AN ARTICLE THAT FILLS A MUCH-NEEDED GAP: Women appear in only 5 percent of sports newsprint. But would a higher percentage actually be appropriate?

The sports page is read primarily by men, who are probably interested in keeping up on water cooler topics (male athletic events, not female ones) and perhaps even on athletic achievements generally, which are dominated by men. Women aren’t even a close second, because they lag behind even boys:

These two links show two sets of track and field records. This one is for female world record holders and this one is for U.S. amateur high school boys.

The boys win in every category… by a wide margin. And those are just high-school age male children in one country that has about 5% of the world’s population, compared to the best adult female athletes in the entire world.

Let’s allow that to sink in for a moment… The fastest female athletes in the world – professionals who have received years of the best coaching and equipment money can buy, cannot even come close to the best efforts of amateur U.S. high school boys in after-school programs.

Remember when the U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team lost to a high school boys’ team? Maybe there should be more articles about those sorts of events. Y’know, so female athletes can get more exposure.