Gender Inequality In Hockey

It is evident that equality and equity between genders, males and females, has had its struggles. This struggle to promote fairness has been expressed through various mouvements such as from the suffragettes emerging in the late 20th and early 21st century, and the recent He for She movement to bring both genders to work together as one. Despite these efforts, in the hockey world, male domination inhibits female athletic success to reach such high level. This is displayed through history, funds and media.
Earlier times imposed that women work less on their athleticism. Moreover, women were restricted to limited choices of sports, and were offered to activities that were seen as more ‘graceful’. Inevitably, questioning if women can be “aggressive…

As more women begin to exercise hockey from the 70’s and onwards, these women had to obtain facilities from the community, but it wasn’t easily granted to them. In Williams, Women’s Hockey: A Heated Debate describes the issues experienced by a female hockey player by the name of Blainey. Blainey depicts that, comparing to her brother, whom also plays hockey, the girl’s team had restricted and inconvenient times and the locations provided for them to practise were set far out of their community. Furthermore, “the quality” of their resources was not effective to succeed in this sport. This issue has been difficult to resolve because the one in power of these hockey organizations were primarily males, and they were set to traditional views. It was believed that boys needed more ice time since they had a potential in entering the National Hockey League (NHL), which would put up an excellent national image. Moreover, males believed that women couldn’t handle the three periods of twenty minutes that was allocated in a game of hockey, therefore women were dispensed shorter game time. Additionally, they believed that women would not be capable of ‘bodychecking’, portraying them as weak individuals physically and mentally. Blainey brought this issue to the court expressing her Human 's Rights code and she was approved by the judge to get the organization to invest time into

The most clear evidence of the inequality between women and men hockey players refers back to the resources provided to a ‘quality’ career and training, which is clearly portrayed by money. In the Women’s Hockey League, a mere budget of 1.8 million dollars is set. When compared to a man’s salary in the Hockey League, it is equivalent to a year salary for that player. This concludes that the budget that runs a female league is less to a man’s annual salary, and for the men it can got up to a couple of million dollars every year. Arguably, women have as much success as men, especially during the Olympics. Sadly, this is due to the fact that many women players take maternity leaves, or like Wickenheiser they have constant guilt that can’t be contained from being separated from their family, which is implemented by the years and years of traditional woman 's role. Thus, it induces less sponsorships for women hockey teams, which provides less income to the teams. Consequently, women decide to practice another career, such as Wickenheiser who is considering to study medicine, because it is less time consuming as hockey players train on most days and travel as well for long distances and days (Macdonald 2010 and Mack).
In all, there is still unresolved issues between men and women in sports. This is due to the traditional gender role that has been applied in a society for centuries, and it is fairly recent that the modern view of equality was adopted. Nonetheless, the efforts