Gender Inequality in the NCAA Goes Far Beyond Just Tournament Weight Room Problems

The 2021 men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments will each take place in their entirety in two separate geographic locations, making them the most unique tournaments the NCAA has ever hosted. The men’s hub is Indianapolis and the women will play in San Antonio.

Tournaments each have their own organizing committees, structures and configurations. There was a glaring disparity between the tournaments when a Stanford coach shared photos of the respective weight rooms at the tournaments. The men’s training facilities were large, with plenty of weights, racks, benches and overall equipment and space. The women’s area included a rack of 12 dumbbells, yoga mats and an exercise bike.

Social networks have lost their minds over differences. The NCAA added more weight to the women’s zone — still far less than the men’s — and added flashy lighting, which social media ridiculed.

Could it be that the men’s committee had a month more than the women’s committee to prepare for their tournament? Barely.

The NCAA announced on Jan. 4 of this year that the men’s tournament would be held in Indiana, with the majority of its games in Indianapolis. The NCAA announced Feb. 5 that the women’s tournament would be held in the greater San Antonio area. This represents 32 days of separation to make these announcements.

It could be argued that the women’s committee had 32 fewer days to prepare and the training area for the women might have been an oversight, as the main concern at both tournaments has been safety protocols surrounding the COVID pandemic -19.

But 32 days wasn’t the problem, nor was a single weight room comparison. It’s a long history of women’s collegiate sports receiving less attention and respect on a national level. The disparity comes from fan attendance, food, goody bags and facilities, and prominent figures in women’s basketball speaking out. Not just about inequality, but the fact that the NCAA allows this to happen.

The NCAA released a statement saying the disparity in the weight room was due to space issues at the San Antonio Convention Center, but it was ultimately able to bring in more equipment for the women’s teams after public outcry.

A legendary women’s basketball coach said that for so long, women’s athletics was content to have a seat at the table, even though it was not discussed and only received “crumbs”. “. Former Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said gender inequality “is hardly breaking news.”

“While I appreciate the outrage, the fact that there is a huge disparity between men’s and women’s sports is not breaking news,” McGraw tweeted Saturday. “We’ve been fighting this battle for years and frankly, I’m tired of it.”

McGraw, who led the Irish to nine Final Fours and two national championships (2001, 2018), said she was “tired” of turning on the TV to watch “an NCAA basketball tournament” and only to discover that it was the men’s tournament. She referred to the NCAA Twitter accounts called March Madness and Final Four, but they only cover the men’s game.

The former coach said she was “tired of having to preface everything we do with the word ‘Women,’ which would be nice if men had to do the same, but they don’t, and when they don’t don’t do it, it makes us look like the JV tournament at their event.

McGraw went on to say that the inequities between the men’s and women’s teams are typical with things like “facilities, food, fan attendance and goody bags,” and even that doesn’t really bother her.

“What bothers me is that no one on the NCAA leadership team noticed,” McGraw said. “As companies across the country scramble to hire women and build diversity and inclusion teams, the NCAA had an opportunity to highlight how sports can be a place where we don’t just to talk about equality, but where we emphasize it.

“To say they dropped the ball would be the understatement of the century. This is the problem we’ve been fighting for decades.”

Dawn Staley is a three-time Olympic gold medalist and current coach of South Carolina, which she transformed into a national champion and perennial SEC and national championship contender. She carried the American flag during the opening ceremony of the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, perhaps one of the highest honors of the Games.

Staley has reached a boiling point over the situation in the NCAA and she wrote a statement Friday that begins, “I cannot stay silent.”

“In a season focused on justice and equality, it’s disheartening that we’re addressing the glaring gaps and inequities in the women’s and men’s NCAA tournament experiences for student-athletes, but here we are,” tweeted Staley.

While she appreciated the NCAA’s efforts to accomplish a mammoth task of bringing 64 teams to San Antonio for the women’s event, she also pointed out the problems with Twitter and the March Madness and Final Four logos that make referring only to male events.

“How do we explain this to our players?” asked Staley. “How can an organization that claims to care about the student-athlete experiences of ALL member institutions have a copyrighted term that only “represents” one gender?

For NCAA football, there is the “Men’s University Cup” and the “Women’s University Cup”. In some sports such as swimming, cross country, and track and field, there are separate “men’s” and “women’s” designations for their championships.

But in the NCAA, there is also the “College World Series” for baseball (men) and then the “Women’s College World Series” for softball.