Do boys’ and girls’ sports get the same amount of attention? “Both boys and girls get the same amount of attention but in different areas” -Olivia Curtis. What she is saying is that boys will get more attention for certain sports, and so will girls. Typically, in volleyball, girls get more attention than boys because it isn’t as popular of a sport with boys as it is with girls. The same goes for hockey and wrestling with boys. These sports are more dominant with boys versus girls, therefore receiving more attention.
Some of the reasoning behind it has to do with which version of the sport came first. Boys’ hockey leagues came before girls’ hockey leagues. Boys’ hockey leagues have had more time to develop and become popular, unlike the girls’ hockey teams, which are newer and have less time to grow and evolve.
Another part of that thought is change. Many people are just so used to watching or liking the girl or boy version of each sport more than the other. For basketball, so many people normalized watching men’s basketball that when women’s basketball came along, got more popular, and reached the same level as the boys, everyone was already watching men’s basketball. So instead of trying something new, they stay the same because to them, it doesn’t matter and doesn’t affect them most of the time, but it can affect the athletes of these sports with things like budgets for uniforms, busing, or fun things they are allowed to do during the season.
A second point of view is “For girls sports to get attention, it’s typically when something utterly spectacular happens” -Claire Sjodin. Claire was saying that if something of almost a miracle has to happen in girls’ sports for them to get any attention, typically. For example, when the volleyball team was in the playoffs this fall, it was given less attention, and they had fewer spectators than the football team when they were in the playoffs. Although these are two entirely different sports, they have different levels of popularity.
There are many different points of view on this topic, but the two that were given are different. Olivia shows they get different attention levels but equally in terms of boys’ and girls sports. Claire says that girls mostly get less support. These opinions differ, but both say that the amount of attention is different and, most of the time, not equal. Many factors play a role in making sports teams more popular, but they are not always fair or equal.
