Gender in Sports
History of women in the sport started back in the 19th century, where at the end of the century, upper-class women were enjoying horseback riding, tennis, golf, skating, and skiing. Second Olympic Games n 1900 was the first time for female athletes to participate in modern Olympic Games. In the ancient and first modern Olympic Games, men were the only people who could participate in the games. In the second Olympic Games, 12 female manage to participate in the games out of 1066 athletes across 19 countries globally (International Olympic Committee). The twelve female participated only in two events that are golf and tennis. The interest of women to participate in games manages to grow, and in St. Louis 3rd Olympic became women's event entirely. Figure skating and tennis ultimately became women's event in the 4th London Olympic, and the 5th Olympic, diving swimming and tennis join the list of women events in Olympic Games (Hargreaves, 2002) . Men who were operating the Olympic Games were the decision makers whether to include the women to participate in Olympic.
In Japan, for example, girls in high schools started playing tennis and swimming in the 1920s. The number of events that girls participated increased to baseball, volleyball, basketball, track, and even swimming by 1926. During this time, Japan manages to establish Japan Women's Sports Federation to ensure that female has a chance to participate in international completions. During all this period, boys and girls use to attend separate physical education classes but until 1989 when the government managed to revise courses of study and enable both boys and girls to attend the same physical education classes.
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Movements towards encouraging women's sports have been rising all over the world and particularly in Canada, the United States, and even Australia (Hartmann-Tews, 2003) . International Working Group (IWG) is one of the independent bodies that empower women to participate in sports and ensure that women have an international conference focusing on games every four years. In the meeting, discussions revolve around issues that women face when it comes to sports and also announces and declares strategic plans that aim at improving the state of female athletes worldwide. In recent days, the female is performing very well in some events that male counterpart has been dominating for centuries, for example, soccer and baseball.
When one focuses on women's sports history, it is possible to notice that the gap between men and women is significantly reducing. Female athletes are showing that the difference between the two genders is diminishing won for instance in the Beijing Olympics, the 25 medals that Japan manages to win 12 of them. However, there are still some issues that hold women back when it comes to sports for instance female faces challenges when it comes to raising families and at the same time participating in sports making it hard to balance the two demanding task on the hands of the women in sports.
There is also another issue when it comes to gender in sport, and that is the difference in payment between male and women sport where men athletes seem to receive more pay in comparison to women athlete. Most people argue that the difference in WNBA and NBA payment is because WNBA is not making more profits in comparison to the NBA forcing them to receive less pay (Lisec, 2012) . Other people justify that situation by saying that WNBA has lower entertainment value in comparison to NBA and therefore most of the people are not willing to watch the sports in TV forcing WNBA players to receive less pay because fewer people will subscribe to it. Some of the fans argue that women's basketball is not entertaining in comparison to that of men because it has lower flashy handles and ducks. In general, the main reason to why there is a discrepancy in payment between the WNBA and NBA is the difference in the profits that the two teams receive and it determines the amount of salary a player gets.
References
Hargreaves, J. (2002). Sporting females: Critical issues in the history and sociology of women's sport. Routledge.
Hartmann-Tews, I. &. (2003). Sport and women: Social issues in international perspective. Psychology Press.
Lisec, J. &. (2012). Gender inequality in the new millennium: An analysis of WNBA representations in sport . Journal of Sports Media, 7(2) , 153-178.
