It the time of year when college sports are settling championships and, as it's spring, that means championships for a lot of different sports, men and women alike.
I've had a chance to watch some sports I don't normally watch, which is to say women's sports. Women's sports just aren't as popular and therefore aren't on TV as often. A fact to support my claim: One softball team averaged about 750 fans a game throughout the season but averaged about 2,300 fans during this stretch in the post season. But everyone loves a champion, so I tend to watch women's sports more often as a champion is closer and closer to being crowned.
I was particularly interested in women's lacrosse this season because my favorite college team played in the national championship game. Like most women's versions of sports, women's lacrosse is different from the game played by men. Some of the rules are different, the markings on the field are different, nor do the women wear helmets or pads. Oh, also, they wear skirts.
Yes, the thing many women would wear to a job interview, female lacrosse players wear as part of their uniform. They do this in field hockey, as well. Certainly this dates back to a time when it wasn't ladylike to wear pants. Play a stinky, sweaty game? Sure. Wear pants? No, not on your life.
And it wasn't just the players. The officials wore skirts, too. This brought a question to mind: A. Are men not allowed to referee women's lacrosse or if they are, B. do they also have to wear a skirt?
My problem with the uniform situation is part of a larger problem I have with the approach taken to women's sports in general. We're past the era when it wasn't OK for women to wear shorts or pants. We're past the era when women couldn't do a good job as soldiers, police officers and firefighters. We're past women being barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen, being a homemaker or whatever else they did as a result of societal pressure.
Skirts, seriously? Still?
But skirts are only part of the problem that plagues women's sports along this mindset.
Softball is pretty much baseball. Except with a giant bat, oversized ball, small field and pitching underhanded.
The girls and women who play softball are, of course, good athletes. That isn't the point. The point is the game was created with the thought that women can't just play baseball – the field is too big, the mound is too far from the plate and whatever else.
Women's basketball uses a smaller basketball. Women's track uses smaller hurdles and a lighter shot put.
Some sports are the same, however. Swimming is the same, mixed martial arts is the same and soccer is the same, to name a few. And what happened as a result? Swimming introduced us to great stars like Janet Evans, Summer Sanders and others. Ronda Rousey became the biggest star in MMA and helped expand the sport's fanbase. Brandi Chastain, Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy really made soccer in the United States what it is today. The popularity of the sport exploded following the success of the women's national team in the early and mid 90s. Remember, they won their first World Cup in 1991 – two years prior to the founding of the MLS. The men's team has done comparatively little. The men have won titles in international tournaments with the fewest competing teams, but in World Cups and the Olympics, not so much.
Famously and recently, the women's team made a fuss about wanting to be paid the same as the men's players. That's a completely fair demand to make, particularly given the history of what the women have done for the sport. It's been a big political issue, as well. But how in the world is that supposed to happen when we haven't gotten beyond the mentality that believes women can't do it, whatever it is?
If they wear skirts, use different equipment and play under different rules, then they can do it. But Janet Evans, Ronda Rousey, Mia Hamm and many others have shown if you put women on the same field, with the same rules and the same equipment, they will eventually rise that whatever challenges come with that and excel in the same way our favorite male athletes do.
Pay equality – that's adorable. Just like skirts and ribbons. So cute.
