Equal pay for Australia's soccer players

[TSwizzle]

When I was in high school: Girls in high school had no opportunity to play competitive sports, including running track or playing golf until I was a senior in high school.

Well it's different where I am. The high school my kids attended had girls playing most sports. Football being the obvious exception. Some sports, soccer and baseball are mixed up until around aged 14. Even when I was at high school (which wasn't yesterday) the girls were active in most sports plus sports that were pretty much exclusively female. I don't see how the "forbidden from competing" manifests.

 

[Toni]

When I was in high school: Girls in high school had no opportunity to play competitive sports, including running track or playing golf until I was a senior in high school.

Well it's different where I am. The high school my kids attended had girls playing most sports. Football being the obvious exception. Some sports, soccer and baseball are mixed up until around aged 14. Even when I was at high school (which wasn't yesterday) the girls were active in most sports plus sports that were pretty much exclusively female. I don't see how the "forbidden from competing" manifests.

Then you are younger than I am. I remember when Title IX was passed and remember that it was not enacted immediately but over some years. And even now there are still disparities.

TODAY it is different: girls are encouraged to participate in sports. In some sports, occasionally a girl will try out or win a spot on a team. Occasionally a boy will try out for a girls' sport and win a spot (cheer squads, dance teams).

My point is that I'm not that ancient and until I was almost a legal adult, girls had no formal opportunities to participate in competitive sports. It was all pick up games/informal games. In my case, that was no particular loss. I had no great longings to compete in team sports, although I would have loved to run track. But there were some girls for whom this was a real frustration--and even now, decades after high school, some of the women who went to high school with me really feel that they missed out on an important opportunity for them. Girls and women are athletic as well as boys and men. At least in the US, it's only been relatively recently that girls had anything approaching equal opportunity to participate in organized sports and in some places, they still have to fight for parity. I was recently at a college sporting event, women's teams and someone who knows more about the athletic facilities was pointing out where the dressing rooms for the men's football team were (in the nice building) and where the dressing rooms for the women's soccer team was (not a very nice building). The men's teams get a much larger budget and much more and better access to training and facilities and schedules, etc.