Women In The Work Force

While doing my junior theme research, I came across a statistic that really shocked me. Part of my research is the number of women working in the athletic departments of schools versus the number of men doing the same thing. I came across an article from the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administration (NACWAA). In this article they say that "women occupy five of 120 athletic-director positions in Division I-A".

This seems absurd to me. From what I calculated based on the above statistic, 4% of the athletic directors in Division I-A are women, while the remaining 96% are men. That is so uneven. It is not even close. This proves that athletics are a department almost completely dominated by men. Men clearly run the show when it comes to collegiate athletics, which is possibly one of the reasons that colleges fund men's sports much more than they fund women's sports. The money goes man to man, and women are put at a disadvantage.

This is something that is prevalent in all aspects of society today, not just sports. There are much fewer women CEO's in the work force than their are men. Men still statistically make more money than women, with women making 77 cents to every dollar a man makes (Time). It seems to be a common theme, which leads me to believe that although the feminist movement has come very far in the past decades, there is still much more work to be done to gain equality between the genders in the work force.

The Research Process: A Warning

As I continue my junior theme, I have come to the realization that many aspects of the research process are very challenging. Also, I have come to find that although the internet is a huge blessing, as it gives us immediate access to endless amounts of information, it can also be a curse. Teachers have always told me that the internet can be a big black hole, and can suck you into it to the point where you are no longer looking at valid information, however I never really realized how accurate they were until this point in my research process.

When researching my why question, Why do men's sports get significantly more funding than women's sports?, I came across many different articles and statistics, many of which directly contradicted each other. I really had to pay attention to what sites I was getting my information for, as I realized it was often hard to judge whether or not information I found was valid.

One tip I found for research through this process: always go through a database or somewhere you know will link you to valid articles, do NOT just type in a few words into google. Google does not sort it's results by validity, so the first hit could be a totally random website. Always, always, always start from a place that you know will give you valid results. Oftentimes schools have links to valid starting points, just like the New Trier Library does.

So, I guess this blog is less of an informational piece of writing, and serves more as a warning. From my experiences in the past few weeks, what I cover in this blog is probably the best piece of advice I can offer anybody doing research on something.