Involvement of Women Since the 1970's
The involvement of women in sports has increase greatly since the 1970’s. Even th
ough the number of females playing and working with sports has increased, it is still much lower than the number of males playing and working with sports. Over a twenty-year span, the percentage of high school athletes that were female increased around 30%. This is mostly due to Title IX because it gave the girls the right to play. Collegiate athletes doubled their female involvement because of Title I
X. Without Title IX, there would still be very small numbers of girls allowed to play sports in school, competitively anyways. Many coaches of male sports have tried to argue that females playing sports takes away opportunities from male athletes but this has not been proven yet so until it is there is no way that female athletes take away from male athletes.
The fact that the number of women athletes has increased really shows that they do not want to just stand on the sidelines waiting for men to win a gold medal all the time or even just watch. Women athletes would rather be playing a sport than sitting and watching because once they know what it is like to play a sport; they always want to be playing. Once female sports became more popular, more girls were becoming well known which helped young girls to get involved in the sports they wanted to play. Once that happened, girls everywhere were beginning to play the sports they wanted and doing well at the also.
“An athlete gains so much knowledge by just participating in a sport. Focus, discipline, hard work, goal setting and, of course, the thrill of finally achieving your goals. These are all lessons in life.” — Kristi Yamaguchi, world champion figure skater