2016: The Year of the Female Athlete

By Sierra Trujillo

When you search “top female athletes” on Google, up pops page after page of “25 Hottest Female Athletes”, “Best Looking Female Athletes” and “Sexiest Women in Sports” as results. Isn’t that disgusting? That’s the world we live in, where the same search including the word male instead results in pages of “Fittest Men in Sports”, “10 best males athletes in the world” and “50 greatest male athletes of all time.” Ranking men’s bodies is present, but scattered throughout your search, whereas judging a female athlete based on her looks alone is the majority of results and articles.
And why? After the past year in sports, are we still not able to appreciate female athletes and their contributions to their sports, regardless of what they look like? It’s not going out on a limb to say that 2016 was “The Year of the Female Athlete.”
There was no bigger stage in 2016 than that of the Rio Summer Olympics. Despite the hype of Michael Phelps returning, the American women actually tallied more gold medals that the men, just in case you were wondering. Simone Biles, along with the rest of the Final Five, stole the show throughout the few days that they competed on the gymnastics floor, tallying nine medals between them all. There wasn’t a day of the Olympics where the American women’s gymnastics team was not highlighted or congratulated after winning the team gold.
There was also Katie Ledecky who made her mark (wake?) in the swimming pool, with four gold medals and one silver, along with two world records set. Kerri Walsh-Jennings and her partner April Ross defeated Brazil in the bronze-medal match of beach volleyball.
Also part of the Olympics, but more impressive because of what they did off the pitch, is the US Women’s National Soccer Team. Few teams can even aspire to be in the same conversation as the USWNT, which has won three World Cups, most recently in 2015, and four Olympic gold medals. But away from the pitch, the women’s soccer team has been fighting with their employer, U.S. Soccer Federation, for equal pay. The team filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March of 2016, claiming that “Our compensation pales in comparison to that of the [Men’s National Team] players given that the women and the men perform the same job duties; have jobs that require equal skill, effort and responsibilities; and perform our jobs under similar working conditions.”
Laid out in the complaint were the differences in pay between the men’s and women’s US national soccer teams, which shows, in just one example, that if the men were to lose all of their friendly games, they would still make $1,000 more than if the women won all of their friendly games. The women are tired of playing obviously better, in front of larger crowds and earning more titles (and money for their employer) than the men’s team, and it’s encouraging to see them standing up for what they rightly deserve.
All these examples and we haven’t even gotten to Serena Williams yet, who is arguably one of the greatest athletes of all time. Notice I left out “female” in that statement; that’s not a mistake. Williams has a total of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, and 14 Grand Slams doubles titles with her sister Venus; she has absolutely dominated the tennis court, overpowering almost any opponent who tries to get between her and a title finish. She has been dominant in the sport since the beginning of time, continually solidifying her status as one of the all-time greats.
There is a lot to look forward to in 2017: Will the Cubs repeat as World Champions? Will the Cowboys win their first Superbowl since who knows when? (1996) How will the Warriors fair in the playoffs after last year’s stunning Finals loss? But, more importantly, what will female athletes do next to continue to exceed our expectations?