Gender inequality in sports Essay

Since the first day of man's existence, men have always been considered as the "Alpha". They have been noted to be stronger than women, which leads women to be labeled as the weaker sex. Due to that, women were never stated nor contemplated to be equal to men. With that being said, women began to evolve and came together in the late 19th century, fighting for their rights to vote, to be heard, and for equality. In 1920, the women's suffrage movement came to an end resulting in women being heard and getting voting rights with some equality. I stated "some" because one could easily argue that women have yet to receive full equality compared to men. Today, the United States is becoming more and more of a secondary industrialized society where people are more secretive, especially when it comes to the topic as to how women are given less opportunities and privileges than men.
As a female basketball player, it has come to my attention that women's sports are not treated the same as men's sports nor taken as serious. When I played on the girl's varsity basketball team in high school, our games were always before the guys. When I look back at the way our games were scheduled, is it a coincidence that we played during the same time that people who would have come to support us were still working? On the other hand, the boys varsity team played at 7 o'clock when everyone was available to go and cheer them on. It is easy to assume that women's sports are not thought to be as important to society as men's sports are. According to Alia Wong, writer for "The Atlantic", "Nearly 4,500 public high schools across the United States have large gender inequality in sports and could be in violation of Title IX." Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. In addition to the unfair scheduling of my high school team's games, the school wasn't as supportive when it came to the girl's basketball team needing new equipment and uniforms. Each year, the boy's team had new team shoes. This is because they occupied more sponsors that we did due to the popularity of male sports.
Not only is there inequality in high school sports, but also in professional basketball as well. In this case, there are many more inequalities such as pay, teams, endorsements, and the age of the corporations. As stated on the article, "Inequalities in Basketball", the highest pay in the NBA is twenty million dollars, while the highest pay in the WNBA is only one hundred thousand dollars. The only exception to this is the WNBA player, Candace Parker, who gets paid forty-four hundred thousand dollars making her the highest paid female basketball player. However, this does not even come close to what a rookie in the NBA would make, which is around one million dollars.