PROMPT
King asks a key question in her first article: why aren’t teachers, coaches, and educational leader encouraging girls to play sports in the same fashion they encourage boys? Articulate a claim which responds to this question, either agreeing or disagreeing with the premise, and explain why (within the claim). Support your response with an analysis that examines societal influences–apart from the ones listed in the article–as well as family and peer influences upon girls and/or women and sports. Also consider the influence the media may have.
Above all, avoid using the 5 paragraph essay formula, as this is not conducive to college-level academic writing.
FORMAT
The essay must adhere to MLA format: double spaced, with headers and page numbers in the upper right margin, and a name block on the first page in the upper left hand margin. Remember to edit carefully for clarity, grammar and spelling. If quotes, paraphrases or summaries are used from the articles, they must be cited in-text.
SOURCE ARTICLES
“Sportsmanship Has Nothing to Do With Being a Boy.” (Links to an external site.) and “New Era, Same Old Fight for Female Athletes.” (Links to an external site.)
“Sportsmanship Has Nothing to Do with Being a Boy”
There is a lot of debate going on about Title IX, the federal law that requires gender equity in sports. I just want to weigh in on one point: girls’ interest in sport.
If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want anyone telling her that boys are more interested in sports than girls or assuming that she is less interested. That would be no different than believing stereotypes such as boys are more interested in math or blacks are more interested in basketball than tennis. Sports participation is as important for our daughters as it is for our sons.
Boys have never had to prove that they were interested in sports to get the opportunity to play. Why should girls have to “prove” their interest? Society just encourages and expects boys to play. Interest is a function of the opportunity to play and encouragement to take advantage of that opportunity.
Boys are not born with a “sports interest” gene. They are pushed, cajoled, expected and sometimes even embarrassed into playing, and we provide them with every opportunity to do so. A coach who sees a big boy in school makes him come out for football. Tall boys are dragged onto the basketball team. Boys who run fast are encouraged to run track.
Sports are so important that we must encourage girls in the same way. Talk about administering interest surveys to prove that boys are more interested in sports than girls and setting quotas on the number of girls who can play based on surveys is wrong thinking and a misuse of an instrument that measures attitudes, not behavior.
I dare any school to invite Serena Williams, Cynthia Cooper or Julie Foudy to speak to the girls in that school and then administer an interest survey. Williams would tell them how much fun it is to play sports. Cooper would say that there is a sport out there in which every girl can succeed. Foudy would tell them playing is important for their confidence, health and success in life after sports. Most girls would want to play after that kind of encouragement.
So why are teachers and coaches not doing this? Why aren’t our educational leaders encouraging girls to play sports?
This is not and cannot be a “male versus female” issue. Boys and girls should play sports, and they should be treated equally.
Boys and girls should grow up respecting the rights and abilities of each other in sports and in life.
“New Era, Same Old Fight for Female Athletes”
By Billie Jean King
L.A. Times
May 18, 2003
I came of age in a different era.
Growing up in Southern California, I dreamed about being the No. 1 tennis player. I had my first free group lesson in a public park in Long Beach, and at the end of that lesson I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: I wanted to be the greatest female player there was.
But it was a hard road for a woman. Often, I felt discounted, invisible. At the Los Angeles Tennis Club, where I went for some of my tournaments as a kid, it was as if I wasn’t there. The boys got the attention and the girls were an afterthought. We were not taken seriously.
When they heard that I wanted to be the best, they looked at me like I must be crazy. There was no professional tennis for women in those days. It simply didn’t exist.
Today as I watch Annika Sorenstam preparing to be the first woman in 58 years on the PGA Tour, it’s a different world. People are more sophisticated than they were in the 1970s. Women athletes are taken seriously.
But women’s sports still have a long way to go. Men aren’t used to sharing the sandbox — or in this case, the sand traps — with women.
The fact is, the sports pages are still all about men. Sorenstam hasn’t received the attention she deserves. It seems like 7.8% of sports media is about women, 8% is about dogs and horses — and the rest is about men.
We don’t get the attention the men get and we don’t get the attention we deserve.
I’m almost 60 years old now. I’m sure that when people look back in history they’ll think that things changed quickly. But it seems so slow when you’re living it. Women still earn only 76 cents for every dollar a man earns. In 1973 it was 59 cents; but why haven’t we gotten to 100? African American women still earn only 59 cents for every dollar a man earns.
Thirty years ago, I played against Bobby Riggs in a match that came to symbolize women’s struggle. I was scared that day, not confident at all. Ninety-eight percent of the world thought he’d win. The odds in Las Vegas were just incredible.
Riggs had just beaten Margaret Court, the No. 1 female player at the time, on Mother’s Day. He was older than I was, but he had once been the top male player in the world. I watched old tapes of him playing at the peak of his career and I could see that he had been great.
Before the match, I kept saying to myself: I have to win. Everything is riding on this. Women’s sports is riding on it. Women’s tennis is riding on it. If I lost to Riggs I felt the women’s professional tour could fall apart; it had been going for only three years. I feared that Title IX would be threatened. I worried that they would tell us that girls couldn’t play.
But about 15 minutes before the match I got very calm because I knew I’d done everything I could. Rosie Casals, a tennis player who commentated at the event, reminded me recently that she came up to me just before the match and I told her I was going to win.
And I did.
Today, I work with World TeamTennis, which I co-founded as an innovative coed tennis league to help show kids that men and women can play together, cooperatively.
That’s my dream: that girls and boys can see men and women cooperating on the court, working together to win.
Because nothing is worse than what golfer Vijay Singh said — that Sorenstam has no business playing in the Colonial and that he hoped “she misses the cut.”
The fact is, it is not easy for women to play against men, because most games are organized around the notion of strength. If sports weren’t based just on brawn I think we could compete. If golf courses were set up to be a lot shorter, if the first drive off the tee didn’t have such an emphasis on strength, it would be easier. But we didn’t create these games. They’re not set up for us.
But Sorenstam is great. She took the challenge. She has dared to compete.”
Works Cited
King, Billie Jean. “New Era, Same Old Fight for Female Athletes.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 18 May 2003, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-may-18-oe-king18-story.html.
King, Billie Jean. “Sportsmanship Has Nothing to Do with Being a Boy.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 29 Sept. 2002, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-29-oe-king29-story.html.
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