In Kelly Wallace’s article “When will women’s sports get the same attention as men” she is comparing women’s sports collegiate and professional to men’s sports. This is ultimately concluding that the attendance and support of women’s sports are substantially lower than the men’s sports. Structuring her essay to give her life experiences and what has gone on recently in the women’s sports world. This article is meant to call all female athletes and the few supporters of women’s sports to speak up and advocate for equal pay for professional sports and the same exposure of collegiate sports that men teams receive. Wallace is trying to advocate for women so they can have the same attention in sports because she feels that women are being disrespected in their sports. Wallace effectively convinces her audience that women sports should be equal with men sports collegiate and professional.
An example that Wallace brings up is about a collegiate team, the Princeton women’s basketball team. “.. did something no other Ivy league men’s team has done before, racking up 30 wins and zero losses during the regular season and beating the Ivy league season record of 28-0 held by the 1970-71 Penn men’s team.” The team earned national recognition but Wallaces point she says is that she wants “equal numbers of fans, TV right, marketing endorsements, etc.” Wallace wants women to have the same opportunities and not have to do once in a while accomplishments to gain headlines.
The biggest issue in professional sports is salaries. In the article Wallace states that “The average salary for a WNBA player is $72,000, which doesn’t include bonuses and benefits, while the average salary for an NBA player is around $5 million, or about 70 times what the average female basketball player makes.” Wallace hit it home when she mentions salary because not just in sports but in the world, today money salary for women is still not equal. Wallace has devoted her career to the advancement for girls and women in sports. If women are playing the same sports, going through the same training and having the same success.
Wallace goes into detail about polls and stats about women and how she will never stop advocating for women and their rights as athletes. Wallace’s main focus is to get female athletes to get them to play the sports that they love and gain equal pay for their passion and hard work. In the article, it states that “…. girls have more than 1.3 million fewer opportunities to play sports than boys do in high school and about 63,000 fewer participation slots at the collegiate level”.
Wallaces wording that she uses in her writing are words like “equality, women, men, sports, and attention. These are strong words that she repeats over and over in her writing to emphasize the importance. Overall, Wallace completed her message by sharing many stories and experiences about women’s sports and backs up her statements by stats and also facts about sports. Wallace talks about a serious topic and me being a female athlete I love that and I want to be an advocate for women’s sports.
Wallace’s message is for all women and not just athletes are to stand up for yourself and to have equality which includes pay and your job. She wants women to gain the same opportunities and it should not matter what gender you are. She effectively convinces the audience that women should gain the same equal opportunity as men in sports.
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