Women Athletes: The Fight for Equality

Elijah H. Reasor

Petrusa

American Literature 3rd

8 February 2016

Women Athletes: The Fight for Equality

As a kid most people make up their dreams based off of things they like. Imagine that as a kid, not only do you have a dream in mind, but also that you aspire to be good while you are young so that once you get older you will be more seasoned. Most people are brought up on equality and that if you set your mind out to do something you can achieve it no matter what. What is equality? Webster describes Equality as, “the quality or state of being equal; the quality or state of having the same rights, social status, etc.,” which means that no matter of age, sex, race, etc., people should be treated equal. Now, imagine that those dreams that you aspire in are took away from you because of your gender. 12-year-old Maddy Baxter was kicked off her football team from her school. She was a sixth grader and a First String Defensive Tackle at a Christian School in Georgia. School officials took her off the roster for several reasons one of which was that the boys might have impure thoughts about her (Fox News). Women should be able to play male sports, if they meet the same requirements that males have to meet, because not only does it fall in line with the American dream, which states that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative; Also it is very logical for someone to want/have the “best-man” for the job, even if the “best-man” is a woman.

The American dream, according to James Truslow Adams in a book he wrote called .The Epic of America, is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." (p.214-215). If that is the case then why do women have to fight so hard for equality. African Americans were slaves to the colonies and also discriminated because of their pigment, and yet Amendment XIV allows all men ”… the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States…”(Constitution), but it doesn’t mention anything about women. Women do not get the right to vote until the nineteenth amendment. women also used to get paid 59 ₵for everydollar a male earned.