BLOGVOICE: Gender Inequality in Sports

Gender Inequality in Sports

Jini Hernandez, WRC Intern and Blogger

Over winter break I started to play basketball with my sister. She’s a sophomore on her high school Varsity team and pulls double duty as Captain of the JV team. She has been into basketball since the 6^th grade and practices at least 4 hours a day during the week. Basketball is her life. I’ve always been into athletics but I was specifically trying to get more into basketball since I wanted to support her. This is why we started playing and doing drills at my mom’s school and in our house. A week or so into my break we decided to go to our local public park to practice.

The field house was open but when we asked the guy at the front desk if we could use the gym we were told we couldn’t…because there is only one day a week women could use the basketball courts and that wasn’t the day. I was stunned, I grabbed the facilities schedule and sure enough the days were separated by who could use the gym. Certain days were for tournaments (all male), other days specifically said Men’s Basketball, another day said 5 on 5 teams but then had Men Only written in a column off to the side and then there was one day a week set aside that said co-ed basketball.

The first thing that popped into my mind were the Jim Crow laws of the South, while obviously not as severe I did not expect to see this level of ignorance at a Chicago Park District, a public place that my taxes helped pay for. How is it that no one has noticed or complained about this before? I know a lot of people would probably say "well women don’t play a lot of basketball so it’s not necessary to have anymore co-ed basketball." I dare them to say that to my sister’s face, or better yet her whole varsity team…

I could understand having a time set aside in the gym specifically for men. However, if you are going to do this it is only fair to have the same amount of time set aside for women. Honestly, it surprises me that there aren’t more women fighting for a time on the court specifically for females, simply because it is pretty intimidating to walk onto a male-dominated court and play like you’re no different than they are. So I give my sister and all female basketball players respect for doing that on a daily basis.

I cannot understand how today we still have public facilities like basketball courts separated by gender. I cannot express how angry I was when told, “no you can’t use this court because you’re a woman.” It’s hard for me to think that my sister who has made this sport her life will be denied places to practice because of her gender. I know how hard she practices, and for people to tell her she can’t use the local basketball courts because they don’t think women play ball, they’re not just being sexist they’re denying how hard she’s worked to gain the skills she has. They are denying her passion.