Women in Sports - NCAA vs. AIAW :: Sports Essays Women

NCAA vs. AIAWWomen have faced an uphill battle throughout the history of sports whether it is to be able to grapple in sports, to attain equal funding for programs, to have access to facilities, or a number of other obstacles that have been thrown in their ways. Women have had to excogitate and administer their own sports structure rather than compete within the mens structure that existed. The sheer strength and determination of many women sports heroes is what propels womens sport to keep going. unity theme that has predominantly surfaced in this fight though is the merging of womens programs with mens, oftentimes lonesome(prenominal) when they are successful enough to stand alone on their own.When womanish athletes wanted to participate in tournaments and intercollegiate play they had to cultivate their own league, since the NCAA would not accept womens teams. Many women fought long and hard in order to form the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) in 19 72, and even harder to make it the successful league it eventually became. The AIAW gained corporate sponsors and television coverage of their national championship and overly catapulted womens basketball into the forefront of athletics worldwide. In 1976, just now four years after the formation of the AIAW, womens basketball debuted at the Olympics. At the end of its reign the AIAW had created 42 national championships and moved from a 276 charter member institution into an organization consisting of 971 institutional members (Hult). In 1979 Title IX was passed, giving female athletes a coarse step towards achieving their goals but possibly giving the AIAW its defeating blow. With the passage of Title IX came funding for womens sports that was not present prior to this. Suddenly womens athletics were more than just a game, they were profitable sports and men took note of this. Most educational institutions merged their mens and womens physical education and athletic departments . Since this new athletic department had twice the staff that was needed, women athletic director and administrators were sent down to secondary positions. Men were now controlling womens athletics, one domain where women had ruled for the past decade. Male coaches werent the only ones to notice the potential profit included in womens athletics the NCAA began to make serious offers to AIAW about merging. Because the NCAA had not prior to this considered the AIAW an equal until womens athletics had potential for television contracts and national championships, the AIAW refused these offers.