Paving the way

Making sure young girls know that sports belong to them too

Ten eager hands shoot upwards at the mention of the word “sports”—and they all belong to boys. Not that it’s a bad thing so many young boys at the community centre after-school program I work at are enthusiastic about signing up for the daily sports option, but it is disheartening to rarely see a girl raise her hand for this activity. Occasionally, I have tried to encourage the girls to do so, but I always seem to receive the same response: 

“No, it’s going to be all boys. I don’t want to.” 

If the time is taken to fully unpack the significance of this statement, it is nothing short of a small tragedy: young girls do not feel that they have a place in sports. From a young age, they are told—both explicitly and implicitly—that the realm of physical activity is one that does not belong to them. Yet, who can blame them for this conviction? 

Young girls do not grow up with female athletes available to them as role models. Rather, female professional athletes are kept hidden behind a curtain composed of poorly structured leagues, little to no televised games, and pay-cheques barely above minimum wage. The abysmal reality of female professional athletes is highlighted in a study conducted by Michael A. Messner and Michela Musto of USC and Cheryl Cooky of Purdue University. This study concluded that in 2014, a meagre 3.2 percent of network television coverage was given to women’s sports, while SportsCenter donated an appalling 2 percent of coverage to female pro athletes. These abysmal statistics are not due to a lack of demand, but rather a system of sports journalism that simply does not lend itself to equal coverage of women’s sports leagues. Notably, with so little coverage given to women’s sports, the viewings of any female athletics that <i>do</i> manage to make it to the small screen are slight. Such a small amount of views leads to sloppy camerawork and mediocre commentary, meaning that women interested in seriously following sports are not going to watch the WNBA, the NWSL, or the CWHL (the latter because it recently folded—a huge blow for the female hockey community). Instead, the views that would have gone to these developing women’s professional leagues go to the NHL, the NBA, and the NFL. While it is not inherently negative for women to watch men’s sports, the lack of high-quality, female, sports-league coverage furthers the notion that the closest a woman can be to a pro-sports league is in front of a screen or in the stands.   

However, the limits on women in professional athletics extends beyond viewers. These limits directly impact players and sports writers, as women on the inside of female athletics face hardships that place an undeniable limit on the stability of women’s professional sports leagues. For example, the average NBA player makes around $5 million, while a typical WNBA player earns roughly $72,000 annually. To put this in perspective, the former salary is 70 times that of the latter. Yet, this wage conundrum is only one moving part embedded in the complex struggle of women’s leagues for legitimacy: if views were better, wages would be higher, and yet, views won’t be better until women perceive athletics as a space in which they are respected. So, how to address the moving part concerned with making women feel that they belong in sports? Well, considering that 90 percent of sports editors are men, it is unlikely that young girls and women are about to see a large increase in female sports league content. However, this does not mean that athletically inclined women should despair. 

Advances for women in sports have certainly been made, and though they are quiet victories, they are there. The Gist is a great example of a step towards women’s athletics being taken seriously. This Toronto-based startup provides sports news articles and updates intended for women, written by women. Founded by Ellen Hyslop, Jacie deHoop, and Roselyn McLarty, The Gist is rewriting women’s place in athletics while creating a strong female community of sports writers. However, the victories to be celebrated for women’s sports are not limited to sports reporting but reach directly into the world of professional athletics. Such victories include the hiring of Becky Hammon in 2014 as the first female to hold a full-time assistant coach position in the NBA. Even a sustainable professional league for women is becoming more attainable as the WNBA enters its 22nd season as a stable association—in large part thanks to funding from the NBA. Not long after Hammon’s hiring, Dawn Braid was hired as a full-time skating coach for the Arizona Coyotes in 2016, and in the 2016-2017 season, Kathryn Smith became the first woman to hold a full-time coaching position in the NFL. There have even been talks amongst the likes of Portland Trailblazers player Pau Gasol and NBA commissioner Adam Silver of hiring a female head-coach in the future.  

Yet, in uncovering so many victories for women in sports, I learned something shocking: the first female hired in a coaching capacity in the NHL, Barbara Williams, was hired in 1977. While it is inspiring to know this a crucial advancement took place more than 30 years ago, Williams’ hiring raises a glaring question that cannot remain ignored: if a development of this significance occurred in 1977, why has there not been more progress since? Why are girls still dropping out of organized sports at approximately double the rate of boys by the time they are 14? The answer appears to be that we still have much more distance to cover—the fight is hardly over. The road for the future generation of women in sports must continue to be paved until young girls cannot even fathom a reason why they would avoid sports. 

It is only then when girls trade sports cards of female players and argue over their favourite WNBA teams that the battle will have been won.  

And in this not-so-distant future, I will offer the sports option to the children at my community centre, and ten eager hands will shoot up—all girls.