Equal Play name of the game...

The University of Saskatchewan has settled a human rights complaint launched in protest over the equality of the Huskies men's and women's hockey programs.

Hopefully a few Green Dogs followers out there can furnish some background on this story. It all started when a group of U of S women (who were not hockey players) launched a complaint. The gist of it is that the university is now bound to, according to the CP story, "ensure that the funds for student athletic awards and player recruitment are the same for men and women," and employ a "high-performance" coach for the women's team.

Some people will read that and point out the female players aren't as good as the men or don't get the same fan support. Well, true, teams are ultimately judged on wins and losses, but the real aim of collegiate sports is enhancing education and learning. Sports is a sweatiest of the liberal arts, so there should be equal opportunity for female and male athletes; it's no different from an engineering scholarship as far as I'm concerned.

With regard to women's hockey, it faces a challenge to maintain its public profile in Canada beyond the national team. It should be explored how best to change the mindset that the best women's players have to go somewhere such as Mercyhurst or Minnesota-Duluth, where no doubt they get great coaching and educations, but end up being out-of-sight, out-of-mind to casual fans in Canada.
Next PostNewer Post Previous PostOlder Post Home

1 comment:

  1. I disagree that men and women's hockey should be treated equally. I'd wager that at least 5 times more men play hockey than women. Shouldn't funding reflect participation? If there are 60 female hockey players at a university should they get a team and equal funding even when there are 3000 male hockey players? How is it fair that the worst female hockey player gets a scholarship while the last cut from the men's team gets nothing?

    ReplyDelete