REMEMBER that movie from "A League of Their" Own? Geena Davis and Madonna portray members of a professional women's baseball league fighting to be kept open by their corporate sponsorship, Harvey's Chocolate. Madonna screams -- through tears -- at the league manager, "You go tell rich Mr. Chocolate man, he ain't shutting me down!" And the collective conscience of the audience thinks, "Injustice! Give those women their league!" After all, don't women deserve the same opportunities as their male counterparts?
Now, consider A League of Their Own, part two. The Women's United Soccer Association folded suddenly last Monday after only three years as a professional league. WUSA founder John Hendricks admonished corporations for not helping to establish gender equity in sports. While gender equity in sports is an appropriate goal at the collegiate level, the implications of obligation simply do not extend to the professional realm. Ethics do not play a strong enough role in the marketplace to validate a women's league that isn't economically successful.
League creators originally hoped that the popularity of the Women's 1999 World Cup would transfer to a full-time league. Now, just five days before the 2003 Cup, they were forced to concede defeat. Unable to find enough corporate sponsors, the league could not go on another day for financial reasons.
Hendricks chastised corporations for failing to make an effort for gender equity in sports observing, "Every time I see a deal with a male athlete for a shoe for five, 10 million dollars, I say, 'Goodness, why don't you invest in 160 players and an international league and all these fans?' " (The Washington Post, "Women's Pro Soccer League Forced to Fold," September 16, 2003). Ethically, it seems that supporting the WUSA would have been a good decision. But this would have meant acknowledging the league as a philanthropy rather than a financial investment. This conflicts with the premise of professional sports, as a moneymaking operation rather than an arena of competition.
Every economic producer has a right to obey the rules of the economy rather than the public morality. It is the wants of society that drives the invisible hand of capitalism, not vice versa. Producers necessarily tailor their product to the desire of the consumer. And women's soccer is a product that simply is not getting grabbed off the shelf.
In contrast, gender equity battles do have a role on the amateur level. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 guarantees, among other things, that intercollegiate level participation opportunities for male and female students are provided in numbers proportional to their respective enrollments. Similarly, financial assistance must be proportional to the ratio of male and female athletes. University athletics -- technically at least -- are not financial enterprises. Amateur play is supposed to be centered on the athletes rather than fans. Thus from a purist perspective, it does not matter whether a women's college sports team plays to an empty stadium; what matters is that the players themselves have the opportunity to compete. The same reasoning stands behind why the Women's World Cup continues this year. Ignoring the event's immense popularity, this amateur competition demands existence on equity grounds.
Athletics is not the only arena to consider this problem. Producers have no real obligation to apply any kind of affirmative action to their operations. There has always been pressure on the film industry to racially diversify their scripts, and thus the actors will play the roles. Fortunately, multiculturalism is in. And we have benefited both from an introduction to talented minority actors and plots that necessitate minority roles. But you cannot force an audience to watch what they are not interested in any more than you can force a studio to accept a financial loss for the sake of equality of opportunity.
Ideally, women's soccer would be just as popular as men's soccer. Then attempts at moral intervention would become unnecessary, and common sense alone would ensure the viability of the WUSA. But as is true of any product, until the pubic demands it, no one is obliged to supply it.
(Kimberly Liu's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at kliu@cavalierdaily.com.)
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