Playing Games With Women

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’S Sports Essay, Research Paper

Playing Games with Women’s Sports

Over two decades have passed since the enactment of Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, including athletics. As a result of Title IX, women and girls have benefited from more athletic participation opportunities and more equitable facilities. Because of Title IX, more women have received athletic scholarships and thus opportunities for higher education that some may not have been able to afford otherwise. In addition, because of Title IX the salaries of coaches for women’s teams have increased. Despite the obstacles women face in athletics, many women have led and are leading the way to gender equity.

In 1995, some legendary tennis players such as Martina Navarotilova, Chris Avert, founded Women’s Sports Legends Foundation. In 1997, seven more players joined this group with several common goals of marketing themselves as ambassadors for women and sports. They pooled their resources and called on their individual talents as players, teachers, entertainers and leaders.

As Newsday’s soccer columnist Johnette Howard observed, “Dream Team players have done more for American soccer than any homegrown athletes in the sport’s history”. In 1996, the US women’s soccer team won the Olympic gold medal and, in the summer of 1999, they faced down the best international competition in the World Cup beating China in the World championship game to win the grueling, month-long tournament.

The latter conquest generated an unseen excitement about Women’s sport in the general public. These events moved soccer from the back pages of a few big city newspapers to the covers of Newsweek, Time, People, and front of cereal boxes. Forty million people tuned in to Women’s soccer team win the World Cup. This expansion of the U.S. soccer audience benefited not just the women, but the men’s national team and Major League Soccer, too. These women showed great skill and determination even when they had not given obsession like Men’s Team. The reward for their efforts was a gold medal victory with the winning goal.

At the 1996 Summer Olympics, in Atlanta, Georgia, there were more women participants than ever before (thirty-six percent of the athletes were women in 1996, compared to just 30 percent in 1992). The 1996 summer Olympics new sports and events for women were added, including soccer and softball.

Many national magazines made the connection between women in the Olympics, and the women’s movements fight for equality in athletics. “This 2000 summer’s Centennial Olympic Games were predicted to be dominated by women athletes,” Newsweek wrote. “This extraordinary transformation of the playing field can be dated precisely from 1972, when Richard Nixon signed into law Title IX, liberal legislation that mandated full equality for women’s school athletics.”

Today women’s life styles and choices have changed so dramatically than it has been over the past decades. Women athletes are getting the exposure and the media attention they deserve. We can no longer make the same assumption about sports and other area that women are exploring and enjoying a huge success. Far from being opinionated, I really do not represent the other side of so-called equality of men’s and women’s sports. I just happened to represent the true and factual side of today’s women’s sports that the same old rules and thoughts can not be pure truth in this free and equal world. Women and Men are being considered having the same capabilities to reach their goals. There may be some instances where women are not getting what they deserve. But nowadays women are conquering the men’s games, heading a household, supporting the families as construction workers, and toping the world’s more prestigious post, being a President of the country.