Popular Culture: The Boston Marathon

In the article titled Face-off on the playing field By, Judith B. Stamper explains girls have their own story of support or discrimination, success also the debate of girls be allowed to compete on boys’ sports team. First, the writer Title IX explains female athletes are been treated second-class for long enough and should pass of inequalities and biases of girls. The writer also clarifies that girls doing sports make them healthier, physically, and emotionally. Other girls that don’t play sports are less likely to use of drugs. In addition, she notes a former Stanford University basketball player Mariah says, strength and independence of things girls learn from sports, the opportunities that are changing women.

Even if a woman was good enough to play sports like a man, the female athlete “was the exception and not the rule” as track and field athlete Sophie Elliot-Lynn stated in 1925. Nationally, women’s athletics were not held in high regard by many Americans, thus making Mabel Lee’s decisions seem radical during her time with the physical education department at the

It was 1967 and 2 miles into the 26.2 mile competition, Boston Marathon officials attempted to pull Kathrine Switzer from the course right in front of the press. The young athlete had trained for months and ran with her track coach and boyfriend who tried to block the officials, as Kathrine continued her race. The profuse sexism and discrimination that this photo shows and represents, illustrates how far women’s rights and combatting stigma has come since the late sixties. Astoundingly, at that time woman were still generally regarded as too “fragile” to compete in long distance running at all, and until 1984 the women’s marathon was not an Olympic event.

“Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity” (Overview of Title IX). In other words, this law says that you cannot prevent a woman from participating in a sport based on her sex. The three sports that women participated in before this law was passed were golf, bowling and gymnastics: none of them very popular (Frantz). Women were looked down upon for trying to do something that was out-of-the-ordinary for their gender. It seems like women have always been seen as the caregivers in the family.

There will always be those who question how much of Title IX is actually responsible for these changes. The simple fact is that society is growing toward the idea of accepting females as athletes. Two professors at Emerita, Brooklyn College confirm the belief that “Increased participation and skill development by young women along with society 's greater acceptance of female athleticism has made sport a vital part of the lives of many young women and their families” (Acosta and Carpenter). Title IX has been a major catalyst when it comes to societal acceptance. The law influences people to accept the idea that women should have the same opportunity involving athletics as men have; it creates a guideline for our society that will result in the adaptation of a new societal norm.

1. Explain why Lansbury chose to focus her research on Alice Coachman (track & field) and Gibson (tennis). (hint: ways they are the same, and ways they are different)? I felt that Lansbury chose to focus her research on Alice Coachman because she wanted to highlight the ways in which the treatment of female African American athletes has been on going since the early 19th and 20th century. Lansbury explained the convergence of class, gender and race that surrounded African American women in the sports in the 20th century remains the same and the images on athletes on todays media as well.

The Boston Massacre was a street fight that occurred on March 5, 1770, between a “patriot”. They were throwing sticks, snowballs, and trash at a group of British troops. The loyalists got very annoyed with the patriots so they shot into the mob killing five. The riot began when around 50 colonists attacked a British sentinel. A British officer called in for additional troops

Women have faced discrimination and stereotypes for thousands of years. What many people did not know though, is that it would take only one of them to transform not only the sports industry, but the outlook on women in everyday activities. Babe Zaharias Didrikson would not only become the greatest, and first, outstanding female athlete of the 1930’s, but would also be the leader of a movement in a time where being sexist was accepted, and where men dominated every aspect of life except for cleaning the house. Babe, being a physical power-house, dominated and participated in almost every sport imaginable to the mind. Through determination, strong will, and the persistence to overcome obstacles, Babe Zaharias Didrikson changed the world of sports forever by overcoming all common perceptions of women in her time and giving hope to all competitive souls of the sports world.

It’s pretty clear that in today’s society males are the dominate figure in sports. They receive a tremendous more amount of media attention than female athletes. Young boys grow up watching television bombarded with heroic images of male athletes. They have something to look up to, while young girls don’t receive the same images.

In 2012, forty-five percent of the athletes that participated in the London Olympics were women, trumping the percentage of women participating in previous Olympics. Women are making their presence felt in athletics all over the world, yet we can not the media to help the influence that these women are having todays youth. Its hard to think that the more influential and better these women get at athletics, and various sports, the less media coverage they continue to get. In a 1966 Sports Illustrated article, John Underwood wrote, “It takes getting used to, seeing young women run long distances, gasping and gagging and staggering around and going down on all fours at the finish line, pink foreheads in the mud.” We see it everyday, women are continually out performing men in various sports, but is Underwood right in saying that people aren’t ready to see women in a different light?

If society stops to understand the struggles these women have been facing for decades will have a clearer picture of what steps to take in order to make a change in the sports industry. Men need to put their masculinity aside and advocate giving women a voice. The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues women in the sport world have faced through history, wage gaps, current issues today, and to discuss findings and recommendations for future research. Title IX is a law that came into effect in 1972, this comprehensive federal law prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.

Is sport related inequality because female athletes don’t have what it takes to make it in sports? “‘At the end of the day, we expect to be treated equally as our male counterparts;...”’ (www.takepart.com, The Players Tribune). Women’s athletics haven’t been treated well since women had a say in what they wanted to do. All men’s and women’s sports should be equally important, equally safe in protective gear, and most importantly should be equally fun and satisfying.

Katie Ledecky, for instance, won gold and broke her own world record in the 800-meter freestyle but on that same day, Michael Phelps tied for a silver medal in the 100-meter butterfly. Naturally, in the newspaper the following day the tile read ‘’Phelps ties for silver in 100m fly’’ and in a smaller print underneath it read ‘’ Ledecky sets world record in 800m freestyle. Even though Katie’s was the bigger achievement and she actually won her race her success was overlooked by Michael Phelps’s who didn’t even win his race. However, this is not the only example of a females sporting achievement being over-shadowed. After Andy Murray, a British Tennis champion won gold in the men’s tennis singles in Rio, John Inverdale, a BBC commentator congratulated him on being his success of becoming ‘’the first person ever to win two Olympic gold tennis medals”.

Women attempt to foray into male dominated sports but there is resistance. The resistance is not just from men, but from society as a whole. The American culture wants women to fit into certain roles. Women are not typically associated with sports as men are. Men are encouraged to stick with a sport and be talented at it.

No other transgendered athlete placed below fourth. The rankings of this race proves the unfairness of transgendered athletes competing against biological gendered athletes. Semenya and the other winners are physically showing the biological difference, along with the moral and ethnic disadvantage against the other athletes that truly deserved to win. There is a plethora of other examples that reveal unfairness throughout the sporting