BENCHED BY BIAS

Despite decades of progress, sexism remains one of the biggest obstacles in sports. On court, women are often subjected to being “worse” and constantly compared to men instead of being valued for their own achievements. From the stands, female fans are dismissed as “fake fans” or “bandwagoners” unless they are able to spotlessly recite the history of their favorite teams. Even from supporting roles like management, commentators, coaches, journalists, etc, important women still have to deal with often scrutiny and skepticism. This shows that, to men, their gender speaks more than their work. Women’s skill and talent are too often disregarded, not because of their ability, but because of their gender. This bias causes women to seem less capable than their male counterparts in all player, fan, and sport professions.

As players, women often face the harshest form of criticism and sexism. The moment a woman steps on the court, they are deemed as “less exciting” to watch or “less skilled.” Their achievements are usually downplayed or overshadowed by the unfair comparison to men players. Studies done by Deputy Chief Medical Officer at AXA Health, Dr Pallavi Bradshaw found that “A poll of 3,000 female sports players found other unwanted comments included being told women weren’t as good at sports as men (42 percent), or women in sport were inferior or ‘soft’ (32 per cent).” This study shows that it's not uncommon for women to receive back handed and sexist comments even when they reach the highest levels of their sport.

Additionally, even when working in leading roles, women who work in professions like management, coaching, journalism, engineering, etc are often disregarded of their hard work solely because of their gender. Even in big blockbuster films, women roles, that should be portrayed as strong and independent, are dulled down to romantic interests making them seem inferior to their male counterparts. According to many viewers and critics outlooks, movies like the F1 movie “had a chance to portray female employees as strong and capable, giving them the same amount of credit as their male counterparts, but instead they chose to reinforce harmful stereotypes and reduce a strong female character to a love interest.” This ultimately shows that women aren’t taken seriously in even high fields of work and disregards the actual skill a female employee may have.

A usual claim to disregard the sexism toward women in sports is that “women are just simply bad at their sport, which is why they receive intensive backlash,” according to comedian Bill Burr. This statement truly just undermines the number of women who play sports at the highest level and put in tons of hard work to achieve greatness. There are many women who play in top schools or teams and play at a higher standard than many playing the same sport. Regardless of the comparison to men, many women are extremely gifted and talented at their sport, and that shouldn't be ignored just because of their gender.

It can no longer be ignored that women face heavy critical and sexist comments day by day for solely working in a sport they love. The fact that women continue to be overlooked just further allows nasty and unnecessary comments to be spread due to their gender rather than their actual skill. The world we live in gives sporting women a huge step from the sexism that they used to receive but still leaves them many steps behind from being judged at the same level as men(by skill). Ultimately, it all comes down to one question: Does gender truly speak louder than actual skill?