GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN COLLEGE AND PROFESSIONAL SPORTS
This research paper discusses gender or sex discrimination
in college and professional sports. In the 1970s and 1980s, female athletes made substantial progress toward achieving equal rights in collegiate athletics through litigation and the threat of litigation. Women coaches made less progress. The entire movement suffered some loss of momentum after the late 1980s because of more restrictive court rulings, funding problems and other factors. Female athletes have hardly made a dent in professional sports, except in certain non-contact sports such as tennis, golf and track.
Until the broader womens movement began to assert itself in the 1960s, little progress was made toward securing equal rights for women in collegiate and amateur athletics in the United States because of the traditional attitudes of most Americans toward women in sports. Athletics were considered a male preserve, apart from the exploits of a handful of women with exceptional skills in noncontact supports, such as Babe Didrickson Zaharias who won several major golf titles in the 1930s and similar achievements by female tennis stars. The first women's marathon in Olympic track did not occur until 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympics. The only professional women's baseball team was the All-American Girls League which former Chicago Cub owner Phil Wrigley organized in 1943 and which folded after men came home from World War II. Females who pursued athletic careers
seriously were largely regarded as unladylike, lesbian or otherwise atypical deviations from the stereotyped gender roles assigned to them, such as cheerleaders, Baseball Annies or groupies, team moms and football widows.
These cultural attitudes are deeply ingrained in many American women as well as men. According to Olson, "as the 1990s began, society continued to demand that women athletes prove their femininity . . . the emphasis in ...