T
his March, outcry arose during
the NCAA March Madness tour-
nament when Sedona Prince, a
forward for the Oregon Ducks women’s
basketball team, posted a TikTok compar-
ing her team’s weight room to that of their
male counterparts. The men’s weight room
was an expansive gym full of machines,
equipment and free weights. The women’s
weight room was a single rack of dumbbells
and yoga mats. The NCAA claimed it was
a space issue, but the TikTok clearly shows
that the women’s area had ample room for
a full gym. And while the internet exploded
in discourse and debate, many women ath-
letes expressed that these disparities are
nothing new.
Indeed, this controversy is a reflection
of a greater issue in sports and in society
overall. Women athletes, and especially
women athletes of color, are not only paid
less for the same or better work, but they
are denied equal economic resources and
facilities, do not receive fair marketing and
coverage and suffer stereotyping, sexu-
alization and discrimination. Despite the
passage of Title IX in 1972, women athletes
today — at the club, high school, collegiate
and professional levels — face substantial
roadblocks to true equality. And while the
University of Michigan does a good job
supporting its student athletes who are
women, the institution of sport overall is
still skewed to support men and their suc-
cess.
As a woman who grew up playing com-
petitive soccer, I am well aware of the so-
cial disparities that occur on and off the
field — less fans coming to the women’s
games, having to prove yourself while the
men do not and the pressure to look good
after sweating for 90 minutes straight, for
instance. I wondered, then, how these reali-
ties play out on the collegiate level, where
one’s sport is not a hobby but a job in the
public eye. Student-athletes are already un-
der a lot of pressure from having to balance
schoolwork, games and practice, so how do
their differing identities — like which sport
they play, their gender, race and socio-eco-
nomic status — and the intersectionality
of these identities impact their ability to
thrive in athletics and academics, as well as
their self-esteem, identity and worldview?
I spoke with seven women from six
different sports — track & field and cross
country, gymnastics, rowing, field hockey,
softball and lacrosse — in the hopes of
learning about their experiences as women
student athletes at the University. As a non-
student-athlete, I have witnessed within
myself, and among other peers who don’t
play college sports, a tendency to make
assumptions or stereotypes about student-
athletes, especially with gendered, racial
and sport-specific lenses. And while these
seven women graciously allowed me a look
into their academic, athletic and personal
lives with common themes linking their
experiences, this article is merely a glance
into the diverse, complex institution of
sport.
Dr. Ketra Armstrong, professor of Sport
Management and director of Diversity,
Equity & Inclusion for the School of Kine-
siology, touched on the idea of a universal
student-athlete experience during a Zoom
interview.
“I’m always hesitant to paint that expe-
rience as a monolith,” Armstrong said. “It
differs if they’re a Black student or a stu-
dent of color. Or if they’re a student of color,
and they’re female and they’re an athlete
playing what is considered a ‘masculine
type sport.’ So there’s a multiplicity of iden-
tities that are at play when you look at those
two buckets of being a student and being an
athlete.”
Indeed, identity impacts experience;
even so, there are the typical obstacles most
women athletes face every day. Sexist com-
ments. Body image issues. Social and po-
litical engagement. Viewership disparities.
These are encountered in the classroom
or while competing; women athletes suf-
fer many of the common grievances of the
patriarchy and those that come with their
sport.
“They’re trying to deal with a lot,” Arm-
strong said. “They’re trying to be students,
they’re trying to be athletes and they’re try-
ing to be citizens … citizens of the campus,
citizens of the community, citizens of the
world. So that’s a lot to ask of a person to do
and to do it successfully and impactfully.”
And yet, just as they do on their field,
court, track or floor — they push through,
they persevere.
“Athletes, particularly, they’re high per-
forming,” Armstrong said. “They’re resil-
ient, first and foremost, let’s not forget that.
They’re resilient.”
***
T
he University of Michigan has
13 men’s and 14 women’s varsity
sports, but if you’re not an avid
sports fan, you are probably only familiar
with two: men’s football and men’s bas-
ketball. Indeed, these teams are central
to our campus spirit and identity: The fall
football season builds a sense of camara-
derie even for those who barely watch the
games, and the March Madness tourna-
ment is another excuse to get drunk and
excited over a maize-colored jersey. Much
of these sports’ popularity comes from
American culture and tradition, as well as
the history of the athletic program, but it
is sustained through powerful marketing
and resourcing — which is possible, con-
sidering these sports are the major drivers
of revenue for the University. The NCAA’s
model, which has shifted from providing
holistic academic and athletic opportuni-
ties to optimizing profit, has led to the cuts
of many D1 athletic programs and hindered
the growth of already existing ones.
For women’s athletics, this model can
be an even deeper threat, as retaining
popularity and viewership has proven dif-
ficult for these teams in the past. Not only
do women athletes have to break through
patriarchal stereotypes about who sport is
for (traditionally, men) and which sports
are “better” to watch (i.e. claims that men’s
games are more exciting), but they have to
fight for equal representation in market-
ing and media. The NCAA was criticized
this year not only for the weight room
fiasco but also because of its March Mad-
ness Twitter account. Its bio reads: “The
official NCAA March Madness destination
for all things Division I NCAA Men’s Bas-
ketball.” It seems unfair to claim that “just
not enough people like watching women’s
sports” when there’s barely a mention of
the women’s tournament — how are you
supposed to get new fans if people aren’t
aware of the games?
It’s a phenomenon that LSA fifth-year
senior Nadine Stewart, a lacrosse player
studying Biopsychology, Cognition and
Neuroscience, described to me over a
Zoom call. Stewart explained how the Uni-
versity’s women’s lacrosse games are not
televised; rather, they are streamed on Big
Ten Network Plus, which requires a paid
subscription.
“Some people obviously don’t have
(BTN Plus), so they can’t watch, so we can’t
really get a huge following,” Stewart said.
This lack of proper representation is
also visible in the sports media. In one
study of sports news in Southern Califor-
nia, it was found that while women and
girls make up 40% of all athletes, they re-
ceived only about 4% of news coverage.
More so, the researchers found “a stark
contrast between the exciting, amplified
delivery of stories about men’s sports, and
the often dull, matter-of-fact delivery of
women’s sports stories.” Again, it seems un-
fair to claim that women’s sports are inher-
ently “less exciting” when they have been
preemptively characterized and marketed
as a boring, required subset of men’s sports
and not in their true, action-packed nature.
While the U-M Athletic Department,
which did not respond to a request for a
comment by the time of this article’s pub-
lication, makes an effort to uplift both their
men’s and women’s teams — a point that
every woman I interviewed made — the
systemic inequalities in coverage and rep-
resentation are difficult to fully unweave
from the collegiate level. Business senior
Kragen Metz, a field hockey player, touched
on this theme when we spoke over Zoom.
“I think, at the University of Michigan,
we get such unprecedented experience
and exposure,” Metz said. “Playing on such
a high-caliber team has been an incred-
ible opportunity and I’m so appreciative of
that. However, there are such discrepancies
where it feels like you’re less valued than
the men’s program, like you saw with the
NCAA March Madness for women’s and
men’s basketball. I feel like that just goes to
show, if you’re not making money, you’re
not valued as much as the men’s sport.”
She described how these discrepancies
are a result of both cultural and institution-
al factors, and are commonly reflected in
athletic and professional life alike.
“I think that Michigan is working on
this, (but) I think that they have a lot of
work to do, especially having been in the
Business School and then on the field hock-
ey field,” Metz said. “There’s a lot of people
who just don’t get what it means to be a
woman in these male-dominated spaces. I
think that women have to put in a bit more
work to be recognized the same, and that
recognition is so hard to come by, especially
from top leadership. Like, Warde Manuel
does not really visit us often, Michigan Ath-
letics social media doesn’t feature us very
often, on BTN we don’t have commenta-
tors. All that stuff would be unheard of for
a men’s team.”
Business sophomore Sierra Brooks, a
member of the women’s gymnastics team,
described one way she deals with the of-
ten difficult experiences of being a woman
student athlete and the discrepancies that
arise with it.
“I think one point where I really real-
ized that, in general, being a female athlete
was different than a male athlete, was com-
ing to college and just hearing about all the
viewership issues and even just seeing how
much money gets put into this program
versus a different program,” Brooks said.
“Those were times when … I tried to le-
verage my sense of community with other
female athletes, because I’ve met so many,
and we’re all so different. And I’ve loved
learning about that, because there’s stereo-
types with certain female athletes of certain
sports … but everyone’s different, and that’s
something that I’ve loved to see.”
These stereotypes that Brooks de-
scribed are deeply-rooted in a centuries-
long gender ideology that presumes what is
feminine and what is masculine.
“The gender ideology that has long
pervaded the institution of sport, and the
culture of sports, it has impacted men and
women,” Armstrong said. “Men who are
playing in certain sports, they’re affected
as well.”
The gender ideology Armstrong men-
tioned has created a theoretical spectrum,
with one end delineating stereotypically
“masculine” sports, which are centered
around power and contact, and the other
with stereotypically “feminine” ones,
which focus on aesthetics and nonaggres-
sion. This impacts women who play stereo-
typically-masculine sports — they are often
classified as “butch” or “buff” — and men
who compete in stereotypically-feminine
ones, who are labeled as “gay.” For women
athletes, this is known as the Female/Ath-
lete Paradox, which “states that athletic
women face a dilemma; they are expected
to succeed in their sport while maintaining
hegemonic femininity.”
One presumed “masculine” character-
istic is strength. All athletes have muscles
in some form or another, due to frequent
practices, conditioning and lifting ses-
sions. Their bodily strength, which is an
asset while competing, suddenly becomes
a negative feature for women when they
enter any space other than an athletic one.
Business senior Lexi Munley, a member of
the track & field and cross country teams,
described this collateral of the Female/Ath-
lete paradox over a Zoom call.
“When I’m wearing a T-shirt or some-
thing, you can see my arms, and because
I’m more muscular … sometimes people
make a comment, they’re like ‘oh, you do
a sport,’ ” Munley said. “And I don’t tone it
down, but it’s something that’s there and
not necessarily something I always want to
be out there … I don’t know what exactly it
is, but it just draws attention in a way. And
maybe the root of that is wanting to feel
more lean and feminine and not just as a
strong athlete.”
But this immediately changes when
competing, Munley said, laughing: “But
when you’re on the track, you’re like, ‘Yes,
look at my arm, I will destroy you.’ ”
Indeed, the expectations for women to
be small, passive and harmless do not align
with the definition of athleticism, which
centers around power, activity and confi-
dence. Interestingly, female gymnasts ex-
ist in a space of both strength and fitness
while also relying on elegance and aesthet-
ics. While other sports, like track and field,
emphasize a lean body type, gymnasts are
usually more muscular; this contradicts the
Western feminine ideal of thin women. And
yet, gymnastics is known as “feminine” be-
cause of the aspect of appearance that goes
along with the sport — in the leotards and
glamorous makeup and hair, for instance.
Olivia Karas, alum of the U-M women’s
gymnastics team, discussed how people
perceive gymnasts, particularly in regards
to their bodies.
“Something that men will never under-
stand about women, and specifically ath-
letes won’t understand about female gym-
nasts, (is) when it comes to literally putting
your body out there on a balance beam or
on a floor, under the lights in front of 10,000
people in a crowd on TV, you’re really out
there, and it’s open for interpretation,”
Karas said. “And it’s open for discussion of
potentially your weight, or how your body
is formed or whatever, and so that’s some-
thing about being a woman that’s just really
difficult in the gymnastics space.”
Similar to Munley, Karas described mo-
ments of insecurity when it came to her
muscles outside of the athletic space.
“In high school, a lot of people would say
things to me like, ‘You look like the Hulk,’
or like, ‘You have the perfect man body, like
a V’, ” Karas said, noting that this changed
during college. “It’s a little embarrassing
because it’s like, why can’t I fit in this dress,
or when I’m in a swimsuit, it’s just like,
‘look at her back’, and … it makes you self
conscious, because then you see … these
women, traditionally-looking women, and
that means dainty, I suppose, if that’s what
people want to associate women with, and
it shouldn’t be that way.”
The Michigan women’s gymnastics
team after getting their first score over 198
in the athletic program’s history.
The link between strength and mas-
culinity also plays into the perception of
women athletes, especially those with vis-
ible muscles, as violating gender norms and
contradictory to heteronormative gender
expectations. One paper on the Female/
Athlete Paradox describes how this im-
pacts perceived sexuality.
“Associating female athletes with les-
bianism has been a common theme in the
United States and ‘follows a belief in the
myth of the masculinization and mannish-
ness of athletic women,’the paper states.
“Females’ sexual orientations are often
judged according to their physical build;
those who exhibit a more muscular body
type are more likely to be labeled ‘dyke,’
‘butch,’ or ‘lesbian.’”
LSA senior Lou Allen, a softball player
studying Political Science, commented on
how these perceptions were present even
from a young age.
“There’s actually a saying in softball
called ‘No Bow, Lesbo,’” Allen said. “Back
when I was in my travel ball, when I was
younger … it was a legit thing, like if you
didn’t wear a bow, everyone was gonna as-
sume that you were a lesbian.”
Allen, who is bisexual, described ques-
tioning the practice as she got older and be-
gan exploring her own identity.
“I got to the point where I was wear-
ing like cheerleader bows, like these huge,
huge things, so that it would be known,” Al-
len said. “And then like I went through my
phase, I’m bisexual, so I went through all of
that and I’m trying to figure out my identity
and everything so I even got to a point of
like, do I wear a bow? Am I supposed to?
Am I supposed to be involved in this? Does
this mess up my identity, because I don’t
know what to do here, I like both. So what
am I supposed to do?”
The dissonance between identity and
expectation is one that is especially con-
toured not only by gender and sexuality,
but also race. LSA junior Haven Essien, a
member of the women’s rowing team
studying French as well as Molecular and
Cellular Developmental Biology, discussed
the various stereotypes she encounters as a
biracial woman.
“From what I’ve encountered, how
male athletes are accepted or approached
versus how female athletes are accepted or
approached, is there’s always this additional
physical aspect,” Essien said. “Even in high
school, or even in middle school, it wasn’t
about my work ethic, or it wasn’t about how
much time I was putting into something,
nobody ever thought about that. It was al-
most solely an aspect of physicality. I mean,
again, I’m different, so I am perceived to be
a stereotype, because I’m biracial, but I’m
presenting Black. So, it was always, ‘Oh, you
have African legs, that’s why you’re so fast’,
or ‘Oh, your height, this makes sense.’ “
This idea that women athletes are bod-
ies first and athletes second represents how
women are perceived generally: As bodies
first, people second. Our identity is, accord-
ing to society, inextricably linked to our
sexuality and subservience to men. Athletes
especially are in a vulnerable spot, because
their bodies and what their bodies do are
central to the form of entertainment that
is sport. As Karas mentioned regarding the
“invited” scrutiny of the woman gymnast’s
body, athletes are historically viewed as at-
tractive bodies meant for us mere mortals
to watch and appreciate. But what seems
like an appreciative experience can actually
reduce athletes to one dimension and pur-
pose, often a sexualized or fetishized one;
and once you add the contours of race and
gender, this perception becomes even more
sinister.
“These athletes tend to be seen as some-
thing for them (non-athlete consumers),
because they’re already shown on the en-
tertainment. That’s kind of what the NCAA
and Big Tens and ESPN Sports in general
is showing athletes as: props for entertain-
ment and less about people,” Essien said.
“So I think that also comes into people not
necessarily seeing them (athletes) as hu-
man beings and then just seeing them as,
like, ‘Oh, I’m going to college, and I want to
hit up like a cute Black football player.’”
Essien also discussed how when people
perceive athletes as one-dimensional, this
creates the false notion that they are only
admitted to the University because of their
athleticism; this often overlaps with racist
stereotyping.
“I’ve heard: ‘Oh, that makes sense,’.. like,
(that) I got into Michigan because I’m an
athlete?” Essien said. “I think, for men of
color, it’s almost assumed that you are an
athlete or that you’ve gotten in with some
sort of scholarship or whatever.”
As the United States is undergoing a po-
litical and social reckoning, the positioning
of athletes as simply bodies for our enter-
tainment is quickly wearing out. And while
athletes have been vocal in political move-
ments for the entire history of sport, there
was a page-turning moment in 2016 when
NFL player Colin Kaepernick began tak-
ing a knee during football games to protest
police brutality against Black people. In the
years that followed, we have seen increased
activism from notable players such as LeB-
ron James — who was told to “shut up and
dribble” after discussing being Black in
America and talking about former President
Donald Trump — and Megan Rapinoe, who
has been an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights
and gender equality, among other things.
We have witnessed multiple teams in the
WNBA lead social-justice movement in
sports, being the first teams to wear “Black
Lives Matter” shirts before games and help-
ing push the vote and flip a Senate seat.
When it comes to social justice leader-
ship or striving for gender equality, athletes
at all levels and of all genders and races are
banding together to push a new movement.
Armstrong, who has worked in all types of
sport spaces, commented on her hope for
the future generation of athletes.
“I’m reluctantly hopeful, but I’m also
happy when I see high schoolers standing
up and saying, ‘You know, this is not right.
This country has to change. I’m not stand-
ing up in support of this flag,’ ” Armstrong
said. “It’s like when I see high schoolers
having conversations about race. I listened
to a conversation of these high school stu-
dents talking about anti-racism, and like
wow — that’s pretty special.”
The links between sport culture and
society are clear and necessary to observe.
“Sport is an entity in society, it mir-
rors and reflects society,” Armstrong said.
“Some of the things we see in the world, we
definitely also see them in the institution
of sport.”The experiences of women stu-
dent athletes in social or academic spaces,
as well as the institutional and philosophi-
cal pressures that define their identity and
sense of belonging, can be easily extrapolat-
ed to the nature of womanhood in Ameri-
can society. We are constantly forced into
impossible spaces, paradoxes that tell us to
be one thing but not the other — but only
in certain circumstances, certain settings.
In understanding how these processes
impact women and further our inequality
with men, we can begin grappling with the
systems and ideologies that prevent our so-
ciety from true equality.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement
How women student athletes navigate college life
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY
Wednesday, April 14, 2021 — 9