Concerned about equity in Women's Collegiate Sports Scholarships? The place to begin is not with the handful of trans girls playing on their school's teams, because the reality is playing on HS teams doesn't lead to scholarships, playing on expensive travel teams does. (1/10) https://twitter.com/Forbes/status/1359203549050245123

Sports such as Fencing, Golf, Lacrosse, Gymnastics, Ice Hockey, Skiing, Rifle, Swimming, Squash, Water Polo, Rowing, Equestrian, and Field Hockey all field scholarship-granting teams at Universities but few (if any) of these sports are played in public HS. They are played (2/10)

...at Elite Private Schools or competed in exclusively in private clubs and teams. All of them have a very high financial barrier to entry and success in all these sports is tied to expensive private coaching and expensive elite travel teams. (3/10)

Even your more traditional girl's HS sports: Softball, Tennis, Track, Volleyball, and Basketball, your performance on your school's team is secondary to your performance at Elite Summer Camps and Summer Leagues. It's common for HS players to skip their school's season...(4/10)

...to stay healthy for their private team's season.

The presence of all this money in youth sports creates a highly unequal playing field...and forces youth without the financial resources out of sports (5/10). https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/meritocracy-killing-high-school-sports/597121/

If we look at NCAA Div 1 (FBS) for 2019, 11.8% of female scholarship athletes were Black.

Twice as many (25.4%) male scholarship athletes were Black.

The difference? Football. A sport exclusively played in schools and typically well-funded by the community. (6/10)

Here's that citation (7/10) https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/diversity-research

Title 9 mandates that universities provide equal numbers of scholarships to male and female athletes. Because football requires so many scholarships, colleges and universities compensate by having more women's sports. (8/10)

But these women's sports tend to be of the Equestrian, Fencing, and Gymnastics variety - the sort of sports dominated by wealthy, white athletes.

Which means who gets left behind? Black women. (9/10)

Be concerned about equity in women's sports, but direct your concern to where the real source of inequality lies: class. (10/10)