Unfair Treatment and Underrepresentation of Female Athletics

We are now smack dab in the middle of March Madness, the NCAA’s top grossing event. The tournament features 64 teams who face off to determine the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball champion. This tournament brings in over 1 billion dollars, which is about 75% of the organization’s revenue.

This year’s tournament has come with controversy involving the NCAA’s treatment of female athletes. The image to the left shows the huge difference in amenities between men’s and women’s athletes at the NCAA tournament. Above you see the men’s gym facilities, filled with every piece of equipment one would need. Below you see the women’s gym facilities, featuring what most people have tucked away in their garage. In addition to the gym facilities, men’s sports were welcomed to the tournament with a bed full of merchandise and gourmet meals, whereas female athletes were welcomed with what you would get on a college tour and a meal from your freshman year dining hall.

However, there is a larger threat facing female athletes that is not often talked about. This threat is the lack of coverage in the media. There is often the argument that female athletes don’t get compensated in the way that men do because their sports don’t generate nearly as much revenue. How are female athletics supposed to generate the revenue of men’s when the TV and media coverage is little to none?

The lack of media coverage would have you assume that female participation in college, Olympic, and professional athletics is small. This is far from the truth. Participation in female athletics has been increasing dramatically over the past 20 years and yet sports journalists' and other authors' treatment of women's sports remains slim to none.

How are we to know if female athletics are worth watching if they are not even given a chance? If sports journalists and writers began talking and interacting with female athletics the way they do with men’s, I believe we would see a surge in popularity. Professional female athletes are the top competitors in their field and are worthy of recognition. While we are seeing what the NCAA thinks about female athletes, we are blind to something much bigger. Sports media and journalism have been hiding female athletes from the public.

While we wait for the larger media environment to catch up, here are some important women writers for you to start following today:

Lindsay Czarniak is an Emmy award winning ESPN Sports Desk anchor. She has covered events such as the Summer Olympics and NBA finals. You can listen to an interview where she discusses her life and career here.

Natalie Diaz is a Native American poet, editor, linguist, and professor who played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before becoming a writer. Her book Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing is a great read for an insight on women in sports as well as writing on understandings of contemporary sports in general.

Megan Rapinoe is a professional soccer player for the USA Women's National team. She has been very outspoken on women’s issues in sports, LGBTQ+ and racial representation, and the gender pay gap in athletics. You can find out more about her life in her new book One Life.