Female Athletic Trainer

I was raised in a home with no gender roles. Both of my parents cooked meals, did laundry, did their farm chores, and cleaned the house. They both thought that everyone needed to pull their own weight despite their gender. That’s the reason why I would be out on the farm, until the day I left for college, stacking bales of hay, herding cattle, and driving the tractor. That is why I believe in gender equality. My father never thought that my ability to do work was hindered by my gender. In fact, he thought the exact opposite. So, that’s why, during the summer before fifth grade, I didn’t know how to respond when a boy told me, “Girls can’t play football.” My ten year old brain could not wrap itself around the words coming out of his mouth.

I met the same conclusions then as when I was doing research today. As one article stated, “Within Division I athletics, women hold 46.4% of graduate assistant and 47% of assistant athletic trainer positions, yet only 18.8% of head athletic trainer positions” (Burton, 2012, p. 304). That fact only displays the results for female athletic trainers in Division I college athletics. The gap gets increasingly wider when examining female athletic trainers in professional male sports. Another article, describing those circumstances stated, “52% of women made up the National Athletic Trainer’s Association but more male sport teams have male athletic trainers on their staff…Sue Falsone was the first female head athletic trainer in professional male sports. She worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2011…” (Graf, 2014, p. 3). The first female athletic trainer in any male professional sport hadn’t emerged until 2011, a mere four years ago. NFL and NBA have each had at least one female athletic trainer emerge in the last four years, but NHL has yet to have a female athletic trainer (Graf, 2014, p. 3). Upon, discovering this news for the first time it was still as shocking as rediscovering it today. That first moment of discovery at age fifteen was when I realized my central belie. That was when I discovered I was a feminist that believed in gender equality. Now, I truly mean that to

This belief can stem from many fears of the unknown, and the fact that our society does not like change in general. Some people could fear straying from tradition. These people could fear what would happen if women were no longer the sole caregivers and men were no longer the sole breadwinner. An article discusses the fear others have as stated, “Institutional resistance to feminist approaches, stemming in part from a fear that demands for gender equality would require power redistribution” (Calkin, 2015, p. 297). This article implied that in order for us to gain gender equality, the men at the top of our society think they would have to relinquish power. So, this is another thing stopping certain individuals from believing in gender equality. However, looking at the problems that have already been discussed, how could one not believe in gender