As season revs up, college basketball tiptoes toward gender equity
As conference play gets ready to kick off, college basketball is at an inflection point.
After last year’s March Madness fiasco, when disparities between the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments ignited a firestorm on social media, those in positions of power took the first steps during the off season to right the wrongs that were cast into broad daylight on the game’s biggest stage.
For the Big Ten Conference, one of those steps included the recent hiring of Megan Kahn as its first vice president of women’s basketball. Kahn was appointed to the first senior-level position in Big Ten to develop a strategy to strengthen, enhance and expand the women’s game.
And to further illustrate its new approach, during the Big Ten's annual basketball media day in October, the women’s and men’s teams for the first time appeared on the same stage, in the same venue and at the same time.
“We will continually be leaders in the industry to promote diversity, equity and inclusion from a race standpoint, a gender standpoint, sexual orientation,” Kevin Warren, the Big Ten's commissioner, told reporters that day. “We will create an environment that is inclusive and that will empower every person to have an opportunity to be successful in the Big Ten.”
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As an outspoken advocate for equity through her work with WeCOACH, a nonprofit dedicated to develop women’s coaches, Kahn is uniquely positioned to take on this task. Kahn has also managed game operations for the 2015 and 2019 NCAA women’s Final Fours in Tampa, was a collegiate conference administrator, and is a former women’s college basketball coach.
“Big Ten women’s basketball is trending in an extremely positive direction, making this an ideal time to join our student-athletes, coaches, fans and the whole Big Ten community in taking our sport to new heights,” Kahn said recently. “We are at a critical inflection point nationally, not only in women’s basketball, but when it comes to gender equity as a whole, and I believe the Big Ten is uniquely positioned to make impactful change in this area.”
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Although Kahn’s hiring could ignite change in the Big Ten, there is still plenty to be done. That much was outlined in the gender equity reports released by Kaplan Hecker & Fink, the law firm retained by the NCAA to conduct an external review of the gender equity issues in the wake of the March Madness backlash last year.
The outrage in March began after University of Oregon forward Sedona Prince shared a TikTok video comparing the fully outfitted weight room at the men's tournament venue with the meager weight rack the women were supplied. The post quickly went viral, leading to a public outcry, with some of the most prolific figures in sports demanding change — even after the NCAA set up a new weight room inside the women's bubble overnight, and vowed to do better. More college coaches and athletes began sharing similar accounts of the disparities.
The gender equity reports, released in two phases, outlined a grim reality — the NCAA significantly undervalued women’s sports, and prioritized men’s basketball “over everything else, contributing to gender inequity.” The second report, which examined gender equity in NCAA championships other than basketball, revealed the NCAA spends more on average on male athletes than female ones. With each report, the law firm offered a slew of recommendations for the NCAA to consider.
So far, the NCAA has made good on several of those recommendations.
March Madness for all
Beginning this season, the term “March Madness” will be used for the marketing and branding for both the NCAA Division I women’s and men’s basketball tournaments. Previously, the marketing was exclusive to the men’s tournament. A new budget format was also implemented for the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments this year.
The NCAA also announced that the women’s basketball tournament would expand to a 68-team field, up from 64, starting this season. The men’s tournament expanded to 68 teams in 2011. Nina King, chair of the Division I Women's Basketball Committee and director of athletics at Duke, said in a statement about the expansion: "This was another important step in providing additional championship participation opportunities for women's basketball student-athletes."
One of the more controversial recommendations was the proposal to hold a joint Final Four beginning in 2027, with the men’s and women’s championships being held on the same weekend and in the same city on a test basis "for a number of years." The sites for the Final Fours through 2026 are already secured.
"This will require careful planning and implementation," the report outlined, "but in light of the structure of the NCAA’s existing broadcast and sponsorship contracts, it is the only realistic way to obtain the same or similar level of corporate sponsorship and promotional synergies at the women’s championship, which is essential to the student-athlete experience."
This winter season has the potential to be the first step in a steady crawl towards gender equity in collegiate athletics. However, there is still a long way to go. Warren, whose hiring in 2019 as the first African American commissioner was considered a significant step toward inclusion in college sports, concluded his remarks on the Big Ten media stage saying as much.
“We are coming up on fifty years since the passage of Title IX, that provided women the opportunity to compete from an athletic standpoint,” Warren said. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but we have so much progress left to make.”
Melanie Anzidei is a reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: anzidei@northjersey.com
Twitter: @melanieanzidei
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: College basketball tiptoes toward gender equity as season revs up
