It’s clear that female athletes do not get the recognition they deserve. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) is seen as less popular and not as worthwhile as the National Basketball Association (NBA), those who watch baseball often don’t give the same respect to softball and the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) gets paid less than the men’s soccer team, despite winning the last two World Cup championships, which occurred in 2015 and 2019. The rarer sports get even less attention.
So, when all kinds of people actually start paying attention to an athlete who is a woman, it’s refreshing.
Simone Biles is one of the most impressive athletes of our generation. She turned heads at the 2016 summer Olympics, winning gold medals for the individual all-around, vault and floor competitions. More recently, she completed a move no one in the history of gymnastics has done before.
On August 11, 2019, at the 2019 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Biles completed a triple-double while performing her floor routine. In the gymnastics world, a triple-double is a triple twist and a double somersault. It is an exciting time for Biles, who is on track to lead the U.S. team in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
After competing, Biles spoke about USA Gymnastics and her anger against the organization for how it handled sexual abuse perpetrated by Larry Nassar.
As someone who usually does not follow gymnastics of any sort—unless the summer Olympics are happening—it made me think about the lack of attention that society gives to athletes who are not males. The type of attention that women athletes get is often more focused on what they cannot do or what they are doing wrong.
The USWNT was criticized for celebrating scoring after eventually defeating Thailand 13-0 in round one of the World Cup title. Yet, just recently, the Cleveland Indians beat the New York Yankees 19-5; the men continued to celebrate one run after another. You could make the argument that it’s not the same situation (it isn’t even the same sport), but I suspect that if women were the root of that celebration and that win, everyone would have been discussing it with a different perspective.
We should be paying more attention to the athletes who wow us every four years. They can put us in awe of their talent more often than we may recognize. The WNBA league runs from May to September (when people often complain about the lack of sports available to watch on television). The USWNT plays games other than those of the World Cup. Simone Biles competes during times that aren’t the Olympics. Perhaps it’s time we start paying attention.