Maybe my combativeness was from the fact that I have gone far and wide to provide proof when it is only refuted by "Oh, those statistics don't matter" when they are, in fact, the official high school participation numbers. Apple meet orange. If they are adding them, isn't that because they are more popular? I don't know about wher eyou live, but in PA when a district tries to add a sport, taxpayers go nuts and force several years of study to make sure that the interest (i.e. popularity) is indeed there.
Wouldn't a person favoring equality wish to see an end to sporting segregation? Should there be white and black basketball teams? One would hope not. Isn't segregation exactly what Saudia Arabian gender policies are all about (well, they're worse than that, but nevertheless). Why do you support blatant segregation? One finds it curious that feminist objectives get turned on their heads when dealing with sports. Can someone please explain why Yale having a women's badminton team is an important feminist objective?
That's about the funniest thing I have read. Ever. Seriously. I have done nothing but provide facts. When I insult it's only because you have the inate inability to reasonably discuss the facts of an argument. Lord, this is fun.
More interesting numbers: Popular appeal Soccer leads all team sports as the number one supervised activity for the under 18-year-old age group. Participation is growing across most segments -- even adult play is up 37% since 1990 -- as those exposed in their youth have adopted soccer as a lifetime sport. And, females account for 39% of all players. Title IX has been a boon for women's college programs with the number of programs doubling to include more than 400 schools. Even men's soccer has grown dramatically -- with 273,000 high school participants. It ranks as the fifth most popular team sport in the U.S. At the college level, there are more than 600 men's teams! The development of the Division I national championship has given men's college soccer more exposure. So if this report, from 1994, could be used as a barometer, coupled with excerpts from other reports I've posted earlier, participation in Soccer regardless of age, sex, or race is through the roof in the past ten years. Women's College Soccer has grown accordingly in that time, Men's College Soccer has not. To say that Men's Soccer has been hit as hard by Title IX as other sports like wrestling or gymnastics is false. Equally false is to say that Title IX has not in part hurt the growth of Men's Soccer. While soccer participation has boomed in every other demographic, it has flatlined in college.
Show me where I ever called for segregation? I think everyone should have opportunity. I think the service academies should be a model, providing every sport imagineable. I think service fees and fiscal restraint are the way to go to provide as many sports as possible while still following federal guidelines for equality. And when did I ever call any sport "an important feminist objective." I'm all about the opportunity on both sides. I just refuse to point the finger at one source when the problems in the current system come from multiple angles. Why that is considered unreasonable is beyond me.
One thing to remember about many of those reports is that they track it all the way down to age 6. So that's hardly a barometer for charting college numbers. And I have said that Title IX is part of the equation. But people who blame women and only women fail to acknolwedge that men are pulling the purse strings at colleges and universities, and they are the ones who decide how to make sure they meet the tests of Title IX. No one holds a gun to their head. They have lots of ways to make the books balance. They choose to cut men's sports.
ben, most of the women benefitting from Title IX reparations come from affluent backgrounds and don't really need the money. Blue collar working women could use a few more bucks, as you have pointed out. Many feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Donna Lopiano favor the intersts of the elite females rather than the rank and file. Yale's female badmitton team may make them happy but that approach does very little to help people who need help. Meanwhile, it is a disaster for men's soccer. The greatest barrier to the U.S. winning the World Cup is not Brazil or Germany, it is radical American feminism.
More interesting numbers: Most Popular Sports for Youth Based on "Frequent" Participation (Ages 6 - 17) Activity Year 2001 1. Basketball (25+ days/year) 11,287,000 2. Soccer (25+ days/year) 7,692,000 3. In-line Skating (25+ days/year) 7,482,000 4. Baseball (25+ days/year) 4,719,000 5. Scooter Riding (52+ days/year) 4,469,000 I just like throwing these out there. Soccer is so damn popular, but the opportunities by and large end at high school, especially if you compare the number of Men's Basketball programs with the number of Men's Soccer programs in college. Anyone have those numbers?
I have been waiting for that quote to come out. I think it was 2 pages later than I expected. Could you post your proof to the average household income of women receving scholarships due to Title IX or is this just something that you know??
Does this mean the feminists are keeping down our In-line skating and Scooter Riding males and stopping the US from dominating X Games as well as the World Cup?? Oh yeah, and are these statistics for boys or all youths?? If all, then how many of those soccer players are girls being forced to play but will retire at the age of 14??
Hoops is sometihng like 900 out of a little more than 1,000 schools in the NCAA. Their sponsorship rate is around 90 percent. Soccer's is around 70, I think, similar to baseball. Football is lower than 60 percent.
Very cute. Suddenly my observations are misogynistic. Perhaps I feel that athletics are for inferiors who lack more meaningful interests? I've noted that men are more interested in pornography. If true, does that suggest a certain inferiority in women? Curious how your baseline assumptions work. To notice that men are by and large physically stronger and faster than women hardly qualifies me as a misogynist. A horse is stronger and faster than a man. Saying so does not suggest that I'm pro-horse or anti-man. My initial comment was that men are far more likely to be interested in sports. First, there was disagreement. Then the discussion turned to the explanations why men are more interested in sports. Feel free to interpret that how you like.
I don't know whether this is the one you found, but the URL gave me "Gender Equity: We Cannot Afford to Choose Between Our Sons and Our Daughters" And this is really, really scary. It is encouraging women's sports participation not just so men's soccer dominance is diminished, but men's dominance in all things!!! Imagine, women who are competent, self assured, able to work in male-dominated organizations. Daughters who don't get pregnant before marriage, who get better grades, who have fewer illnesses. What is this world coming to? What happened to keeping them barefoot and pregnant? The article even tries to obsfuscate this basic threat by its title and by claiming such principles as: If we have to cut sport opportunities, don't cut men's sports. I am really worried. Little did I know that Title XI is actually a liberal plot to undermine the male's God-given right to dominion. It must go!!!!
And yet when somebody posted results of a study that indicated that, at least to a certain age, the interest in sports was about equal, and that there were plenty of external reason to show why a girl might be less likely to continue after that, you dismiss it out of hand. Yet you cling to your notions without offering one iota of evidence other than "everybody knows that"
And for those places with football, imagine where all that excess money could go ... charter flights, 11 coaches, nutrionists, etc., etc., etc.
Excellent post, Nutmeg. A few colleges have added men's division I, a few have dropped but, but an invisible hand keeps the level at about the same as in the early nineties. Title IX as applied is hurting the development of men's soccer in this country. If you are a soccer fan you should be concerned about this.
So you deny that male administrators are hurting college soccer too? The cooties won't kill you, Tommy, they will only make you stronger.
I thought we should be mortgaging our homes to the hilt to follow the US to matches because that's the only true test of a fan, right, Tommy. hey, what about that Thank You Title IX banner the Mexicans were supposed to have?
Funny, if women are so interested in sports why are their empty stadiums at almost every women's sports event? It is easy to buy a ticket you know. Men's college basketball and football are big business, selling millions of tickets and landing big TV contracts. This is a market economy and if women were interested the networks would be falling all over themselves to put the Yale Women's Badmitton team on prime time. With all this interest you would expect there to be 7 or 8 women's professional leagues, Monday Night WNBA and so on. You can't even give those tickets away. Every women's pro league has gone out of business due to lack of interest. If men are to blame for all of this, why haven't men been able to also put a stop to women shopping, talking about shopping, talking about their children, and watching sitcoms and cooking shows? Those are big business and men are not very interested in them. You would expect the men to be able to oppress those folks too, just like they oppressed Donna Lopiano's grandmother because she was not allowed to lift weights.
So it's only about money then? Bye, bye men's college soccer, Thomas. pssst ... men's college doesn't draw that much more than women's.