Self-professed feminist that I am, I must confess that I do not follow women’s sports.
I don’t know why. I support Title IX, which equalized sports opportunities in schools, the fruits of which have included higher medal counts for the United States at the Olympics, thanks to golden performances by our female athletes. I’m all for any civil rights initiative and am absolutely sick with worry about the Georgia Legislature’s most recent effort to restrict voting rights, especially for Black voters.
Still, I prefer to watch men. Part of it is, I’m afraid, purely sexual and perversely feminist. I like to look at attractive men, and many men in sports are attractive. Men have objectified women for millennia. I think turnabout is fair play. And for me it is a kind of escapism, too. As someone who is not a man and not married, I’m curious about how they think, move and emote. It’s like visiting a foreign country.
But I suppose in the main I’m fascinated by power and, until recently, men are the ones who have held it virtually alone.
Nevertheless, I felt ashamed when I saw the NCAA discrepancies between the Covid bubbles for the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments — which have since been rectified after a social media uproar. The men had an elaborate gym-like weight room; the women, one set of weights. The men had a buffet; the women, pre-packaged sandwiches. (This really got me. I can’t stand to see people not being well-fed.) Perhaps more important, the men had marketing — March Madness; the women, well, little in the way of March Madness.
What gives? Money. The old saw is that the men draw more and thus make more money for the sponsors and advertisers. That may be true, but it is no reflection on the quality of play. (My conservative uncle watches the University of Connecticut women’s team, because he says it’s the best.)
Rather, this is a matter of acculturation. We as a culture have grown up with the male as the default. Women will go to see a movie that appeals to men, but men won’t go to a “chick flick.” This contributes to the ghettoization of women, who while roughly half of the world’s population are treated like a minority of one. As long as women are treated like second-class citizens, their events will remain second class in people’s minds.
But it’s a vicious circle, isn’t it? If you don’t make women the marquee event, they’ll never have the opportunity to attract more viewers, they’ll earn less money and fewer backers will be willing to put them in prime time, so to speak.
So it’s a question of breaking the cycle. But who’s going to take the risk? Tennis’ Slams pride themselves on equal prize money. But the women still play their final the day before the men’s. The men are still the culminating event.
Maybe it’s time to alternate the finals. Maybe it’s time to make women the main event.