Rejection And Discrimination: Females In The NFL

Rejection and Discrimination: Females in the NFL Sportscenter appears on the television in front of you, and with Breaking News: Arizona Cardinals have hired the first female coach. Feelings of joy are rushing throughout your body, but you begin to wonder why it took 100 years for this to happen. Football was invented back in the 1880s, with the NFL being established on August 20th, 1920, but it took until 2017 until the first female was hired as an assistant coach in the NFL. Why did it take over 100 years to hire a female coach in the NFL? Females have been nonexistent within the ranking of the NFL coaching realms up until 2017 because of a lack of knowledge about the game, gender discrimination, and rejection from males within the entire

While females do have leagues of their own such as the IWFL or Independent Women’s Football League, the leagues are not comparable to the NFL or CFL (Canadian Football League). The main difference between the two is the physical and chemical make ups of both the males and female’s bodies. A 30-year-old male can have between 270-1070 ng/dl (Nanograms Per Decilitre), which is a measurement of testosterone. While on average a 30-year-old female will have between 15-70 ng/dl. This gives the male a big advantage in the ability to become bigger, stronger, and faster, which is essential for any football player. This makes it difficult but not impossible for a female to be able to get a chance to play football in the same league or group with all males. In the long run this will present even more challenges for females to secure a job coaching in the NFL, because males with actual NFL experience would be more likely to get hired than a female with experience playing in the

The owners are going to have to be willing to take a chance and make a change, to pave the way for future females in the NFL. The owner may be hesitant because he or she may be afraid that they will receive a lot of backlash from either the fans of the team, the other coaches, or even the players. Owners often would hire a male over a female, with identical applications, to follow the norm, even though this is illegal and known as gender discrimination (Gerdeman 2017).

Males over Females Gender discrimination cannot be stopped because it is nearly impossible to prove in most situations. If you are a female applying for a job, you do not get to see what the other people’s resumes look like. You do not know if you are the most qualified person out of them all, therefore you will not be able to prove that if you do not get hired, it was because of gender discrimination. While some people may say that gender discrimination no longer exists, that is not the case. Over the past 40 years, improvements have been made, but there is still more progress that needs to be done. Females on average make 78 cents on the dollars compared to men (Gerdeman 2017). Females are also highly unlikely to hold a prestigious title such as a CEO; within S&P 500 firm’s males make up 95.2% of CEO’s (Gerdeman 2017). Within the 32 teams that belong to the NFL, only two teams are owned