An Update On Gender Equity In Sports Publicity At Ludlowe

February 5th is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. It is a natural opportunity to look back and see if improvements have occurred since it was first publicly reported about the discrepancy between boys’ and girls’ sports promotion via Ludlowe’s Athletic Department Twitter account.

Back in October 2019, I wrote a piece in the Patch which highlighted the lack of gender equity regarding sports promotion via the FLHS Athletic Department’s Twitter, their primary social media account.

After that article was posted, I met with the Fairfield Public School’s Title IX Coordinator and a Title IX investigation began. I have been encouraged with the verbal updates I have received. A formal report is forthcoming.

The Winter Sports teams’ data through January 31, 2020 demonstrates that some improvements have been made, but there is still a significant discrepancy on how some female sports are publicized via the Athletic Department’s social media this winter season.

There is gender parity in social media with the basketball and indoor track teams, although they were relatively equivalent by the end of last year January too.

While the massive discrepancy has decreased between boys’ and girls’ hockey teams, there is still a significant lack of equivalency between the quantity and quality of promotion via social media created by the FLHS Athletic department.

Instead of being 5-6 times more social media posts, FLHS Athletic Department social media account provided the boys' hockey team twice as many social posts as the girls' team. Worth noting, the girls' and boys' teams have almost the same win/loss record.

Boys’ hockey games are more thoroughly covered with details, like interim scores and highlighted individual performances Additionally, the boys’ team has five times the number of promotions beyond the @ludlowesports universe by “at-ing” Dave Ruden, FCIAC or GametimeCT. Using that technique provides far greater promotion of team and individual accomplishments. @FCIAC has 7.6k followers. @DaveRuden from the Ruden Report has approximately 8k followers. @GametimeCT has over 20k followers.

Beyond hockey, gymnastics, fencing, wrestling, and boys’ swim and dive have had modest improvements since last year.

As of January 31, 2020, our ski team has zero social media posts, despite tremendous success (Fairfield Girls' Ski Team has won the state championship since 2014 ). Bowling has not had one single mention either. Cheer isn’t mentioned as of 1/31/20 and there are no competitions listed on the FLHS Athletic webpage.

Below is the data that was collected on Winter sports @LudloweSports Twitter account from the December 2, 2019- January 31, 2020.

I was hopeful that this would be solved by now, but with the lack of some sports receiving any promotion - not even announcing competitions - I am discouraged.

Moreover, the girls'/boys' hockey team promotion discrepancy was reduced not by increasing the girls' social media posts, but rather a consolidation of a lot boys' team information put in a single tweet vs posted individually in the past. Regardless, the intent of Title IX is not to reduce the favored team's publicity, but to raise the less featured team to their level.

I don’t believe anyone in the FLHS Athletic Department and Administration intends on promoting some boys’sports more than girls’ (or even ignoring some sports entirely, regardless of gender), but to quote FLHS Headmaster Greg Hatzis from the Falcon Footprint video, “It is really important that we really understand the differences between intent and impact. When something bad happens, people usually start making excuses and talking about what they may or may not have intended…. In reality, your intent doesn’t matter. We often see this type of thing happen around the world of social media. But in reality, what matters most is the impact it could have on other people.”

Let's talk about that IMPACT. Having some teams being more highly publicized than others gives the impression that certain groups of athletes are more valued than others by the administration at Fairfield Ludlowe High School. I do not believe that is the case, let alone the intent. But as FLHS Headmaster Greg Hatzis said, “intent doesn’t matter.” It is time to get serious and fix this issue so all athletes, regardless of sport or gender, feel as though they are valued members of Fairfield Ludlowe High School.