March 29, 2017

Professor says women’s hockey pay settlement sad commentary

Cheryl Cooky Cheryl Cooky Download image

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Professor Cheryl Cooky believes the U.S. women’s hockey team agreement for equal treatment and pay is a big moment in sports. But she also calls it too long in coming.

“It is a sad commentary on the state of gender equity in the workplace and, specifically, in sports that in 2017 - the year of the 45th anniversary of Title IX - that women must still fight for basic rights like equal pay,” said the associate professor in Purdue University’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts.

“We should celebrate the bravery and determination of U.S. women’s hockey for its willingness to stand up for equality and to fight injustice.” she said. “This very activism signals the ways in which female athletes are now empowered to speak out against inequality. In the past, many female athletes would have been reluctant to do so for fear of losing out on opportunities to participate. And, in fact, many women just were grateful to have the opportunity and did not want to ‘rock the boat,’ so to speak, for fear of being perceived as ungrateful. Now, thanks to Title IX, girls and women athletes have an expectation that will have opportunities to participate and that their participation will be equitable to that of their male counterparts.”

The women’s team reached agreement with USA Hockey on Tuesday. The agreement includes equitable travel and insurance programs, a pool of year-end prize money and a monthly training stipend. Cooky’s research and teaching involves gender and sexuality in sport, gender in media and popular culture, feminism in popular culture, and feminist theory.

“I would also say that the mainstreaming of feminism is a factor here,” Cooky added. “Increasingly women are speaking out about gender inequality. The popularity of Sheryl Sandburg’s ‘Lean In’ illustrates the point. And famous actresses and pop stars are speaking out against wage discrimination relative to their male counterparts in the entertainment industry.”

Cooky wrote a white paper in 2016 on a similar topic with U.S. Women’s Soccer. She is the co-author of “It’s Dude Time: A Quarter Century of Excluding Women’s Sports in Televised News and Highlight Shows.” 

Writer: Howard Hewitt, 765-494-9451, hhewitt@purdue.edu 

Source: Cheryl Cooky, 765-496-2857, ccooky@purdue.edu

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