More is Possible: Celebrating NGWS & Looking Ahead
This year marks the 37th year of National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD). The day is intended to bring attention to women’s sports and recognize the achievements of women in sport.
According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the first year NGWSD was held in 1987 also “served as a remembrance of Olympic volleyball player, Flora “Flo” Hyman, for her athletic achievements and dedication to promoting equality for women’s sports.”
Hyman, who died of Marfan’s Syndrome in 1986, was a part of the 1980 and 1984 U.S. Olympic Volleyball teams. Although the U.S. boycotted the 1980 games in Moscow, Hyman led the team to a silver medal finish in 1984 in her hometown of Los Angeles.
She was also named to Sports Illustrated’s Top-100 Female Athletes of the 20th Century. Some names on that list are recognizable (e.g. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Billie Jean King, Mia Hamm, etc.), while others, like Hyman, are not as well-known to all. Women’s sports coverage has always paled in comparison to men’s sports coverage; however, without the passage of legislation like Title IX, we may not have a Top-100 Female Athletes list at all.
The passage of Title IX has increased opportunities for women in many instances, myself included. Thanks to Title IX, I was born into a world where girls and women competing in sports was pretty normal. My parents drove all over west-central Illinois taking me to various practices and games – tumbling, soccer, flag football, softball, basketball, volleyball, and track meets. If a sport was offered, I was there.
Title IX ensured I had the ability to play volleyball in college at the University of Illinois. It enabled me to pursue a career in athletics. It also afforded me the opportunity to share the stage last fall with fellow Illini alumni as a panel moderator for the Fighting Illini Women’s Summit, which celebrated 50 years of Title IX and Illini Athletics.
However, as I discussed in a previous blog post, Title IX isn’t all sunshine and daisies and equity. In some cases, it has actually had reverse effects on equity. The bill states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
One example of an unintended effect of Title IX is that before 1972 – and the passage of Title IX – women held 90% of collegiate coaching jobs for women’s teams. As of 2019, women only held 40.8% of those same roles.
To clarify, less than 50 years after an equity law for women was passed, representation of women in collegiate coaching roles dropped by 50%.
You might think this is due to the fact that there are more male student-athletes or male sports programs at most schools.
You’d be wrong.
The ratio of male student-athletes to female student-athletes is nearly one to one today, with women’s sports having shown significant growth in the 40 years since the NCAA began to sponsor women’s championships.
While the total number of NCAA sponsored men’s sports programs has essentially stayed the same since 1982 (2,778 programs in 1982 vs. 2,987 programs in 2022), only noting a 7.5 percent increase, the number of NCAA sponsored women’s sports programs has nearly doubled across 40 years jumping from 1,767 programs in 1982 to 3,695 or 109 percent.
With such a significant increase in female participation in sports over time, it is important to explore why leadership roles in athletics have not grown at the same rate for women. Women have often been forgotten from leadership roles since the NCAA merged with the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) in 1981, which I wrote about last summer.
This underrepresentation was highlighted well in a 2019 New York Times article, which exposed the notable gender gap in NCAA Division I college athletics: “Of the 65 colleges in the nation’s five wealthiest and most powerful sports conferences, only four have women leading the athletic department.”
Gender stigmatization has often been pointed to as a key factor for the lack of growth for women in athletics leadership roles. With stigmatization comes stereotyping, and previous studies suggest that there are qualities and behaviors believed to be more “desirable” for each gender (Peachey & Burton, 2011). This type of theory, which ascribes certain characteristics as masculine and others as feminine, serves as a great foundation to understand how stigmas associated with gender roles may impact the representation of women in leadership roles in athletics.
So what?
Today marks the 37th celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day. And while we’ve seen dramatic growth of girls and women in sports – particularly in participation – since the first NGWSD and since the passage of Title IX, there is still more work to be done.
More is possible.
Equal pay, equal playing environments, and team travel concerns have all been at the forefront of “what’s next” for women’s sports. While these things are all important in the process of closing the gender gap, they cannot be the destination – they’re only a part of the journey toward equity.
As Sheryl Sandberg said, "We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored."
In sports, this means we don’t just need girls and women participating – we need them leading, influencing, and impacting at the top, as well.
