In the decades since Title IX, female athletics have seen incredible progress. Girls of all levels are breaking records and pioneering new programs as more and more opportunities arise. The future of women’s sports looks bright, but visibility, accessibility, and culture remain battlefronts in need of continued advocacy and support as we work to build up strong, confident girls.
It’s hard to believe only a few decades ago girls and women in sports were a rare occurrence in the high school and college setting. In 1972, only two percent of college athletic budgets went to female athletes and a meager 1 in 27 girls played a sport. Within a few years of passing Title IX, six times as many high school girls began participating in competitive athletics. By 2016, 1 in 5 girls played sports. Additionally, the U.S. Olympic Team saw 292 women to 263 men versus the 1972 count of 90 women to 428 men.
As a female athlete, I am so grateful for the incredible progress made for women and girls with a passion for athletics. It truly is a different world compared to the one my mother and my grandmother grew up in. But we still have a long way to go and ways to continually improve. Visibility, accessibility, and culture remain battlefronts for female athletics.
What Does Visibility Look Like?
Take a moment and think of the names of three professional athletes you know. Who comes to mind first? Was it Tom Brady or LeBron James? More than likely, all the names you can think of are male athletes. Chances are, if you did name a woman, you probably know her from the Olympics. Such disparity of visibility between men’s and women’s professional sports has an unfortunate side effect: it leaves girls uncertain about whether their interest in a particular sport is even possible to pursue.
Every so often a breakout female athlete catches the attention of mainstream news outside their sporting circle. Many of us can remember when Alex Morgan became the youngest member of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team in 2009. After she helped lead the USWNT to an Olympic gold in 2012, she went on to co-captain the team for two World Cup victories in 2015 and 2019, as well as a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Her recognizable pink pre-wrap headband worn every game became a trademark. Unsurprisingly, girls across the country took up the pre-wrap look after they saw her play on television.
More recently, if you follow NCAA basketball, you likely heard of rising star Caitlin Clark, the point guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Caitlin became an overnight sensation after her incredible performance in the Women’s March Madness tournament. She made history breaking the single tournament scoring record and assist record, while her scoring streak surpassed any other in March Madness history, including the men’s. Clark’s visibility as a female athlete created a new passion for basketball among the young girls of Iowa. They showed up in droves to youth basketball camps with the desire to be like the talented college player they watched on TV.
The ratings for games in this Women’s NCAA tournament were the highest ever. In fact, three regional finals games had viewership surpassing all but two other basketball telecasts on ESPN’s network this season. Averaging 660,000 views per game, the tournament saw a 42% boost in views from last year. This spring, maybe for the first time, the March Madness family dinner table conversation revolved around the women’s basketball tournament, largely thanks to Caitlin Clark. I know mine did.
Visibility of successful, talented women in sports is one of the biggest ways to encourage more girls to participate. They see the possibility, the amazing opportunities their hard work can lead to, and the support they can receive from the broader community for their talent and dedication.
We don’t have to wait, though, for the national news to promote this visibility. It could look like a community rallying behind their girls’ lacrosse team headed to state or parents taking their kids to see a women’s basketball game. It could be a school inducting more deserving female athletes to their Hall of Fame or promoting the times of girls’ events to the student body. Plenty of opportunities exist to start getting the little Caitlin Clarks and Alex Morgans in your community excited to grow into future record breakers themselves.
The Importance of Accessibility
To misquote Field of Dreams (1989), “If you build it, they will come.” In the case of the movie, Kevin Costner’s character, Ray, built a baseball field for long dead baseball legends to play again. Luckily, the athletes we are dealing with are very much alive and even more willing to show up to play.
Take the recent surge in interest for girls’ flag football. In 2017, Atlanta Falcons Director of Community Relations Amanda Dinkel took on the effort of promoting and encouraging the Falcons and local Georgia schools in Gwinnitt County to start up girls’ flag football. The program included a $100,000 grant from the Falcons’ owner Arthur Bank and effort from Gwinnitt County’s Athletic Director Jon Weyher. The assumption was that 10 schools might field teams with approximately 150 girls joining total. An estimate which got blown out of the water when all 19 county schools wanted in and about 400 girls showed interest. Since inception, girls’ flag football has grown throughout the state with the Atlanta Falcons continuing to support the sport through grants.
One school, Blessed Trinity Catholic High School, entered the scene too late to receive grant money for the start of its program, yet the school and coach still managed to get the team up and running. The girls, with their limited resources, even made the state semifinals. The excitement and interest for these sports already exists, so it’s encouraging to see so many people working toward creating opportunities to fill those spaces.
After the success in Georgia, more NFL teams decided to get involved. If you watched the Super Bowl, you may remember one of the ads featured the quarterback from the Mexican women’s national flag football team (another wonderful example of visibility). And now all the girls who discovered flag football from that ad have the increased chance to go out and pursue that interest.
Flag football is not the only example by a long shot, each year additional sports become accessible to interested girls: wrestling, water polo, martial arts, and many others. It’s a far cry from when a school had a cheer squad or a tennis team if you were lucky. The future looks bright if we continue to advocate for making these opportunities available.
Why Culture Matters
As a little girl I played on the baseball team. With my brothers also participating on their own teams and my mother somehow managing to coach the lot of us, our summer days often passed in the local park either playing or watching baseball and evenings spent at the occasional MLB game. Baseball was the only sport we all shared. My brothers’ and I had dreams of being infielders on the older kids’ teams when we got there.
Imagine my surprise in third grade when I discovered there were no girls’ baseball teams. Not a single one. Sure girls could play with the boys up to a certain age, be the single female on the team. But eventually she was expected to move to softball. The problem for little me was softball wasn’t the family sport. It was different, the ball, the shape of the field, the strategy of the game. All completely different. I didn’t want to play softball. I wanted to play baseball.
Unfortunately, I’m not the only little girl who discovered the sport her whole family enjoyed or the one she dreamed of playing was closed off to her. With the rise in sports available to women, I hope to one day see baseball and even tackle football on the list of high school girls sports. But this is far from the only hurdle.
Cultural attitudes around girls sports still have a ways to go. By age 14, twice as many girls will drop out of sports as boys. Only 40% of high school girls currently play sports and by age 17, 51% will quit entirely.
Even though girls who play sports display better confidence, self-esteem, body image, and psychological well-being, many negative connotations against female athletes linger. For instance, the pervading misconception that gaining muscle looks bad or sweating isn’t feminine. Boys are encouraged by society to reach peak physical fitness, while girls are deterred from it. At the 2016 Olympics, female athletes received live commentary on their appearance instead of their performance. And in the 2021 Summer Olympics, the Norwegian Women’s beach handball team received fines simply for opting out of bikinis and wearing a uniform with more coverage, similar to the men. These double standards on the highest level of athletic competition discourage girls faced with the decision of whether to start or continue sports. When this occurs, and they ask themselves if it’s worth pursuing, what will the answer be?
Going Forward
Despite setbacks and scandals, more and more young girls are discovering a passion for athletics every day as they see the growing visibility of women to look up to in their chosen sport. Girls in high school are breaking records and those who have never played a sport are stepping out of their comfort zone to try brand new ones and pioneer programs which will last for years to come. College and professional level women’s sports continue to garner attention from broadening audiences as well as more sponsorships and funding. Overall, the future of female athletics looks bright. Even so, as the kids say, “the grind never stops.”
Sources:
Alex Morgan (teamusa.org)
Hawkeye star Caitlin Clark inspires young Iowans to play basketball (kcci.com)
Record weekend for women’s tourney as Sweet 16, Elite 8, hit highs – Sports Media Watch
Caitlin Clark breaks records during historic March Madness run | CNN
How Title 9 Transformed Women’s Sports (history.com)
Women’s Sports History | National Women’s History Museum (womenshistory.org)
NFL strives to bolster girls’ flag football across all levels – ESPN
How to keep girls playing sports – and why we should | News | UW Health
Benefits – Why Sports Participation for Girls and Women – Women’s Sports Foundation (womenssportsfoundation.org)
Women’s beach handball team fined for choosing shorts over bikini bottoms | CNN
Why Watching Women’s Sports Can Empower Young Female Athletes – TeamSnap Blog | TeamSnap
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