to help women in sports, it only seems to be making their chances worse. In Susan Birrell’s and Nancy Theberge’s article Ideological Control of Women in Sport, they state that the pattern of exclusion of women athletes has not changed significantly since the passage of Title IX. Instead of being looked at as equals in sport, women are still looked down upon to men’s sports. Even though studies show that girls who participate in sports are more likely to reach higher levels of education, higher levels of pay in the workforce, and it lowers their rate for teenage pregnancy by playing sports, women are still not getting as big of an opportunity to play sports as men do, even though it’s for a good cause.

This upsets me because women have been fighting and still are fighting for equality long after Title IX was enacted. After what I learned in class about how women had a hard time trying to get into educational institutions and even a harder time trying to participate in sports, I thought about what Title IX has done to make women’s and men’s participation in sport equal. It’s a shame that even though Title IX is enacted, it still does not make a big difference in women’s participation. Women still get fewer teams, scholarships and lower budgets than men’s sports teams. They are still seen as less superior to men in sports as they were before Title IX began. In spite of the impact Title IX has had, there is still some work to be done to achieve full equality. Women are just as good as men are in sports and should get the same opportunities to achieve their best potential.