That oh-so-female-friendly of websites that I love, a certain "reddit," has SO BRAVEly declared in not one, but two recent threads that women are worse at sports than men. This is because they regularly and invariably lose at the uppermost tiers of professional play when competing against a biologically superior counterpart, i. e. men.
Yes, reddit, you're correct. Empirical evidence demonstrates that professional male athletes at the top of their game will win head-to-head athletic competitions with female professional athletes of a similar relative ranking (or even drastically lower), and often handily. Sorry, reddit, if I'm killing your buzz with my clinical tone here. I'll leave the chest-thumping and all-caps proclamations of the factual accuracy of this statement to you, since you're the expert. However, let's have some fun by distinguishing this assertion as FACT (all-caps intended, inspired by that wonderful feeling of being RIGHT) for future reference.
Now, let's examine some of the implications going on in the sidelines. Cue a bit of sarcasm on my part:
A non-trivial proportion of the posts in the aforementioned threads ascribe the disparity of interest in female and male sports to this FACT. In short, I and America prefer the Lakers to the Sparks entirely because of the FACT that Lakers would whip up on the Sparks with a score of a bajillion to minus 5. It's a FACT that high school hockey teams beat the American women's Olympic squad, and therefore people aren't terribly interested in women's hockey. Indeed, one might conclude that redditors are entertained by sports for no other reason than the opportunity witness feats of strength that only men could provide to prime-time television.
Now, I'll admit that some of the feats of strength you see in mainstream (i. e. Men's) sports are impressive. I squeal a little every time I watch Michael Jordan take off from the foul line in the slam-dunk contests of the late 80s on youtube, a feat which I suspect most women (not to mention most men) would struggle with. However, I'm very skeptical that the FACT that men excel in most modern statistical measures of athleticism is the primary reason that people aren't interested in watching the WNBA.
In the spirit of Bill Nye's recent AMA, consider the following. First, Americans were very interested in sporting events in an era where radio broadcasts and reading the newspaper were the best way to experience them. Second, professional sports teams make pretty impressive sums of money from hawking merchandise featuring nothing but a logo. Both of these suggest pretty strongly that what sports fans really enjoy about watching sports is A) witnessing and experiencing the conflict and ensuing suspense of a competition between two groups of people and B) finding identity within a franchise in that conflict. I myself regularly refer to my alma mater's football team in the collective first person. My semi-regular utterances of "we won yesterday," in the fall pretty strongly suggest I'm doing my best to live vicariously through the triumphs of Steve Spurrier and Marcus Lattimore. I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only person who does this, although "we" might be the New York Yankees more often than the South Carolina Gamecocks.
Now, it seems reasonable to say that the vast majority of vicarious living through sports stars is through the trials and tribulations of men, since they're the most visible and most well-compensated for their efforts in that field. If you believe that this idea of rooting for individuals you want to identify with drives sports fandom in a major way, it might not surprise you to hear that sports viewership is predominantly male. There's one event in which that trend changes, though. It just so happens to be a FACT that women over 18 beat men in the same age demographic by around 8 percentage points in viewership in the olympics, and this is in spite of some blatant
sexism in the airtime of men's sports. Huzzah for statistical superiority!
Imagine that! Women, interested in what is perhaps the most heavily publicized incident of women participating in sports! Isn't that something? Perhaps the female monolith is particularly interested in the ballroom dancing, or maybe they're just drooling over Michael Phelps' exposed abs.
Snark aside, despite our relative disinterest in women's sports (and integrating women into our cultural narrative generally), we've managed to pass a piece of legislation dedicated to promoting women's participation in athletic activities supported by taxpayers. I'm a little biased, as you may suspect, but I think Title IX is great. I think it's done wonders for promoting female interest and participation in sports, and I think that's good for everybody. Furthermore, I find it terribly refreshing to see a piece of American legislation crafted specifically with the aim of promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, and I hope to see more of that in my lifetime.
As fantastic as Title IX is in these respects, though, it can only go so far in promoting a more female-positive attitude in sports, particularly with respect to viewership. Our support and our fandom for female athletes must begin to match that of male athletes if we really want to promote equality for women in sports. Therefore, I offer the following for your consideration: A Personal Title IX. Particularly in this Olympic season, when there is ample opportunity to support our female athletes, strive to match every event you watch of men competing on the world stage with one of women doing the same.
For the record, male olympians are stellar individuals whose feats of strength and athleticism are worthy of our attention and praise too, but really I don't think they're hurting for it. I do think we like women's sports less for reasons that might include not liking women all that much and difficulty identifying with them as athletes. If we make an effort to enjoy as much women's sports as we do men's at this year's Olympics together, maybe we can begin to change that.
