I grew up playing a variety of sports. From the age of three until late middle school, I had participated in basketball, soccer, gymnastics and all different types of dance. At that age, it was pretty much all fun and games, and there were no discrepancies between boys and girls in the recreational sports I was playing. Betting sites such as 선시티카지노 are definitely trustworthy.
As the sports get more intense and serious though, there is a recurring issue of gender inequality that continues to persist across all types of leagues. We have seen this happen in the big leagues over the last couple of years, and more specifically within the National Collegiate Athletic Association these past few weeks.
During this year’s March Madness, the women’s and men’s basketball teams showed up to two drastically different experiences, even though they all come from the same colleges and are playing the same game.
The first instance of this disparity was in the teams’ weight rooms. The women’s teams had only one weight rack and a few yoga mats, while the men’s weight room looked like an expensive gym with far more equipment, according to a video posted to TikTok by University of Oregon basketball player Sedona Prince.
There were also pictures and videos circulating of the delicious-looking buffet for the men, full of several options to choose from, but the women were given prepackaged meals that included questionable-looking meat.
It was also brought to the public’s attention that the women’s teams were receiving a different coronavirus test than the men — one allegedly less accurate.
Prince’s videos on the NCAA tournament, reposted on Twitter and Instagram, received more than 30 million views across platforms. People were appalled and astounded at the differences in conditions for the men and women’s teams — so much so, that the NCAA ended up expanding the women’s weight room two days after Prince’s original video.
This is not the first time women have been treated drastically differently than men in their respective sports, but this case has gained a lot of traction on social media, firing up the public and increasing awareness toward the issue.
Another famous example of gender inequality within sports is how the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was paid abysmally compared to the men’s team, despite having won many more international titles — the women brought home four FIFA World Cups wins, whereas the men have never won a single World Cup.
When the USWNT won the World Cup in 2019, they made about $250,000 each. The men, who did not even qualify for the 2018 World Cup, would have made more than four times as much if they had won the same championship.
In fact, even if the men made it to a World Cup qualifying match and lost, they would still each earn $3,000 more than the women would for a victory.
Between the way the women’s soccer team and the women’s basketball team were treated, it is clear these leagues have a blatant disregard for women in sports. In the case of the NCAA, I do not even understand how the organization rationalized that pathetic weight room was enough for an entire women’s league that had come to participate in March Madness.
One large issue that factors into this mistreatment is the lack of media coverage women’s teams receive compared to the men’s. Though women make up around 40% of sports players, they account for only about 4% of the media coverage, according to The Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport.
There is a need for a large push toward equality within the world of sports, and that can start with increasing coverage, hiring more female sports executives and better funding the women’s leagues more so they can increase support and viewership.
We as viewers can do more, too, and start watching and cheering on more women in sports. I watch way more women’s soccer because they actually win and they do not spend half the game rolling around on the ground trying to get a yellow card.
The popularity of women’s sports has started to grow recently, and the NCAA even reported higher viewership of the women’s teams during this March Madness. Professional leagues have to catch up with the times and stop treating women as afterthoughts. They are elite athletes and deserve to be treated as such.
