In my blog post, I am going to be talking about the difficulties women athletes have to face compared to men athletes. Fun fact, I am also starting a podcast called “Walk it Off” which is actually all about women in sports. Most of the content in this blog is going to be mentioned in my podcast.

To start off, women athletes face discrimination, sexism, harassment and stereotypes plus many more. This causes them to have many difficulties in succeeding in their sport. Women in professional sports today face challenges such as less funding than the men. Although women still have to fight for their rights, we have come a really long way in women’s sports. We used to only have mens sports. Throughout all of these obstacles, these women in sports continue to break barriers in female athletics. 

“In some sports, such as basketball and soccer, women’s teams receive far less media coverage than men’s teams. This can lead to a lack of visibility for female athletes, which can make it difficult to attract sponsorships and grow their fan base.” states the article linkedin.https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/evolution-women-sport-challenges-female-athletes-face-james-staunton#:~:text=Inequalities%20in%20funding%20and%20pay,with%20their%20strength%20and%20determination.

I can very much relate to this quote from the linked in article. Compared to the men’s soccer team here at the University of Evansville, we have far less people show up for our games. Why is that? Well, people still to this day seem to only really care or show interest for mens sports, not womens. As a college athlete, it is very important to have coverage for you to get sponsorships and NIL deals. Now as college athletes, we can be paid for having deals. Obviously that is a huge plus, but the more well-known you are, the better offers and deals you will get. This means the better/ more coverage you have, the better, more worthwhile sponsorships you will get. 

“Female athletes are objectified on the field, much as they are on the streets. From coaches, to commentators, to the audience, women are looked at as commodities showcasing themselves for men’s pleasure, not as entities of potential and talent.” states the article Your Story. https://yourstory.com/2016/09/challenges-female-athletes-face

Have we ever heard such things said about a male athlete? Even in everyday life, we don’t see women catcalling men. That would be so unusual. Another example of this can be how guys always make inappropriate jokes about volleyball players in their spandex. According to the article , the great divide, it was reported that there are 31% of  men partaking in sports compared to 20% women. In the next paragraph, I talk about more important statistics. 

 “In Britain, half of men tune in to watch professional men’s sports (56%), while the numbers plummet by more than half when it comes to women’s sports (23%). The same pattern is observed among women, where just over a tenth watch women’s sports (15%), while more than a third watch professional men’s sport (31%). The situation is comparable in the United States.”https://business.yougov.com/content/7863-the-great-divide-exploring-gender-gap-in-sports-viewership

Another personal example is that boys here get a lot more funding/donations here then we women’s soccer do, so they, overall, have nicer things than us. 

Although some improvements have been made, women’s salaries are still significantly lower than those of their male counterparts.”We have huge pay inequalities. If I just tell you, for example, that the average salary of a female WNBA player was 110 times less than that of a male NBA colleague, that gives you an idea of the inequalities involved,” states euro news. https://www.euronews.com/2023/07/27/gender-inequality-in-sport-the-challenges-facing-female-athletes

Like I said above, there are many advancements being made, but yet we still have yet to give equal pay to the females in sports. 

As a female athlete, it is very sad to see and read about all of these things female athletes have to face. In this commercial I have linked right here https://time.com/6295047/viral-france-advertisement-soccer-gender-orange/, you can see many things wrong with this. In this commercial, female footballers are disguised as male footballers, but you can’t see that until after the fact. This commercial is to show and prove that female soccer players are just as good as men besides the females are just a different gender. There is no difference in their quality of the game or the level of their skill. They are just females, not male. So support female athletes like you do the male. We are just females. We are still just as good as the men, but just female instead of male.