As women continue to make their mark in the sports arena, the spotlight continues to shine primarily on men. Syracuse, like many other universities, can do more to ensure that all teams receive publicity and support from the school.

In the 2016-2017 basketball season at Syracuse University, the women’s team advanced to the quarterfinals of the ACC’s women’s tournament as the men’s finished seventh in the ACC.

Edward Russell, an associate advertising professor at SU, said the results of a project that showed how deeply ingrained this gender divide is in athletics.

“We did an advertising project to promote how much better our women’s team was than our men’s that year. Truthfully, we found in research that no one cared,” Russell said. “Over 90% of women said they’d rather watch the men’s basketball game than the women’s.”

In order to see significant change in the stands at women’s sporting events, the university must commit to continuously investing in the promotion of female sports. By failing to do so, female athletes and fans continue to be fed the idea that they are simply not as capable or important as their male counterparts in the world of sports.

Title IX does require “that the athletics programs meet the interests and abilities of each gender,” but does not require schools to spend equal amounts of money on both men’s and women’s teams. While SU spent over $13 million on men’s basketball in the 2016-2017 academic year, the school set aside only $5.5 million for the women’s team.

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This focus on men’s sports also has also been shown to have adverse effects on female student athletes.

Anne Osborne, a communications professor at SU and an expert in the field of sports media and fandom, said there are connections between how much representation athletes received and how they might feel about their personal performance.

“There’s a theory called symbolic annihilation that basically says the groups that are unrepresented or underrepresented in the media, what that communicates is a lack of importance,” Osborne said.

If women are not receiving the same exposure as men in sports, research shows they ultimately lack the feeling of validity and power in what they are doing. When attendance numbers are so drastically different, it is inevitable for females on campus to feel less important or accomplished.

SU’s female athletes earned their spots on the university’s sports teams and have achieved tremendous feats. But they haven’t received the exposure they deserve. They’ve entered an arena society largely reserved for men.

“It reinforces this understanding of sports as a domain for men, as a place to celebrate masculinity and male excellence,” Osborne said.

While working toward solutions to this problem is complicated, it is not impossible.

Osborne suggests long term investments and sustained efforts into promoting Syracuse University’s female sports teams. This means making sure students know when there is a women’s sporting event coming up and connecting fans with the players. The school should advertise for women’s games in the same way it does for men’s games, including merchandise, posters and events dedicated to female teams.

“If programs were willing to really invest and make a long-term commitment I think we might be surprised at what we would see,” Osborne said.

There are financial considerations the school has to make, though.

“It would require probably siphoning some of the funding that goes towards men’s athletics off of the programs and into women’s athletics to try to promote those and it is a greater risk,” Osborne said. “With greater support you would also start to get the ability to recruit better athletes.”

Female athletes at Syracuse University continue to thrive year after year. The problem is that many of their peers are not aware of that. SU must take the time and resources to amplify the amount of attention female student athletes receive.

 Alex Battaglia is a freshman newspaper and online journalism major. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at abatta02@syr.edu. She can be followed on Twitter at @alex_battaglia.

Published on November 6, 2019 at 1:18 am