By Emme Ostrander

Growing up playing on an all boys ice hockey team, I got to see many different perspectives on women playing a “man’s sport” and how differently the women’s teams are treated from the men’s. It is well known that with Title 9 now in place “it is illegal for public high schools to exclude certain people from sports based on gender.” Although that was a huge step towards equality in men’s and women’s sports, there is still a grey area surrounding “equal”.

Just recently the U.S Women’s Soccer Team sued the federation for unequal pay. The women playing for the U.S Soccer Team were getting payed about twenty-five percent of what a male player was earning. Taking into account that the amount of money brought in from a women’s game is far less than that of a men’s game, some people say it is fair. The real question though is that, is all the money set aside for the players salaries that is brought in from a female game actually going to the women’s salaries? Or is some of it getting added on to the men’s salaries? It could be just a theory, but who knows?

Jumping down a level to college sports, we still see the inequality between male and female sports. Hockey is a great example of this. As many high school-aged women’s hockey players, including myself, are starting to look at colleges and touring campuses we notice the difference between the guy’s locker room and the girl’s locker room, or even the guy’s rink versus the girl’s rink. Not until recently, when one of my female teammates visited Boston University, did I realize the unbelievable difference between the men’s rink, Agganis Arena and the women’s rink, Walter Brown Arena. Agganis is fairly new with an enormous amount of seating and amazing atmosphere, while Walter Brown was opened in 1971 with about half as much seating and a kind of old and beaten down feel. This is just one of the multiple examples of inequality in one of many sports.

There are many steps being taken to equalize male and female sports and women’s sports have definitely been climbing the ladder, but it will take a long time for them to become completely equal, if that day even comes. With the U.S Women’s Soccer Team bringing more awareness to this issue, maybe there will be even more progress soon.