The Double Standard

While I definitely do not consider myself an athlete in any way I was really interested in the sports field in colleges in Ms Barcombs talk. Her talk brought to light a lot of things I hadn't even considered to be an issue of women rights in our country. I just assumed most head coaches of women's sports were women themselves. It was very surprising to hear that's not the case at all. When title nine was passed 90 percent of women's sports were coached by women but today that number has shrunk to around 40 percent. The fact that this number has shrunk since the time title nine came out is shocking and shows a lot about the kind of movement our country has made in the last years. Instead of more women being head coaches because of title nine there are even less women head coaches then before. While title nine was supposed to propel a movement of equality in athletics across the country, we in the end moved backwards from this goal. I think small improvements are being made but clearly more needs to be done to balance out the athletic community. 

The video of the different head coaches in the video we watched before the presentation, I was moved by how passionate these women were and how much they wanted to be role models for their players and show them that women can be in places of power and authority. I thought this message was really moving because it makes a point that this is to show young girls growing up in a very male dominated society that women can be in these positions of power and are equal to men in the sports world as well as the rest of the world. Many of the coaches in this video agreed that while small improvements like title nine have helped in small ways much more needs to be done to shift the percentage of women coaches back towards 90 percent and higher. 

I also thought the double standard, talked about in Ms Barcombs talks as well as the videos, was a really interesting look into what it is actually like to be a woman coach in such a male dominated field. When women coaches get frustrated by a call or angry with something during a game, they are accused of being dramatic and emotional. Whereas when male coaches throw things and scream during a game they are considered passionate and driven. This double standard creates an unfair system abasing women going back to say women are not fit to do a job that commands authority and respect like coaching or high power jobs. Women are viewed as weak and unable to perform well under tough conditions but when they don't show weakness and instead show passion they are told that they're too emotional and that they let their emotions control them in an inappropriate way. While I don't pretend to know much about sports this topic is again another example of the way women are viewed in our society and how these views ultimately set up an unfair world that doesn't raise women to be powerful and be in positions of authority.