Tik Tok video sheds light on gender discrimination in NCAA
By: Cayley Dishion
One rack of 12 dumbbells compared to an entire room full of equipment. Pre-packaged dinner trays compared to a catered buffet dinner. A towel with “NCAA Women’s Basketball” on it compared to the 15 or so items branded with “NCAA March Madness” on each of them. These are a few of the inequalities women are experiencing as an athlete in the NCAA.
It is 2021, yet the NCAA basketball tournament this year proved that gender inequality is still more of an issue than ever. Sedona Prince, University of Oregon women’s basketball player, posted a Tik Tok video showing the disparity in weight rooms provided for the men and women. With seven million views, the video has rocked the world calling for change.
Rhonda Lundin Bennett, senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator, describes the video as making her feel “proud, hopeful and energized.”
“We have created an environment where our student-athletes and young staff members feel empowered to use their voices to point out inequity,” Bennett said. “We as senior women administrators have been talking about gender inequity for years but have never captured the attention of athletic directors and presidents and the general public like these women and the prominent coaches who also spoke out were able to do. I am also hopeful and energized that we can keep the conversation going and help people see the value in women’s sports and correct some of the inequity we face.”
Bennett served as a representative at the 2021 NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament in San Antonio, Texas where she was able to witness these events first-hand.
“We all saw many of the gender equity challenges play out over the last few weeks in San Antonio, and it is definitely something that needs to be addressed,” Bennett said. “Women’s sports, and especially women’s basketball, have been growing in popularity and I don’t think the efforts to put on the championship have met the growth of the game.”
Money, resources, coverage, and marketing are all excuses being made for why men and women's’ sports come across as inequitable. Doug Knuth, director of athletics at Nevada, admits gender inequality is something the University has been challenged with for years.
“It’s one of those things we are talking about and focused on,” Knuth said. “We’re trying to make things better but we’re not there yet. We evaluate where we are and where our deficiencies are and have a plan.”
What does the data show?
In the NCAA today, there are 278,614 male student-athletes and 216,378 female student-athletes. In the Mountain West Conference there are 2,541 male student-athletes and 2,450 female student-athletes. At Nevada there are 196 male student-athletes and 186 female student-athletes.
When looking at total expenses for the Mountain West Conference, men’s athletics spent more than 3 times the amount on recruiting, game-days, and student aid than women’s athletics did.
This generated nearly three times more in revenue for men’s athletics compared to the $94 million brought in from women’s athletics within the conference.
When looking at student enrollment at institutions in the Mountain West Conference, 10 of the 12 schools had a significantly higher number of enrolled female students than male students. Every school in the Mountain West Conference has more women’s sports teams than men’s and in the NCAA women’s sports account for 54 percent of NCAA teams while men’s sports represent 46 percent of teams.
Gender Inequality in the Past
The University of Nevada, Reno is coming up on the 50th anniversary of when Title IX was passed, stating “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination.”
Angie Taylor played for Nevada women’s basketball from 1981–1985 in the early years after Title IX was passed, but recalled her experience was anything but equal.
1981 was the first year the NCAA offered championships for women’s athletics, 42 years after the first NCAA men’s championship where the Oregon Webfoots won the first NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 1939.
“It was male versus female,” Taylor said. “We drove places that the men got to fly to. They had a lot more uniforms, they had a lot more shoes. My first year we got one pair of shoes for all that work, and that was the first year we got shoes so everyone was excited.”
Taylor fueled her passion for making women’s sports as equitable as men’s sports in her role as senior associate athletics director at the University following her basketball career at Nevada.
“For me, in life, the burden of race is heavier than the burden of gender but in that context it was much more about gender,” Taylor said. “We’re going to turn this thing around. That is what drove me so hard when I ran the program. It shouldn’t be that way because we should all have the same opportunities. I was proud to be able to be part of the shift.”
Fast forward to 2006. It’s been 34 years since the Title IX amendment passed. That’s 34 years for athletics to become equitable between men and women, fully fund women’s sports, and provide women athletes with the same opportunities provided to male athletes.
Brittany Puzey, Nevada softball player from 2006 to 2009, is passionate about gender inequality in athletics because of her less than equal experience as a female athlete at Nevada.
“We were the best team on campus,” Puzey said. “We were ranked in the top 25, we were beating all the national teams, yet the big talk was still football and men’s basketball.”
“When I first started at Nevada, we didn’t have a field built for us,” Puzey said. “We played at Idlewild Park. They eventually built Christina M. Hixson Softball Park, which meant we finally got a field so we were excited for that, but it was nothing close to what the baseball team was getting.”
Puzey and her teammates often compared their treatment to the treatment of the men’s baseball team because it was the most similar sport to softball.
“It’s tough with softball,” Puzey said. “There is no men’s softball so there’s kind of an out in that way for baseball to say we don’t have to provide the same thing for the women because there’s no women’s baseball team. There’s softball, but that’s a different sport.”
“It was bare bones, meanwhile the baseball team had turf infields, new scoreboards, new uniforms, and a locker room. The whole time I played there, we never had a locker room. Facilities were sub-par while the men’s baseball team was constantly getting new stuff.”
Puzey had a similar experience to that of Taylor’s where the men were prioritized when it came to the use of facilities.
“We never had an indoor practice facility,” Puzey said. “Our coaches begged to use the men’s indoor facility specifically designed for baseball so when it was raining or snowing, they got the facility and we didn’t get to practice.”
Puzey met her husband, Adam Bishop, who played football for Nevada from 2003–2007. Puzey was able to see first hand how different male and female athletes were treated with her boyfriend being on the football team.
“One of the crazy things was nutrition,” Puzey said. “My husband who played on the football team had their charter planes that fly them to and from games and he would tell me when they hopped on and off the plane each player would get their own personal pizza, full size candy bars, and a whole goody bag waiting for them on the plane. They would have their nutrition shakes pre-marked and ready for them.”
“When we were traveling, there would be times when we didn’t get fed,” Puzey said. “They would forget. We would frantically drive around after games hoping there was Jack in the Box open so we could go through the drive-thru and grab all these athletes who played a double-header something to eat. It was really discouraging.”
Title IX was put into play in 1972, yet 34 years later has proven not effective in athletics. Puzey channeled her irritation into a published article about contact sports exempting women the equal opportunity to play, even in baseball which isn’t a contact sport.
“It seemed to me blatant gender discrimination,” Puzey said in the article. “For you to tell women they can’t compete because they might get hurt is blatant gender discrimination. It’s frustrating to learn there are laws that say that. My friend played Little League and around her teenage years she was told she wasn’t able to play baseball anymore because she had no future playing baseball. Getting a college scholarship is the height of sport for female athletes. She never got the opportunity to truly play the sport she loved because of gender discrimination.”
What does gender equality look like in 2021?
In the present day, the viral Tik Tok video of the NCAA Basketball Tournament is showing gender inequality in athletics is still a pressing issue. 49 years after Title IX is put into place, shouldn’t be the first year female athletes start receiving equal treatment.
Nicola Ader, Nevada Women’s Track and Field athlete, currently holds three school records at Nevada and has earned five All-American honors in her events. Her home country of Affolterbach, Germany does not mix academics with athletics at the college level, leading Ader to choose Nevada where she could combine both. She was recruited by Coach Scott Williamson when he flew out to Germany for a recruiting trip. The good relationship and conversation made Nevada feel right because of the athlete-coach relationship.
“There wasn’t such an inequality in Germany because competing in sports is more of a private thing and isn’t connected to scholarships or any other monetary value,” Ader said. “Here at Nevada though, I have definitely noticed big differences between different sports and gender.”
Ader has realized how valuable money is within athletics at the University, which ultimately leaves the Women’s Track and Field team without a home, regulation size track.
“The way the stadium is set up we aren’t allowed to host meets so track and field gets less money because we don’t make money but we don’t get the opportunity to make money,” Ader said. “We also don’t have an indoor facility so we can’t host indoor meets. We have to be so dependent on men’s sports, so once football starts not doing well, our budget gets cut.”
“People come up to me and ask ‘When is there a home meet I can come and watch?’ and it’s sad to say we won’t ever have meets at Nevada,” Ader said. “It’s annoying because it would be nice to have home meets and receive the support and attention that other sports receive.”
On National Girls and Women in Sports Day back on Feb. 3, 2021, Ader and her teammates discussed with U.S. Senator Cortez Masto the inequalities they are experiencing at Nevada, who was unaware there was even an issue and that Nevada was unable to host home meets due to the lack of facilities.
“There is a difference in terms of what they provide us, which they have been doing better with since the start of the Alpha Fund,” Ader said.
The Alpha Fund was created specifically for female athletes with the goal to provide one meal per day to the female athletes at the University. Instilling the importance of nutrition education in not only the male athletes on campus but the female athletes too is crucial for performance in their sport and in the classroom. Donations from the community and faculty will supply the 186 female student-athletes with a fresh, nutritious meal supplied around their practice and school schedule.
“We are provided with one meal on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then leftovers on Tuesday and Thursday,” Ader said. “Some kind of sandwich, cup of fruit, and water is what we get and I am happy with what we are provided with right now. I know this is a new project they just started and I am really grateful for the efforts to find a better balance between genders.”
Ader has a more positive outlook on the issue, hopeful that the Alpha Fund is the push needed for equity for female athletes.
“I feel more valued,” Ader said. “It creates a better environment and it is nice they pay attention to those things, because you need to pay attention to nutrition.”
Puzey on the other hand doesn’t see the progress that needs to be made happening when she saw the Tik Tok video and the uproar it caused due to the discrepancies at the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
“I was irate about that,” Puzey said. “This has been going on for years and I am glad attention is getting called to it. One thing that came to mind is that for certain sports, like softball and baseball, there is no NCAA tournament where the two sports are competing side by side to see that dichotomy, like there is in basketball. Some of the biggest disparities and injustices won’t be exposed because there aren’t those two sports running in parallel.”
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for gender inequality?
As strange as it might sound, Knuth is thankful for the gender inequality in athletics because it keeps him employed trying to figure out where the inequities exist and fixing them to get the University going in a positive direction.
“We are not there yet,” Knuth said. “Equity for male and female athletics has come a long way and this is progress. 2022 will be the 50th anniversary of Title IX and we’re launching a big fundraising campaign for female athletes.”
Bennett is making strides in her role when it comes to finding the inequities in women’s athletics and addressing what needs to be done to fix them.
“We also need to put more resources into women’s sports,” Bennett said. “There are studies that show that women’s sports would be just as popular if they received the same coverage in the media that men’s sports do. I think we need to change the mindset and see the value and potential for growth in women’s sports to be able to fully address the changes that need to be made.”
Puzey went to sign her 5-year-old daughter up for softball in Reno when she found out there were no softball leagues in the area.
“It’s still prevalent with our daughters,” Puzey said. “It’s frustrating to see as a successful college softball athlete.”
