‘We get thrown some crumbs’
Teams in the NCAA Women’s Tournament aren’t accepting inequality anymore
After a few days of observing an embarrassment of gender inequities between the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments, fully displayed on social media by many female college players, Northwestern’s Veronica Burton thought back to her early playing days.
Were practice times really fair between the boys and girls teams in high school? Didn’t the boys get more shoes and more attention?
If that was true, what other slights have been ignored? What subtle messages downplaying inequality have been absorbed? How much have she and others silently put up with?
“Sometimes we overlook it at this point because we’re so used to it,” Burton said, preparing for No. 7 seed Northwestern’s first-round game Monday against No. 10 seed Central Florida. “Nobody is really surprised anymore. I feel like I’ve seen it ever since I was young in sports.”
Sexism isn’t new, in sports or anywhere.
But the 2021 NCAA Tournament has become a point of thunderous reckoning for the patriarchal college basketball organization.
Stanford sports performance coach Ali Kershner tweeted a photo Thursday comparing the weight rooms for the women’s and men’s tournaments.
The women had a small rack of dumbbells and yoga mats. The men had a massive room of power racks and weight sets.
After NCAA Vice President Lynn Holzman said the differences were because of “space limitations” at the women’s facility, Oregon forward Sedona Price posted a rebuttal on TikTok. She showed the laughably available extra unused space in the room.
“It’s 2021 and we’re still fighting for bits and pieces of equality,” the video was captioned.
Other videos pointed out the differences in prepared meals and gift bags for the men’s and women’s teams.
Since sports started, women have been mainly treated like junior varsity scrubs compared with male athletes worshipped universally as heroic Olympians. Only free male Greek citizens were permitted to participate in the first modern Olympic Games in 1899, as well as the ancient Olympic Games. Later, women were considered too weak to play fullcourt basketball. Early college sporting organizations discouraged female athletes from so-called unladylike competition outside of playing for exercise.
Women kept pushing the bar, proving themselves on the playing field but forever grasping at true equality.
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off,” women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem once said.
That’s the point women in sports have reached. And something might be changing.
“It’s pretty disappointing to be part of, especially in a year full of the fight for justice and the fight for change,” Burton said. “Just having that conversation overall right now is frustrating, honestly.
“The biggest thing for me is the idea, the misperception that we’re not grateful to be here, that we don’t understand what we’re being given. We knew what it was like to not be here last year. It got taken away from us; we were all pissed. We want to be here. We want to play basketball.”
Of course they do. Imagine how maddening the gaslighting and too-late apologies feel.
“It’s obvious,” Burton said. “Seeing the weight room, or lack thereof, for us. Seeing the food, seeing the bags. It’s not very hard to see it. It’s evident and it’s frustrating. We’re wondering as women here, ‘Is there something we’re not doing to deserve it?’ We’re working just as hard as the men. We’re in the gym just as much as them, I promise you that.”
That question — do we deserve this? — is what sexism is designed to do: force women into accepting inequality as normal.
Players in 2021 are comfortable pointing this out and demanding substantive change.
Their boldness and courage are not by happenstance.
They grew up witnessing Venus Williams push for equality in 2007 between men’s and women’s tennis players, resulting in equal pay at all four Grand Slams. More recently, they saw the women’s national soccer team file a class action lawsuit, claiming unequal pay and genderbased discrimination by the United States Soccer Federation.
They’ve been inspired by WNBA players who are continuously at the forefront of calls for racial justice, boycotting games this summer and successfully campaigning against conservative and thenteam owner Kelly Loeffler of the Atlanta Dream and her run for a Georgia senate seat.
“We’ve been able to use our platforms and realize we do have a big voice and probably bigger than we thought,” Northwestern senior guard Lindsey Pulliam said. “Just the motivations to be treated the same has kind of given people the courage to step up and call out what’s not right.”
The social media images so clearly illustrating disparities felt like a familiar insult. Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma’s description of women’s players receiving a less reliable COVID-19 test than the men felt like another chapter in Sexism 101.
No matter the excuses or rationale for the decisions, it looked like the women’s tournament was an afterthought — because it is.
“The fact that there’s a huge disparity between men’s and women’s sports is hardly breaking news,” former Notre Dame coach
Muffet McGraw said in a statement on Twitter. “We have been fighting this battle for years and frankly, I’m tired of it.”
“Women’s basketball is a popular sport whose stock and presence continues to rise on the global level,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley wrote in a social media post. “It is sad that the NCAA is not willing to recognize and invest in our own growth despite its claims of togetherness and equality.”
Northwestern coach Joe McKeown is leading his 19th women’s team in the NCAA Tournament. He remembers long bus rides and cheap hotels in the early days.
There has been some progress but not at an acceptable rate. And it’s nothing compared with the explosion of money, exposure and planning poured into the men’s tournament.
“It’s not about the swag bag, the hats, things like that,” McKeown said. “It’s about taking a tournament to another level as far as marketing it, as far as media opportunities. The men’s tournament is so big. March Madness has become a brand in itself. I just feel like we get thrown some crumbs.
“We have a great sport right now. Women’s basketball is really good right now; there’s so many great teams, great coaches. We just need the opportunity to showcase it.”
Burton wanted her focus to be on the Wildcats’ upcoming game against the Knights and the enjoyment of playing in March Madness. But demanding equality is draining — but necessary — work.
She feels hopeful that more people are listening now.
“It’s frustrating to always have to fight for it,” Burton said, “but at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to cause change.”