Women basketball players feel a disservice in the United States

MSometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Especially when you make the contrast visible. The first photo, which sports physicist Ali Kirchner of Stanford University in California uploaded to Instagram two weeks ago, shows a huge hall filled with fitness equipment and weights in the final tournament of the University Basketball Championship in Indianapolis. The other is an excerpt from the meager training opportunities in San Antonio.

The main difference? In Indianapolis, all 68 men’s teams were assembled in the bladder to protect against Covid infection in mid-March. You must have the best possible conditions for the popular competition, which is usually spread over fourteen different sites under the banner of “March Madness”. A logistical challenge in which the NCAA invested three months from planning time.

The NCAA in Texas has made similar efforts with the many centrally located hotels and halls where several thousand athletes, coaches and supervisors can be accommodated in a college basketball tournament held simultaneously. But one thing was clearly not very clear to the organizers: Women also need adequate fitness equipment.

People of the second degree

The crash was resolved quickly once the photos were circulated on social media. He retouched the insult as much as possible with a weak interpretation (“limited space”). But this impression remained: even in the American education system, where gender equality has been enshrined in law for half a century, women are often treated as second-class people.