A few weeks ago I attended a football game here on campus and noticed many things that brought more of my attention to issues affecting women. This event opened my eyes to many different challenges that women face on a daily basis, as well as out at a sporting event. The first and foremost thing that opened my eyes and that I am going to talk about now is the lines for women’s bathrooms. Every football game, concert, music festival, or any other sports game that I have gone to I have seen that the lines to women’s restrooms are much longer than that of the mens restroom, but this game I experienced it in a different way. This started because I went to go to the bathroom with my girlfriend and my aunt. Lucky for me, there were only a few guys in line for the men’s restroom. Unlucky for them, there was a line of at least 50 other women waiting just outside their restroom. This line almost even wrapped all the way around to the men’s restroom. However, this wasnt even the worst part… I had already finished using the restroom and by the time I came back out they had only moved up about five spots. I found it absurd knowing that the line took that long. After asking my girlfriend and doing a little bit of research this makes way more sense why.
Women have a lot more needs on a per trip basis to fill than men. Such as any possible menstrual needs that they need to take care of, as well as checking on their outfits, their hair and usually even their makeup. The line being as long as it was did not reflect solely on the women in those lines but the lines are attributed to the lack of sufficient stalls along with other quality improvements that should be done for women. The men’s restroom does not take an all consuming amount of time because for every one stall, there are also three to four urinals.
Not only did I notice their struggles with the restroom, I had also overheard during the game some of the guys around me talking down to a few different girls due to their lack of knowledge of the game. This is not at all their fault, women are typically not as exposed to the game of football as most guys are. Still, anyways, these guys would turn around and talk to their friends about how their question was dumb or that they should already know that. How can I as a man expect a woman to understand something that I am not even willing to explain to her? This got me thinking about what else women might be going through during football games and even in the industry itself. Women are under-represented. This leaves the door mostly closed for any women who might want to be getting into the game as a fan or as a potential career since there are no role models for them to look up to. It does not help that a platform like this could possibly lead to sexualization from the vast male audience of the sport. A lot of men end up seeing women in sports as cheerleaders and do not give them the same respect that they would give a male reporter. I don’t think this lack of respect would stop there. We already know there is a wage gap in America, but in the Women’s Football Alliance, which is a football league for women, their average salary is 58,000 compared to the males average salary of almost 3 million as of 2022.
We need to make some changes for women. They deserve the comfort we men get in sports..
ShoutOut! James Madison University 