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Katie Hicks

Mr. Wood

English IV, Period 1

3 March 2020

The ‘Greats’ Unknown

Think of the greatest player of all time. Now, think of five greats. How did they get to

where they are? Your Lebron’s, your Kobe’s, your Michael Jordan’s, Derek Jeter’s and Tiger

Wood’s. Go back to the very beginning, and you will see much of the same. Despite varied

circumstances as they grew up, there is a universal pathway followed by these athletes as they

worked their way into society’s hall of greats.

As a kid, I remember the anticipation of lunchtime recess. The bell would ring and as the

teacher lined everyone up, the excitement rose and the chatter echoed. Slides, monkey bars,

tether balls, four square, jump ropes, wall ball, the opportunities were endless. It was in this

whimsical world of childhood delight that the separation began. Our ‘Greats’ started out young.

Recess was their dominion as they beat all the other boys in spontaneous games of pickup and

kickball. They would come home and tell their parents how well they did or how many free

throws they made in a row. Maybe later that day or week they would go to their youth team

games and practices. Their parents pushed them, and they pushed themselves. Middle school

came and they ruled the blacktop during breaks. Crowds started to gather daily to watch. Now

high school rounds the corner. They train all day, everyday. They have visions of greatness:

playing on varsity, college scholarships, sold out stadiums, making a career out of their passions.

Even in high school, they are all over the local news. They are featured in newspapers, with
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interviews about their aspirations, their stats, and their dream schools. They are put on a pedestal

for their impressive achievements and are sold as the model of what hard work can do for

someone. But what would have happened if they were girls? Would they reach the apex of their

sports?

What if they have the same mindset, the same work ethic, the same aspirations for

greatness? Thanks to Title IX, they would legally have equal opportunities and funding, but little

after that. The crowds of students watching at their high school games come just to save seats in

the bleachers for their friends for the boys’ game after. Their coaches are almost always men.

Their coaches don’t push them as hard; they don’t think that they can handle it. They train hard

all day, everyday, but the courts and fields are reserved for the boys’ teams. They make varsity,

but there aren’t any local newspapers asking them about their inspirations or work ethics. When

they get two uniforms, the boys get additional hoodies and travel gear; they’re told it’s an issue

of fundraising. Over the loudspeaker at school, the class president announces that men’s golf has

a match today and men’s soccer is going to state, but they don’t mention that they won their

league game last night. They carpool to games because the district won’t pay for their buses.

They continue to out-work their competitors and get that college scholarship, but there are no

sold out crowds. They grind in the weightroom, and are chastised by their roommates for looking

too masculine. Although they are collegiate all-americans, yet their highlights only make it on

the air twice a season. Still, they push themselves, balancing school and practice and workouts.

Eventually, they get drafted to play professionally. There they receive even less recognition, their

salaries are laughable, and they won’t speak up because they fear they will be fired, and they

didn’t work this hard for this long just to lose it all. Later, they have to face the decision of
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starting a family, or continuing their passions, because they are told they can’t have both. They

choose to start a family, and their careers subsequently end, and their legacies are reduced to a

distant memory and a couple college highlights.

That same mindset, work ethic, and hunger for success doesn’t lead them to the same

outcome regardless of gender. So, in all honesty, no, they would not have achieved any measure

of the fame and fortune granted to them through their respective sports had they been women.

Not because they wouldn’t be as talented, but because the structure of our culture and society

does not include space for high-achieving women. As a female athlete, most of the instances

used above in the “hypothetical instance for greats” are based off of my personal experiences as

a student-athlete at Northgate, and it was only when I started writing them down that I began to

realize the inherent inequality in the way girls are both coached and regarded in the world of

athletics. Therefore, for my senior project paper, I have chosen to explore how cultural biases

and institutional sexism impact women in sports today.This has always been a topic of interest

for me because I have seen first-hand the discrepancies and biases that dominate the world of

sports and persist despite legislation such as Title IX.

According to the United States Department of Justice, “Title IX is a comprehensive

federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education

program or activity. The principal objective of Title IX is to avoid the use of federal money to

support sex discrimination in education programs and to provide individual citizens effective

protection against those practices” (Overview Of Title IX Of The Education Amendments Of

1972). Essentially, in relation to athletics, it provides equitable opportunities for participation,

scholarships, and treatment. However, Title IX does not protect women from all instances of
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bias. For example, before Title IX passed, more than 90 percent of coaches of women’s teams

were women, compared to only around 43 percent today (Gender Bias Abounds Among

Women's College Coaches). Title IX did exactly what it was supposed to do. It got more girls

playing. However, Title IX asked for participation; It didn’t ask for coaching. As a whole, we are

moving backwards in terms of gender equity in coaching.

Representation in coaching is essential, as we work towards the embodiment of the

“strong, independent woman” that is so often referred to in other avenues of the professional

sector. Today, there is no longer a stigma among young people about female doctors, attorneys,

and CEOs, yet there is among coaches. Gender bias towards female coaches may be derived

from many different levels within the coaching environment, ranging from hiring practices of

athletic directors to athletes' perceptions themselves. While researching this, I was plagued with

a resounding “why?” What really made such a difference, that the percentage of women coaches

would drop 47%? I eventually came to the conclusion that research just wasn’t enough and I

needed to talk to someone who has both seen and participated in the progression of women’s

sports in their livelihood. This is how I came into contact with University of Michigan’s Head

Softball Coach, Carol Hutchins, aka “Hutch”. The winningest coach in NCAA softball history,

she has dedicated 36 years to coaching at Michigan, also becoming the winningest coach in

Michigan Athletics history, having never suffered a losing season in her coaching career. On the

hiring practices of athletic directors, she reasoned, “People hire people who they’re comfortable

with. Male boards in business hire male CEOs. And in sports, male athletic directors hire male

coaches. And 89% of Division I athletic directors are men, so the math is simple….Women are

all great enough to play the game, so women are great enough to coach the game”. Furthermore,
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on the issue of the lack of female head coaches, she explained, “As the opportunities (funding,

scholarships, facilities) improved, we saw a lot more of the other gender going into our coaching

pools, diminishing that percentage until only one in four division one head coaches were

women.” At its roots, a large portion of the decline is due to gender bias, which is defined as

“stereotyped thinking about the nature and roles of women and men”. The essential idea is that

women are inherently nurturing and incapable of pushing their athletes to the next level, and

beforehand women held more positions because they were the only ones who wanted the

job—until funding and salaries improved. In their Journal of Sport Behavior, researchers Daniel

Frankl and Donald G. Babbitt compared results from a Parkhouse and Williams study of the

perceptions of hypothetical female and male head basketball coaches (1986) with their study on

track and swim head coaches. While track and swim athletes were generally less contradictory

towards potential female coaches, basketball players displayed far more negative feelings and

associations with female head coaches. They concluded that this was because field event marks

or performance times are a relatively objective measurement of achievement, while overall

basketball performance is a more complex combination of defensive, offensive, and leadership

skills. Thus, the basketball coach may be expected to exhibit a more autocratic leadership style,

which is thought to be a masculine quality (Frankl & Babbitt). Essentially, it comes back down

to the old-age belief that women are not fit to lead, and it is this cultural standard that has been

subconsciously ingrained generation after generation that has further contributed to the lack of

respect and consideration of empowered women. All in all, the lack of female coaching can be

attributed towards both athletic director biases and the assumption that women do not belong in
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athletic leadership positions, which in itself sounds so antiquated despite it being a contemporary

issue. Athletics as a whole benefits from diversity, so coaching should too.

Another factor largely impacting women’s sports is the media. Women’s sports

constantly grapple sexism, underrepresentation, and the undermining of achievements as

perpetrated in the media. The University of Minnesota reported that, “Forty percent of all sports

participants are female, yet women’s sports receive only 4% of all sport media coverage, and

female athletes are much more likely than male athletes to be portrayed in sexually provocative

poses” (Media Coverage & Female Athletes). To put this in perspective, in one-hour of ESPN,

roughly 2.4 minutes would be dedicated to women’s sports while the remaining 57.6 minutes

would be used to cover men. This is important because it depicts exactly how damaging media is

towards the development and success of women’s sports. For my second interview, I chose to

reach out to my future head coach, Laura Berg. Head coach at Oregon State University and

softball legend, she is a former collegiate four-time All-American, a Women's College World

Series National Champion, and one of only four women to have won four Olympic medals in

softball, having won a medal at every Olympics the sport was contested. On the issue of the

importance of equal airtime, she explained, “You need to see her to be her. Only 4% of sports

media coverage in the U.S. is dedicated to women’s sports. Girls need and want role models that

they can see around them, and in the media, so they can aspire to be them. A lack of visible role

models means fewer girls being inspired to start, and stay in, sports, and we want to empower

girls to make sure they can gain confidence, develop leadership skills, and reach their full

potential and be successful both on and off the field.” Not only is coverage important to show

girls proper role models, but it also serves to show the world that women are competing and
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accomplishing amazing things right under their noses. For example, in 2013, the University of

Minnesota’s Women’s Hockey team had to get to a 26-0 record with a 26 game winning-streak,

until the local news started covering their success (Media Coverage When It Comes to Women's

Sports). The lack of quality media coverage is imperative to the stagnancy of women’s sports

because without stories and representation, the assumption is that they aren’t doing anything

worth covering or watching or supporting, which is clearly not the case in the majority of

women’s sports.

Sexism additionally runs rampant in the media. The New York Times did a spread on

sexism in Olympics coverage and reported, “Language experts from Cambridge University

analyzed about 160 million words that shared some insight about the way male and female

Olympians were covered. The word “man” is generally used roughly three times more than the

word “woman,“despite the fact that women make up some 45 percent of athletes competing, and

words to describe men often included fastest and strongest, while for women, related words

referencing their ages or their marital status were most common” (Osipova). This kind of

language is detrimental to the progression of women’s sports because it suggests that women are

wives first and athletes second, which only further serve to contribute to gender biases and the

idea that women cannot make a profession out of sports. Sexist headlines and clips are nothing

new and continue to go viral, even in today's world of the #MeToo movement and other

women’s causes. For instance, everyone remembers that Serena Williams wore a catsuit to the

French Open, and that it later was banned, or that French tennis player Alize Cornet was given a

code violation by US Open officials after she temporarily took her shirt off after noticing that it

was on backwards. However, when was the last time a male athlete was penalized for removing
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his shirt? The mere focus on what she was wearing, or who she is married to, or whatever sexual

innuendo can be made distracts from the truth that they are competing, professional athletes who

are treated differently because they are women. There were never reports sexualizing Usain Bolt,

yet “Jiggling Michelle Jenneke hit the track after injury and left little to the imagination”.

Overall, the media is largely responsible for keeping female athletes from becoming one of the

‘Greats’ on the level of a Kobe or a Michael Jordan, because they either aren’t given the time of

day to audiences or readers, or if they are, they are objectified and sexualized until we forget

who they are and what they did.

Finally, one of the largest points of contention in the fight for equality is the pay gap.

Sports have long mirrored society and the pay gap has been as persistent in professional sports as

in the business realm. This is nowhere near a new issue, and it is highly contested by successful

female athletes such as: The U.S Women’s National Soccer Team, the U.S Women’s National

Ice Hockey Team, the WNBA, Big Wave Surfers, and Serena and Venus Williams. Basketball

legend and all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, Pat Summitt wrote in her

memoir, “At a starting salary of $8,900, I’d be head coach of the women’s basketball team, an

instructor required to teach three courses, and an administrator in the athletics department, while

Johnny Vaught was being paid $27,000 to be the head football coach at Ole Miss.” Pay

differences, then and now, show how deeply rooted sexism and biases are in our culture, as we

are shaped to believe that the quality and worth of a female coach or athlete is inherently lesser

and should be compensated as such. Female athletes today highly contest this phenomenon and

are actively working to push for change. In 2016, Andrea Moller, Bianca Valenti, Keala

Kennelly, Paige Alms, Karen Tynan and Sabrina Brennan – founded the Commission for Equity
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in Women’s Surfing (CEWS) to increase the number of events and awards for female surfers as

well as to fight for the offering of equal prize money. Additionally, Serena and Venus Williams

have also been notoriously outspoken on issues of equal pay and prize money. In fact, Venus

wrote letters to the US Open for three years until they finally awarded equal prize money in 2007

(The Fight for Equal Pay in Women's Sports). However, the U.S Women’s National Soccer

Team and the WNBA have taken the fight to new levels. Most recently, in advance of the 2019

FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, the United States women’s soccer team took a stand

against “institutionalized gender discrimination” within the U.S Soccer Federation, with

twenty-eight members of the current national team announcing in March that they are suing U.S.

Soccer, seeking equitable pay and treatment. It is no secret that the Women’s Team has far

exceeded the Men’s Team in both revenue and athletic success. They have placed in the top three

teams in every Women’s World Cup since 1991, when the women’s tournament began, and in

the six Olympic Games that have included women’s soccer, they've captured four golds and a

silver. The men have not achieved anything close to the spectrum of the women’s team and even

failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2018. Despite this, the women, who generated

approximately $20 million more revenue in 2016, were paid a quarter of what the men’s team

were (Abdeldaiem). U.S Soccer responded to the lawsuit denying alleged pay inequities by

saying that "indisputable science" explains why the men have a greater physical ability to

compete at their level than the women do at theirs, and that laws governing equal pay "explicitly

applies to jobs that require equal skills, and not to employees that possess equal skills," therefore

they are not guilty of discrimination(Bachman). The defense of U.S Soccer is plain sexism and

clearly illustrates the rampant gender discrimination that led to the filing of the lawsuit in the
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first place. If a team that has earned our country endless world championships, olympic medals,

and is globally regarded as one of the most successful teams is not paid equally if not better than

their male counterparts who have achieved little to nothing, then the issue lies far deeper than a

biased commissioner, and points towards the more hard-hitting truth: we value women’s success

less. And to anyone who thinks that untrue, imagine how quickly this would have been solved if

the men’s won consecutive world cups and olympics and were paid less than a quarter of the

women's team, who wasn’t even talented enough to go to the world cup in the first place.

Furthermore, a number of players are forced into early retirement after having children.

Threatened with salary cuts and inadequate maternity leave, most players have to resign from the

game indefinitely. This is yet another example of the institutional sexism that works so hard

against the progression of women and their pathway to becoming a “Great”. Did anyone ever

question Derek Jeter’s ability to play after his first daughter was born? In short, no, because as a

man, it is assumed that childcare is in the hands of his wife, and therefore his talent would not be

impacted by a child, as it would if he were for example, a starting center in the WNBA.

In conclusion, the issue does not lie in the lack of female talent or ambition. Problems

regarding female athletes success boils down to the fact that as a society, we flinch at the site of

change. We are incapable of changing our mindsets, to believe that a woman is fully able to

coach at the highest levels. Overall, it shouldn't matter if they are female or male; if they know

the game, they should be able to coach it. Additionally, leadership is not a masculine quality, and

neither is winning. And in such an elitist society, winning is something that you would think we

would celebrate at any opportunity, and yet we overlook so many women’s accomplishments to

focus on how they looked or what their husband had to say, and pay them less for working just as
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hard. All in all, what keeps women down in sports today is the notion that we are and will always

be more fragile, meant for families, and made for men. But we are not here to please; We want to

compete, and win, and be successful. We want to be asked about our attitudes and not our attire.

Some resent us for our confidence and our beliefs, but there also is an added resentment as we

infiltrate a place that is decidedly male. Cultural biases and institutional sexism still find a way to

keep women from reaching their full potential in sports, but as a society we have come so far,

and still have more to go.

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Works Cited

● Abdeldaiem, Alaa. “USWNT Players Sue U.S. Soccer for Gender Discrimination.”

Sports Illustrated, 8 Mar. 2019,

www.si.com/soccer/2019/03/08/uswnt-players-sue-us-soccer-gender-discrimination-laws

uit

● Bachman, Rachel. “U.S. Soccer Denies Discrimination in Response to Lawsuit.” The

Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 7 May 2019,

www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-soccer-denies-discrimination-in-response-to-lawsuit-11557246

695​.

● Berg, Laura. Head Softball Coach at Oregon State University. Personal Interview, March

20, 2020

● “The Fight for Equal Pay in Women's Sports.” Women's Sports Foundation, 10 Oct.

2019, www.womenssportsfoundation.org/education/fight-equal-pay-womens-sports/.

● Frankl, Daniel, and Donald G. Babbitt, III. "Gender bias: a study of high school track &

field athletes' perceptions of hypothetical male and female head coaches." Journal of

Sport Behavior, vol. 21, no. 4, 1998, p. 396. Gale In Context: High School,

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A53336111/SUIC?u=wal55317&sid=SUIC&xid=5750bd4

c. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020.

● "Gender Bias Abounds Among Women's College Coaches." USNews.com, 2 June 2016.

Gale In Context: High School,

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A489590948/SUIC?u=wal55317&sid=SUIC&xid=ccff96

29. Accessed 6 Mar. 2020.

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● Hutchins, Carol. Head Softball Coach at the University of Michigan. Personal Interview.

12 March 2020

● “'Jiggling' Michelle Jenneke Hits the Track after Being Injured and Leaves Little to the

Imagination.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 22 Jan. 2020,

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7918109/Jiggling-Michelle-Jenneke-hits-track-in

jured-leaves-little-imagination.html.

● “Media Coverage & Female Athletes.” Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in

Sports, The University of Minnesota,

www.cehd.umn.edu/tuckercenter/projects/mediacoverage.html​.

● “Media Coverage When It Comes to Women's Sports.” ​TPT Video,​ PBS, 8 Sept. 2017,

video.tpt.org/video/media-coverage-when-it-comes-to-womens-sports-25508/.

● Osipova, Natalia V., and Katie Rogers. “Sexism in Olympics Coverage.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 18 Aug. 2016,

www.nytimes.com/video/sports/100000004600240/sexism-in-olympics-coverage.html.

● “Overview Of Title IX Of The Education Amendments Of 1972, 20 U.S.C. A§ 1681 Et.

Seq.” ​The United States Department of Justice,​ 7 Aug. 2015,

www.justice.gov/crt/overview-title-ix-education-amendments-1972-20-usc-1681-et-seq​.

● Summitt, Pat, and Sally Jenkins. “Sum It Up by Pat Head Summitt”, Book.

PenguinRandomhouse, 4 Mar. 2014.