Gender and Sports

The presentation on Sports and Gender was very interesting. I enjoyed hearing about the sports uniforms and how they have changed throughout history. I never knew that beach volleyball regulated the size of the uniforms that women wear. Female sports seem to be turning more towards sexuality to attract an audience. Female athletes that partake in sexual advertisements are criticized for being in the ads if their playing declines, whereas most males are not criticized for their endorsements. When tennis player Ana Ivanovic participated in sexy advertisements, this was automatically responsible for her bad season, because it took away "from her practice time. If you type Ana's name into google, tons of results come up referring to her as a "hottie." Yet, it you type in Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal, no such results appear. The results for Serena Williams include "who is Serena dating." The public seems to occupy themselves more on the personal life and body image of the female athletes compared to the male athletes. Male athletes are also more likely to be shown in action and in uniform in their photo shoots than female athletes.

The discussion on Title XI interested me, because I have to say that I think Title XI needs to be reformed. Title XI states that there should be complete equality in universities between women's and men's sports. This means that equivalent teams need to have the same number of players. The issue is that it can cause some teams to be cut due to lack of participation from the other gender. Under Title XI, women's sports need to be given the same amount of funding as male's sports. The problem with this is that football drains most of the male finances. Since there is no female parallel to football, many male sports teams are left underfunded, because the football teams use up the money. I once worked with a guy who was a really good swimmer. He got a partial ride to Pittsburgh for swimming, yet he would had received a full ride if he were a female. Pittsburgh university gives out less male scholarships for swimming, because the rest of the scholarship money goes towards football. While Title XI greatly helped to promote women's participation in athletics when it was written, I think it needs to be revised so that it does not limit participation and so that football is a separate financial entity.