TED Outline Format

Oral Content

Topic: Women in sports

Purpose: Why women’s participation in sports is important and things that need to change in order to foster more participation and craft a better society

Thesis Statement: Sports participation is important because it fosters better mental health and the push for equality in other fields, however, the inequalities that exist in pay, resources, and media coverage are hindering participation and this needs to be fixed.

Introduction

By the age of 14, girls are dropping out of sports at a rate 2 times higher than boys. This is a puzzling statistic, considering women and men are supposed to be given equal opportunity to compete since the passing of Title XI. However, when you really look at it, there are still extreme disparities that are affecting young girls’ decisions to pursue sports, and these need to be eliminated. 

 

Body

I. Main Idea – Sports offer implications beyond the ones seen on the surface, and girls participating in athletics is important.

A. Sports improve mental health, body image, and self-confidence.

• A longitudinal study revealed that teens who participated in sports “reported less depressive and stress symptoms” across the next five years of their lives after competing
• A recent study revealed that 90% of girls that participated in team sports reported that their involvement had a positive effect on their self-esteem

B. The movement of women in sports inspires equality in other male-dominated aspects of society

• In 1970 women made up only 8% of all STEM workers, and now represent 27% of employees in those fields as of 2019
• In 2018, only 4% of top movie directors were female, and in 2020, that representation increased to 16%

 

II. Main Idea – In order for women to be more inclined to participate in sports, and garner higher respect in society for female athletes, the disparities in pay, resources, and media coverage for female athletes need to be eliminated.

A. The WNBA salary on average is $73,738 and is considerably lower than the average NBA salary of $8,264,922. However, when comparing the profit of the organizations, it is observed that the WNBA achieves $60 million in revenue compared to the NBA’s $8 billion (Baker).

• Out of all commercial investments in the sports industry, only 3% of them are invested in women’s sports programs, despite data that reveals that 84% of sports fans are interested in women’s sports. *possibility to diminish pay gap*
• While 40% of sports participation are female, they only receive 4% of media coverage.

 

III. Main Idea – ​​The implications of a world in which men and women are given equality in athletics could be far greater than what is seen thus far, and this possibility could be extremely beneficial to society as a whole.

 

Conclusion

I hope that we can come together as a community to recognize that the disparities women face in sports are an issue that needs to be addressed. The future little female athletes of our country deserve it.

 

Slides I could include: