You don’t have to be a professional athlete to care about issues impacting women in sports. Hell, you don’t even have to be female. Any human with a fairly basic understanding of math can see why it’s a problem that our women’s soccer team was awarded $2 million in prize money after taking out the World Cup in 2015, while the men’s team (who failed to win anything) earned $9 million.
What you do need, though, is an Internet connection, in order to see the body-shaming strong athletes such has record-breaking gymnast Gabby Douglas have to deal with on social media. Once you’re done reading those comments, switch over to male gymnast Samuel Mikulak’s account to see the kind of positive attention his medal-winning muscles get.
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Finally, a television would also provide a little insight, because then you would notice that women’s sports—particularly at the Olympic games—get far less prime airtime than the guys’ events. One study out of the University of Delaware found that in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, men received almost 23 hours of prime-time coverage, versus a little less than 13 hours for women. Another study discovered a more even split at the 2008 games: 46.3 percent of airtime went to women, but even then, coverage of women’s events mainly included what researchers dubbed “socially acceptable” sports for women—i.e., events where the competitors wore tight or short clothing.
There’s really no better time to talk about these issues than right now, as the countdown to the Rio Olympic Games in August closes in. With that in mind, we spoke to seven female sporting champs to find out what they considered to be the biggest issues facing women in their industry. Keep clicking to read what they had to say.
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