Gender Equality in the Sports World and within Native American Communities
Women’s equality has evolved over the last hundred years, but has it really changed?
In the last hundred years, women have made tremendous strides in many aspects of life. Women now hold jobs, have the right to vote, and even participate in professional sports which was all once considered dominated by men. Before women were able to play professional sports, their work ethics made an impact on the economy when women were able to hold jobs. Women worked as teachers, cleaners, in childcare, in factories and some women went as far as working as prostitutes.
Although females were participating in professional sports, they didn’t seem to get the same treatment as male athletes. Women’s sports is really only recognized when these women do good or bad. What a lot of people don’t know is that this current topic is happening within my community and other surrounding Native communities, where female athletes rarely get the recognition or acknowledgement they deserve. Let’s look at the history of women’s sports, how this affected female athletes across the country, and how this topic is starting to generally affect local native communities.
Women have proven in society that they can be as great as men. According to Robert C. Bell, a writer for The Sport Journal, the history of women’s sports evolved back in the 19th Century, where women were limited to horseback riding, archery, golf, tennis, skiing and skating. These sports were often referred to as “feminine” because they weren’t played as often as basketball. Men had a negative perspective of women being involved in athletics because men expected their wives to stay home, cook, clean their homes, take care of their children, and make their husbands happy. Bell later stated that women’s athleticism was often looked down on and was called a “threat to women’s fertility”. On May 14th, 1900, women became able to participate in the Olympics. According to the International Olympic Committee, women were limited to only playing tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism, and golf (olympics.com). Although we are in our current generation, women are still being treated unfairly.
In recent years, we’ve seen this topic circulate within the sports community. Prime example, Sedona Prince, a women’s basketball player at the University of Oregon, brought attention to the media by filming a TikTok showing and expressing the unfair differences between the male and female weight room when these athletes were placed in the “Bubble” during the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Prince’s video documented how men participating in this event were provided the necessities they needed to stay in shape, while the women were provided a rack of dumbbells and yoga mats that was supposed to be used for the whole team. Prince later stated “if you aren’t upset about this, then you are a part of it”, indicating her outrage with this situation. Other athletes and leaders across the globe also expressed their opinions on how the NCAA should’ve dealt better with this situation.
While gender inequality is everywhere I truly want to talk about how it impacts Native American communities. Local newspapers cover news, and sports events that took place the night before. I have skimmed through it a couple times, the first thing that I always happen to see is a boy's game that headlines the paper. It’s not that it is a bad thing, but what would it take just for once to have a girl’s game as a headliner. Do boys athletics pull more attention than girls? Throughout my high school years at Zuni High School, I have been to a couple basketball games and noticed a big difference between boys and girls games. To start off, there seems to be a lower attendance rate at girls games compared to boys. Some boys often say that “boy’s games draw more attention because their games are more interesting” and they often argue that boys are “more physically superior”. Lots of people often disagree with their statement by indicating that women are just as physically superior as these boys.
At some point in our lives, we’ve seen an example of inequality throughout the entire world. It feels that we are living in a repeated cycle of inequality. We’ve found ways to overcome these inequalities, but we just follow back into that repeated cycle; to forget what we’ve once fought for. Inequalities seem likely to never end because it seems that we will likely always have a dislike towards something or someone. Yet, we just have to look forward to a better future in order for changes to occur.
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Sources:
https://olympics.com/ioc/faq/h....
https://kinesiology.csp.edu/a-...
https://www.swishappeal.com/nc...
https://www.womenshistory.org/...
