Let's Change Our Plan of Attack

It’s November 28, 2020, a brisk but bright day in Columbia, Missouri. Perfect weather for Saturday SEC Football. The Vanderbilt Commodores suit up for their match against the Missouri Tigers. Among them is a new face: Vanderbilt Women’s Soccer’s Sarah Fuller. Fuller dons a helmet and shoulder pads, ready to kick down the gender barriers that have discouraged women from playing football for all these years. As the start of the second half rolls around, Fuller walks onto the field. In doing this, she makes history as the first woman to ever log a snap in a Power Five football game.

After coronavirus-related quarantines ravaged Vanderbilt Football’s special teams players, head coach Derek Mason needed a kicker, and Sarah Fuller stepped up. She did something hard, she did it well, and she was the first to do so on the big stage. But in the midst of the media frenzy that ensued, I can’t help but feel like Fuller’s story wasn’t being told in its entirety. She is a soccer player, an SEC Champion who persevered through injuries and a global pandemic and still walked away a champion. These years that Fuller dedicated to her soccer career, however, were reduced to a mere sentence, two if she was lucky.

Female athletes like Sarah Fuller deserve recognition for everything they do, from their talent to their hard work, but our current media coverage of women in sports hinders the movement for gender equality in sports. Thanks to Title IX, female participation in college athletics is at an all-time high and two in five womxn are involved in sports, compared to the one in 27 womxn involved in sports before Title IX’s passing in 1970. But the limitations of Title IX become painfully clear when you see how coverage of sports skews in favor of men. On average, women’s sports coverage hovers at a pitiful 4% of all sports coverage, only spiking when female athletes participate in the domain of men’s sports.

By failing to acknowledge women’s athletic achievements without the backdrop of gender barriers and men’s sports, we reinforce the decades-old idea that sports is a realm impenetrable by women. The misogyny we’ve spent decades fighting is unearthed once again, and women are left fighting for their worth. Women’s sports coverage needs a renovation, because although the woman-in-a-man’s-world rhetoric is a watertight trick to get clicks, it is trapping us in a vicious cycle.

In a Zoom press conference, Fuller touched on the discrepancies between media coverage surrounding her soccer and her football careers. “We deserve this amount of coverage for women's sports. I can go back to the SEC tournament and boast about how incredibly our team played. The team chemistry—we looked so good and so smooth. That was good soccer,” she said. “It would be amazing if we could get more coverage and attention because these women work so hard to do what they do. NWSL, the WNBA, all those women's sports organizations work so hard.”

This is by no means a new conversation. The battle for equality has been an ongoing issue in the realm of professional women’s sports since the days of Billie Jean King and the Battle of the Sexes. Tennis, soccer, and other traditionally male-dominated sports have been hot spots in the fight for gender equality, but still only receive attention when men are brought into the picture. The current fight for equal pay for the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) is one continually emphasized by comparing the records of the women’s team to that of the men’s team. The media has respected the movement for equal pay by paying attention and providing coverage for these efforts, but we need to do more.

The USWNT reached a court settlement this past December in their fight for equal pay, only for the court to rule on equal treatment but not equal pay. But the court cannot promise equal pay when the revenue systems for women’s sports do not generate as much profit. Men’s athletic institutions such as FIFA, the NFL and the NBA are billion-dollar industries with the means to pay their athletes handsome sums. In order to have even a chance at catching up and making a name for themselves, women need this same media attention in the domain of women’s sports. The public cannot assist in generating profit without ample opportunity to do so. Deloitte research indicates that fan interest for women’s sports already exists: 66 percent of participants in a multi-country study were interested in at least one women’s sport, and 84 percent of sports fans were interested in women’s athletics. Public interest exists but the monetization that can lead to equal pay will not happen without help from the media. We need to talk about women in sports like soccer and basketball. We need to feed existing public interest with consistent coverage. Revenue growth from television rights, attendance, and sponsorships will soon follow.

It is time that we as the media step up our game and invest attention in women’s sports separate from their male counterparts. Title IX cannot work alone to support present-day goals for gender equality, and we have the means to help. We must share the complete stories of women like Sarah Fuller because they are tremendous athletes. We must put the spotlight on women for their achievements, irrespective of how they interact with existing gender stereotypes. These women are the role models for generations to come; let’s treat them as such.

By Anita Mukherjee

Indie rock enthusiast and home chef who will always make time to watch a stand-up special