While the Civil Rights Act is of major importance to the liberty and opportunity of all Americans, some recent developments have pushed for an equitable future that does not embrace our diversity and strengths.
Long has men’s sports subsidized women’s sports, and women’s interests lagged behind men’s in athletics pursuits. It is of utmost importance that women interested in athletics should be able to play at a college level at a minimum, but to suggest that the interest is identical to men is disingenuous.
Forbes reported a study that found that the most popular dream job for boys was far and away being a professional athlete at 16%. Girls, on the other hand, reported that they wanted to be a doctor at 16%. Diversification is a strength that should be cultivated, rather than shunned. We are a stronger America if we enable our people to succeed at their interests.
There is certainly a case to be made that the interests of these children are products of discriminatory gender disparities that warrants ongoing monitoring that women who seek to be professional athletes have a path forward in such a career. But the fact of the matter is that an interest is an interest, regardless of where that interest comes from, it is that child’s true passion. Our legislature should cooperate with the interests of its people.
I propose that college scholarships should not seek an equal athletic representation between men and women. Instead I propose that the number of scholarships offered should be equal across both athletics and academics.
The exact 1-to-1 alignment of athletic scholarships specifically has given rise to incredibly niche women’s sports like rowing to flesh out the third string of football programs while what would otherwise be a more popular men’s sports like wrestling or volleyball suffer a lack of federal funding. There are many ways empower our differences while still being considerate of those who choose the broken path.
We could do any one or combination of the following policies:
- Guarantee a smaller portion of athletic scholarships to women after looking at data on interests
- Design a gender agnostic athletics program that federally funds the top high school sports by popularity. For example, if the top sports by popularity are Football, men’s basketball, women’s volleyball, men’s soccer, and softball, we would fund those. Funding the top 20 sports may result in a 75%-25% split for male to female, which could be considered healthy based on the interests of the students.
- Athletics scholarships not offered to women must be made up in another area, (like pre-med academics for example).