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

NCAA vs. AIAWWomen have faced an uphill contest throughout the history of sports whether it is to be able to compete in sports, to make headway equal funding for programs, to have access to facilities, or a routine of other obstacles that have been thrown in their ways. Women have had to organize and execute their own sports building 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, ofttimes only when they are successful enough to stand alone on their own.When female athletes wanted to participate in tournaments and intercollegiate play they had to miscellanea 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 1972, and witha l harder to make it the successful league it eventually became. The AIAW gained corporate sponsors and television insurance coverage of their national championship and also catapulted womens basketball into the forefront of play worldwide. In 1976, just four years after the formation of the AIAW, womens basketball de besidesed 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 gentle IX was passed, giving female athletes a huge 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 mutation 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 t his new athletic department had double 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. priapic 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.