Women's sports, like many other industries, has long been treated as subordinate to men's athletics. In fact, the whole idea that the default name for sports (i.e. NBA) is for men while WNBA must specify that it's for women is a prime example of how our society views women's sports to be second priority, less than average. Oregon basketball player Sedona Prince recently took to Tiktok to expose the double standards she experiences with weight rooms. NCAA provided her team with a meager stack of dumbbells while the men's team received a giant room filled with state of the art squat racks, weights, and facilities. Her video was an up close look into some of the daily challenges that women face in sports. In response to the bad publicity, the NCAA made a major upgrade to the women's weight rooms. However, this is just a start. Women have historically dealt with worse foods, poorer facilities, less accurate COVID testing, the list goes in.
I think it's imperative the NCAA make long term change instead of just material efforts to combat the bad publicity. This subordinate treatment to women is just one aspect of the institutionalized sexism that plagues society and a lot of measures must be taken to reverse the effects. When such a big organization like the NCAA openly treats women as less than men, it sets a precedent for all the people that watch and participate in sports to do the same. I think NCAA should actively do more to advertise women's sports, provide them with equal facilities and treatment, and invest more money and effort into women's sports than ever before in order to equal the playing field.
Discussion Questions:
What are ways that NCAA can work to improve their treatment towards women?
What message does it send younger generations?
How has social media affected our view of the NCAA?
How can men stand up for women in cases like these?
The NCAA needs to increase their funds allotted to women. How do we expect athletes to perform if we aren't equipping them with the tools to succeed? That's exactly what's happening here - this weight room is a window into how the NCAA views women's sports, so how are we going to expect a high level competition if the NCAA continues to treat athletes this way? This tells younger generations, especially younger girls, that this is how they will be treated no matter how high their athletic abilities are. They could train their whole lives to reach March Madness, and be met with this kind of nonsense. Men should be partitioning their weight room (for COVID safety) and splitting their gym with women, or alternatively they should set times for women to use their room and completely sanitize the equipment beforehand.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Darshan, it is completely unacceptable for this treatment to exist in this industry. One popular excuse--the men's tournament makes the NCAA more money than women--is very nuanced. How can women be expected to perform at the same level when they are not receiving the same treatment not only in terms of weight room equipment but advertising as well? This definitely sends a message that women's sports are not as prestigious or coveted as men's. Young girls will not aspire to be professional athletes. I'm glad that a tiktok was made about this because it must have been humiliating for the NCAA. Instead of justifying the actions of the NCAA, men should stand with women and be outspoken about this issue.
ReplyDeleteI agree- especially because Tiktok has over a billion downloads and is such a worldwide platform. I see it as an effective first step to gaining publicity for such a prominent problem. But as you mentioned, men should take a stance too and higher ups need to do more about this issue.
DeleteI haven't seen the video on Tiktok, but from the picture you posted the difference between the two gyms is striking. I definitely don't think a simple set of dumbbells is enough equipment for a professional athlete to train well. Like Diya mentioned, the men's tournament brings in more money than the women's tournament, though that may be part of a larger societal bias towards watching men play sports rather than women. I don't personally know how much of a difference there is between the two tournaments in terms of profit, but I'm pretty confident that both of them make at least enough money to pay for a decent weight room for each team. In terms of solutions to put women on more of an equal footing with men, the NCAA could start with increased publicity for women's teams. Still, societal change is a long-term thing, and it will take a significant amount of time and effort before viewership, profits, etc are equal for teams of both genders.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the others that there needs to be a change in the NCAA because these conditions are unacceptable. It portrays a strong message to younger girls that their sports are not as important as male sports, influencing how they view themselves individually and in society. Although the NCAA is working to improve the conditions for women in March Madness, I think that they already made their message clear at the beginning where their priorities lay, and they can't do anything to completely make up for that. In the future, I think that organizations need to make more of an effort to ensure that men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, such as providing adequate resources for both genders.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you that the NCAA should make some long term changes when it comes to women athletics. This starts with better funding which can lead to better facilities. Additionally, they should be treated equally as the men are. For example, the march madness brand is used for the men's basketball tournament but not for the women's. Without the brand, the women's tournament has less publicity. This message is bad since younger generations began to accept this sexism within society. They think its normalized and this sexism will just continue. Social media brings a lot of attentions to inequalities like how tiktok was used to expose the differences in the weight rooms. Thus, it makes us view the NCAA much differently as we begin to see their many flaws.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone who commented before that there needs to be a major change in the way the NCAA treats female athletes. If inequities this large are present in tournaments as important and prestigious as March Madness, I can't imagine the extent of what happens behind the scenes during the normal seasons. If it wasn't for Prince's viral post, I'm unsure if anything would have changed and a lot, if not almost all of us, would have remained ignorant to what happened. In terms of the message it sends younger generations, I'm scared that younger girls will see posts like these and simply just expect that to happen later in life without knowing how unjust actions like these are. However, I hope that as more people start advocating for female athletes, inequalities like this will no longer be the norm and they will no longer be expected by young female athletes.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, thinking about what happens behind the scenes is a little scary. A lot of proponents talk about the amount of money that men's NCAA tournaments make- as if NCAA players are just a number. The NCAA is known to monetize their players, stopping them from taking advertisement deals with companies and instead having complete and utter control over them. Clearly, the NCAA needs to make core changes to improve the treatment and equity of their players and send a better message to younger generations of athletes.
DeleteThe NCAA most definitely needs to change the way they treat women. In my personal opinion, they need to televise and advertise women in the way they advertise men's teams. There is a lack of publicity on the women's teams and I practically never see ads for women's ball, while men's basketball is constantly being advertised with campaigns like March Madness. I also think the budget for women's basketball needs to be upped. In comparison, men's D1 has a budget of 28 billion while women on only get 14.5. Although women have a less high viewing rate, this is insanely uneven for the women, even though they work just as hard and receive little recognition. This is not sending a good message to younger generations as the inequalities make young girls feel as if they are less capable of accomplishing their dreams on the basis of their sex, as they see women in the media being treated as inferior. Social media has definitely drawn attention to the NCAA in a negative light. When I saw that video I was disgusted at the extreme differences in the women's weight room compared to the men's. It was honestly super upsetting to see something like that as women are already getting so much less recognition in sports while still working insanely hard.It made me loose respect for the NCAA, and I think a lot of people felt the same way. As for how men can help out, I think that male NCAA athletes should definetely have called attention to the issue through social media, or even talking to administrators. It is definitely a responsibility for them, as they are a big part of the NCAA's incomes.
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