Inequality In Sports Essay

Chinque Thompson

WRT 102.75

Professor Rai

8 March 2016 For many years American society has struggled to create equality between men and women for a large amount of things. Although, throughout the years people have made great efforts in order to minimize the gap of inequality between each gender, society still has not reached its goal yet. An example of where this is shown in our world today is within sports. Men have been dominating sports when compared to women. The attention given to them, the increase amount of ticket sales and media coverage are all proof that this gap is relevant today. However, the question that needs to be asked is why this gap within sports is so prevalent today? I believe that many outside factors

The only time we see women getting attention within the media is for their sexuality and not their athletic ability. In Val Hanson’s article “The Inequality of Sports” she uses the example of Tennis player Anna Kournikova to showcase this. Hanson states: “Throughout [Kournikova] career, [she] never won a singles title in tennis, but she made an astounding $10-15 million in endorsements through modelling and exposing herself to the camera, using her attractiveness to make money and gain attention. Modelling and photo shoots rather than actual sports are what female athletes seem to be defined by” (Hanson, 17). This notion relates back to the idea of gender stereotypes in sports as women through history were suppose to focus on the way the looked oppose to being the one who played outsides with their husbands an

You need to first present the evidence that women’s sports have much less coverage than men’s. Thus the kind of studies presented in “It’s a BOy’s World” needs to be presented first because you need to convince your readers that this is a significant problem. It would also help if you had more than one study confirming this bias in the media. CHECK

You will probably also need to see if this kind of discrepancy can also be seen in the kind of remuneration (money paid for work or service) that women get in comparison with men. (you need to see is this discrepancy is more defined in certain sports as compared to others -). CHECK

You might even want to talk about the differences in job prospects after a career in competitive sports. X

Perhaps you can then discuss if there is evidence to suggest that the difference in remuneration has to do with the difference in media interest. CHECK

Then you can start asking for why this is so. You have one answer -- that it is the result of gender stereotypes. But the evidence that you provide for this is very sketchy. Just having another person saying so does not count as evidence. You have a couple of studies -- Hardin, Hoisness -- but they are just the beginning. You need to find more