Women’s basketball doesn’t need nets lowered, it needs equal respect

Women’s basketball deserves your respect and the game doesn’t need to change in order to get some equal treatment to their male counterparts.

As a former Division 1 athlete who happens to be a woman, I’m exhausted by the current news cycle.

Last Thursday, the NCAA women’s college basketball tournament in San Antonio looked like the Fyre Fest of college sports, while the men’s tournament, although imperfect, looked more like Coachella in comparison. From discrepancies in swag bag gear, workout equipment, food quality, and COVID test frequency, the NCAA missed the mark when planning the women’s tournament. And although the NCAA has since remedied the situation (thanks to generous equipment donations from Dick’s Sporting Goods), the whole situation was an oversight at best and a slap in the face at worst.

Whenever sexism in sports receives significant airtime, I hear the same stale responses over and over again, and the past few days have been no different. For example, the “women generate less revenue than men, so they should get fewer benefits,” argument is popular, but it’s also a lazy take. Yes, female athletes generate less revenue than male athletes, but they also receive significantly less marketing resources and media exposure opportunities, so it’s not really a fair comparison.

There’s also the ludicrous “women don’t lift weights” rebuttal that’s not only sexist but patently false. But for me, the response that’s most likely to set me off is “If women would lower the nets, then women’s basketball would be more popular.”

At first glance, the logic here looks innocuous: Basketball fans love dunks. Female basketball players are, on average, shorter than men, and therefore, it’s harder for them to dunk on a 10-foot rim. Lowering the nets would up the entertainment factor of women’s basketball by making it easier for women to dunk. More dunking equals more fans equals more revenue, which is good for women’s basketball. Everybody wins, right?

Women’s basketball lowering the nets is not the answer, it’s problematic

It’s not that simple, and before I explain why lowering the nets is a hot-button take for me, I’d like to offer a few disclaimers.

First, I want to make it clear that although I am mostly addressing men in this piece, I understand that not all male sports fans are sexist (I actually think that the sports bros who comment “make me a sandwich” on women’s sport-centric social media posts are just a loud, persistent minority). I know plenty of guys who would watch a college softball game over a major league baseball game or who know more about women’s golf, soccer, and tennis than I do, and I take care to acknowledge that before I dig into sexism in sports.

Second, not all WNBA players bristle at the thought of lowering the nets. While Phoenix Mercury veteran Diana Taurasi called lowering the nets “degrading” and in response to the question, replied “[You] might as well put us in skirts and back in the kitchen,” Elena Delle Donne doesn’t mind the idea. The Washington Mystics forward has tweeted her support, saying “Lowering the rim isn’t just about ‘the dunk.’ Its [sic] about the future of the game,” implying that women’s basketball needs to evolve with the times.

Delle Donne compared lowering the nets to handicaps in women’s golf and lowered nets for female volleyball players, pointing out adaptations that already exist for women athletes.

While those are fair comparisons, it’s also worth noting that nobody is suddenly asking women golfers to tee off with the men, nor are we raising volleyball nets so those athletes can mimic the men’s game, so it can be frustrating to see this demand being placed on women basketball players. Back in 2017, Los Angeles Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike was asked about lowering the nets and explained this dynamic perfectly. “I’m so glad you asked that question,” Ogwumike said to the audience member who inquired about it, “because this is probably one of the most offensive questions you can ask a WNBA player.”

She then went on to say it’s “not logical” for people to ask WNBA players to play with lowered nets so they can dunk more because “we’re constantly being compared to men. We have people excelling with a 10-foot rim, and now you want us to lower the rim so we can continually be compared.”

That’s a mic drop.

“Increase dunking in women’s basketball” is a tempting proposition, but it’s problematic. First, saying that lowering the nets in women’s basketball would make the game more entertaining is inherent, although likely unintentionally, sexist. When people demand that female basketball players dunk more often to make the game more exciting, the subtext, as Ogwumike suggests, is: the women’s game is inferior and women need to play more like men to be worthy of respect.

That’s absurd, and we don’t see this type of gendered standards placed on other female athletes— nobody is asking softball pitchers to throw overhand or female gymnasts to hop on pommel horses to make their sports more entertaining. Why should professional basketball players have to adjust their basic shooting mechanics to, in the words of Ogwumike, “appease people who don’t want to watch [women’s basketball] for what it is.”

Second, from a logistics standpoint, lowering the nets for women would be a nightmare, and it would set the sport back decades by decreasing access to female athletes. Consider the nets at your local high school gym or your favorite college arena. Are they adjustable? What about the nets at your local park? Can you flip a switch to lower them, or would you have to replace them completely to accommodate a nine-foot height standard?

Dunking can’t fix misogyny.

I don’t have statistics about the adjustability of basketball rims in the U.S., but if a sizable chunk of these nets is fixed at 10 feet, changing the height of the women’s rim would require major infrastructure overhauls across the sports industry. Rural and lower-income communities would likely not be able to afford to build new courts or installing adjustable nets that could accommodate both men’s and women’s heights.

Some colleges with big budgets might be able to shoulder the cost, while others won’t be able to afford it, (and the ones who do would likely be criticized for taking those dollars away from men’s sports).

Finally, lowering the nets wouldn’t erase the pervasive sexism in American sports culture. The brand of male sports fans who demand that women athletes “get back in the kitchen” isn’t automatically going to become women’s basketball fans just because those athletes are dunking more often.

In fact, the kind of guys who suggest that female college basketball players are “JV” are more likely to offer responses like “Of course she can dunk — the rim is only nine feet,” or “Hell, my 10-year-old son could dunk on that rim. Blindfolded.”

Dunking can’t fix misogyny, and sexist men respond negatively to female athletes because women who thrive in hyper-masculine spaces like competitive sports push the boundaries of conventional femininity, and are, therefore, often construed as threats to the industry.

We hear the spirit of this attitude when folks argue that Title IX “robs” male college athletes of opportunities (in spite of the fact that Title IX goes both ways and benefits male athletes as well), or that televising women’s sports “steals” airtime from men’s sports (even though women’s sports only receive two percent of total airtime on SportsCenter), or that female football referees take jobs from “more qualified” men (even though there are currently only two female refs in the NFL). If guys who already feel threatened by women in sports feel even more insecure by watching women get paid to dunk a basketball, it actually might make things worse.

So suffice it to say, I’m firmly on team “leave the nets alone,” because lowering them wouldn’t get to the heart of the problem in women’s sports: they are woefully under-resourced and under-respected. Resource scarcity is obvious at the college level, as according to the NCAA’s most recent financial report, women college athletes only receive 18 percent of operating budgets, 41 percent of scholarship funds, and 29 percent of recruiting dollars at the FBS level.

This year’s women’s tournament also proved that female college athletes simply aren’t respected as their male counterparts. Contrary to popular belief, March Madness doesn’t fall under Title IX because the NCAA runs the tournament, and the NCAA (believe it or not), is a nonprofit organization, not a federally-funded entity. Thus, the discrepancy of resources we saw last week proves if it wasn’t for Title IX on college campuses, it’s unlikely that universities would fund women’s sports at all.

Lowering the nets would increase the overt sexism in sports culture

We see this same lack of respect in the WNBA as well.

Although the WNBA’s personal branding is excellent, as evidenced in its brilliant orange hoodie campaign that made the flashy jacket a bestseller, it still seems like networks doubt the potential of women’s sports to thrive. Statistics vary, but most suggest that women’s sports only receive six-nine percent of total airtime on major networks. We’re talking all televised women’s sports, not just the WNBA. Imagine the outrage that would ensue if men’s sports received that kind of coverage.

It’s impossible for any league to grow without exposure, and media exposure has been proven to work — this last summer, ESPN expanded its coverage of WNBA games, and as a result, viewership grew 68 percent in the middle of a pandemic, while the NHL, NBA, and MLB all experienced double-digit decreases in viewership. Even an inaugural league, like Athletes Unlimited, a new professional softball league that debuted in the summer of 2020, post promising numbers largely thanks to social media: AU garnered 3.9 million viewers over the course of its six week season even though games were only aired on ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN3. Imagine what it could have done (and can do in the future) with more coverage.

Women’s sports are marketable. They just need more than a minimal effort from sports media, and we’re not asking for much. Experts project that allocating 12-18 percent of total airtime to women’s sports and improving the quality of such coverage could reap massive returns for women’s leagues.

That’s a pretty low bar, and it would do a lot more for female athletes than lowering the nets.