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Women's B-Ball
"Since women in the WNBA don’t get paid much, a lot of female basketball players chose to go overseas instead"
By Nialah Charles
April 15, 2007
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Since elementary school, Youth Radio's Nialah Charles has loved playing basketball with the boys. But after shifting to middle school where teams were no longer co-ed, she's realized basketball fans perfer to see men play rather than women.
Outside of the recent Don Imus scandal, you rarely hear anything about women’s basketball. And you’d never hear those comments about a winning men’s basketball team.
Ever since the third grade, I’ve loved basketball, even when I was the only girl on the court. I never thought of basketball as a “girls’ sport” until middle school, when the leagues became separated by gender. Now that I’m in high school, our women’s team (who won state champions two years in a row) gets almost as much respect as the boys. Still, whenever I show up at a girl’s game, the bleachers are only half full.
It’s the same in the professional sports world too. The standards for men and women are completely lopsided.
Since women in the WNBA don’t get paid much, a lot of female basketball players chose to go overseas instead.
As I continue my journey to become a professional basketball player, I hope this double standard begins to change, so I can live my dream at home.
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