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Writer's pictureJohanna Indyk, Sally Kelton, Evy Orozco

Women in Sports

Despite the progress made in gender equality, females still have 1.3 million fewer opportunities to participate in high school sports compared to males. The Women’s Sports Foundation is committed to researching the factors that influence this daunting statistic. Their work is done to ensure that females of all ages are able to reap the benefits of athletics without facing injustice. Girls can gain important life skills such as leadership, teamwork, and confidence through participating in sports at a young age. Yet a majority of them do not have an opportunity to get involved and to stay involved. This is shown in a study by the National Women’s Law Center which found that in 1972 only 295,000 girls competed in high school sports compared to the 3.97 million boys. A significant barrier is the dearth of facilities, coaches, training, and equipment in female athletics. Male sports are given priority to better practice space and amenities, often leaving the girls to the disregarded facilities. In some high schools, girls soccer teams are forced to practice on the JV grass fields while the football team is given precedence to the turf field. In addition, coaches become less interested in guiding women's sports due to their lack of attention, making it harder for girls to find coaches. The distinct differences that divide the male and female athletic teams diminish the experience for girls. They are less motivated as a result of little recognition and discrimination. The inequality decreases participation in female sports. It is essential to keep girls active in athletic teams and to bring attention to the wrongful inequality.

For decades, gender inequality has been taking over sports in high schools. In an attempt to try and make sports more equal, a law was placed: Title IX. Alia Wong wrote an article, Where Girls Are Missing Out on High-School Sports, explaining the challenges women face in high school sports. She found that there are over 4,500 public schools in the United States that have gender inequality. These gender inequalities represent the male sports versus the female sports and the obstacles the female sports face. A good amount of schools have large gender barriers in sports which is represented by a minimum of 10 percent fewer spots on female teams than male sports teams. This proves the point that males have more opportunities than females when it comes to high school sports. It has also been recognized that certain schools have larger gender gaps depending on their demographic, meaning that schools with a majority of minorities will have less female athletes participating in sports than schools with a majority of white people.

Through a series of interviews of high school students, it was found that all of the students are angered at the existing gender barriers in sports. They shared first hand experiences in which they and their teams were directly mistreated or discriminated against simply because they are female. Instances were described in which their coaches had to pay for things such as uniforms and other resources out of pocket, while male sports had theirs funded by the school. Their voices are not heard and action is not being taken, although this is clearly an issue being recognized by many students. What does this ongoing issue say about our society?

Karl Marx’s conflict theory can be applied to many gender, socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity related issues. The fact that female sports teams get unequal resources and facilities to practice in relates directly to the idea of constant struggle for control of scarce resources, present in the conflict theory. The Title IX law was implemented in 1972 to “put an end to” the issue of high school gender barriers, states the law, but the power it carries is abused. This misuse allows for further discrimination against female sports teams. One scenario that represents this dysfunction in the Title IX law is within The Florida High School Athletes Association. Only 8 of the 40,400 highschool football players in Florida are girls, but the FHSAA argued that “exempting football from financial cuts was not discriminatory because it is technically co-ed.” This almost unspoken inequality leads highschool girls to feel discouraged and “diminishes playing experience” making them quit, says the Women’s Sports Foundation. They are being forced to quit due to lack of funding, a problem that male sports don't have. A female highschool athlete described that “female athletes don’t get the same funding, recognition, and don’t get the proper training/attention of coaches that males do.” This issue is not only recognized by the female athletes but also the males athletes. They have attempted to take action but it is the coaches that are preventing change, which represents the perpetual struggle in the conflict theory. The same highschool student mentioned how “the coaches don’t care enough to actually recognize it.” This has had a serious effect on the confidence and performance quality of female athletes, as some would call it, “demoralizing and unmotivating” making it “difficult to keep up the drive and love for the sport”. This factor, along with the constant feeling that you have to prove yourself to the males in sports, makes being a female high school athlete a very negative experience, one that the conflict theory can be applied to.

Another perspective is the functionalist perspective. Sociologists see this as people that have structure and the same beliefs, values, and behavioral expectations. In this perspective, the structure can’t be messed up or unbalanced or it will throw everything off. This connects to high school sport’s gender barriers affecting athletes' lives. A female student athlete was interviewed on gender barriers connecting to the functionalist perspective. She was asked a series of questions associated with High School sports’ gender barriers. She stated that there is a “hundred percent gender barrier…” at her highschool. This provides an example of how this issue could affect student athletes and impact their structure in life. If this structure gets changed and negatively impacted it starts creating social problems. The same student athlete shared her experiences on the team with gender barriers. She said that she’s experienced her and her team being “kicked off the field” when they had a game because the football players needed to warm up. This injustice of male sports getting more than female sports creates unbalance and teaches some players that this is okay. There are many dysfunctions that come from these inequalities, which affects the way females feel. She voiced that it creates a barrier between many of the girls and boys sports teams because of the “constant vying for field time or funding…” These dysfunctions make some female athletes feel like they aren’t worth as much as the male athletes. The functionalist perspective also includes the latent function, which in this situation is that females are being prepared and shown that there are inequalities and negative impacts in the world that they inevitably have to face. Lastly, it contains the manifest function, because people intended to give more resources and funding to male sports, such as football. Sociologists use this perspective to help elucidate how it affects female athletes individually, the overall team, the school, to everything they do affecting their life structure.

Different interactions and the power struggle in society contribute to the inequality of adolescence sports. The symbols of power and authority in association with the macro and micro levels of society is known as the interactionist perspective. Through this point of view the reason behind the divide in sports can be identified by society’s desire to put women down. This is reflected through the social construct that females can not participate in contact sports or play aggressively. It is frowned upon for girls to join rough activities such as football, hockey, and lacrosse as a result of their “size, strength, and skill” (Women’s Sports Foundation). Misogynists justify their beliefs by saying that there is a safety concern for girls playing against males or harshly against each other. These are myths, as science has proved that “risks in contact sports have nothing to do with gender and more to do with coaching and the child’s skills and experience in that sport” (Women’s Sports Foundation). Female athletes are also penalized for any hostile moves during their games. The internet has shamed women’s teams for aggressive playing while men’s teams are encouraged to be confrontational. People become nervous when women cross the line because it is not “normal” behavior for them. Society has been conformed to believe that females are delicate, submissive, and passive. The act of excluding and criticizing women in contact sports is a symbol of these thoughts in the public. The interactionist perspective of sociology identifies the conditioning of society to conclude that females are inferior to males. Symbols used in different interactions, such as athletics, uphold this conjecture.

Through analyzing the three main sociological perspectives in the context of high school sports gender barriers, it can be shown how the conflict and interactionist theories coincide with one another. The conflict perspective of sociology describes society as being in a state of perpetual struggle between groups for limited resources, which breeds the inequalities seen today. There is a constant battle between male and female sports for coaching staff, equipment, and funding, all of which are scarce assets in athletics. Male dominant sports are often given the majority of the resources because their teams receive more attention. Society has always emphasized male sporting events as a result of social conditioning over time. This ideal is identified by the interactionist perspective that examines social behavior through different interactions that occur in society. In this viewpoint, the exchanges between human beings can be classified through social conditioning and different symbols. Throughout history, populations have been taught that women are meant to stay home and take care of their family, while their husbands work. Many people do not want to watch female athletic events because society has conditioned them to believe that males are superior. Subsequently, men are given more resources since their sports gain a larger amount of support. The interactionist perspective essentially impacts the resources that women in sports are fighting for, known as the conflict theory.

Sociologists are able to accurately analyze the issue of gender inequality through the conflict theory and interactionist perspective, but may struggle to identify its causes through the functionalist perspective. Emile Durkheim’s functionalism is a theory that states that all aspects of society are controlled by interconnecting systems. Each system has manifest functions, latent functions, and dysfunction that are all essential to its success. In the context of gender inequalities most systems manifest functions or intended purpose is creating a division of labor. The theory is habitually applied to the organization, stability, and allocation of tasks. The functionalist perspective examines society at a macro level rather than a micro level, which is a part of interactionism. It is not the best method to describe gender barriers in high school sports because it is a smaller issue. Sexism in high school sports is not directly related to a system that holds society together but is rather a result of interactions and conflicts. The interactionist and conflict theories can be easily applied to this matter because they take different relations into account. Functionalism does not pertain to the exchanges throughout society. The struggle for gender equality in high school sports is attributed to the struggle for resources and the effects of social norms.


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