I recently got roped into watching the men’s NCAA championship. Unfortunately, it’s seemingly inevitable if you have any acquaintances of the male persuasion that you will eventually be watching sports that you have little interest in. Although I find basketball enjoyable sometimes, I sometimes start wondering why we never watched the girls play. When I asked the guys this same question, I was met with guffaws and exclamations of ‘Girl’s basketball isn’t a real sport!’ but any one of the female basketball players that they undervalue could probably dominate them in any physical activity. There is a common stigma that women athletes in socially male-dominated games are somehow less talented than their male counterparts. There does not seem to be any real evidence for their shortcomings except for a vague, murky conception of women’s sports as not as important but my question is why? It isn’t like women athletes work less hard or are less talented simply because they are not men. If anything, it seems like they would need to work harder to overcome the physical shortcomings that men don’t have to deal with. Everyone plays the same game, so why are women’s sports so underplayed?
It is partially the marketing of sports as primarily male television, with something like two-thirds of sports viewers being men. In any given sports broadcasting, there are so adds for beer that I feel drunk just by watching. It is also the stigma of sports as something that is somehow inherently masculine. While there are obviously female-dominated sports like gymnastics and field hockey, these sports are marked by their uniforms for their femininity. I would personally like to see a male lacrosse player scoop a ball off the ground while running full speed in a skirt without flashing anyone or see a male gymnast do a floor routine with a leotard riding up. Why do women need to always add something extra to gain the attention? Why isn’t the simple raw athleticism of women as impressive as the same talent of men? Maybe it’s just because men don’t want to watch a woman do something they couldn’t ever achieve, or maybe because the common view of male athletes as heroes doesn’t quite stick to women. Whatever the reason, women never seem to be quite enough in the sports world despite their amazing effort, talent, and skill.
