When you think of sports at Ida B. Wells, the first that come to mind are often football, soccer, and baseball. In any high-school-based movie, they show men playing sports and girls on the benches cheering for their boyfriends. This creates an idea that women aren’t good at playing sports; when that’s very misogynistic.

Since 1972, Ida B. Wells High School and many other high schools have created women’s sports teams, letting women play sports. Title lV is a federal law that has removed any barrier when it comes to genders from participating in the education system, but Title lV also tries to make male and female sports have equal funding and budgeting. Yes, as great as that is, women are still being treated unfairly when it comes to their sports teams. From the rules that have been set to school fundraising and audience popularity, the favorability of men’s sports is obvious. Not everything is peachy, some things are hidden behind closed doors, even with Title IX they are not doing their job properly and making things fair when it comes to different gender sports.

At IBW, men’s sports teams get new uniforms every year. It could be assumed the same treatment is given to women’s sports teams — unfortunately, that is not the case. The Varsity Softball team has had the same uniform for three years now, along with women’s basketball and women’s soccer. 

The men’s locker room also is double the size of the women’s locker room — the men get couches and nice lockers. But then the women’s locker room has wooden benches and inferior lockers. Women’s sports don’t have enough fundraising to support their students who play these sports. The champion titles in the gym for the women’s volleyball team have not been updated in eight years, but the men’s baseball team was last updated three years ago, even though the volleyball team has won during those eight years.

 There were six basketball games in two days, three of the men’s games on February 1st, then three of the women’s games the next day. The men’s teams had way more popularity than the women’s teams, with a lot more people on the sidelines than the women’s team. The preference of student support expands the issue from lack of support from the school to the whole student body, including athlete’s peers. CC Masem is a sophomore on the women’s JV team for basketball, and she says she does not see a lot of people cheering for her team and that it improves how she plays when she sees people cheering for her and her peers. Masem enforces the idea that when there is a smaller student section at women’s basketball games compared to men’s games, it also contributes to the performance of the team. Students need people in the bleachers to do better.

Women should be treated equally in sports around the world, in the United States and at every high school, especially at IBW. Title IX needs to be involved with this but they have been lacking in figuring out the whole unequal budgeting. Ida B. Wells Barnett was a woman who fought for her rights and the rights of Black individuals and Black women’s right to vote. How would she feel if a school was named after her and had unfair rights when it came to fundraising? She wouldn’t be happy if we did not fight for our equal rights as well. Ida B. Wells High School fights for everyone and everything to make everything equal but weirdly we cannot even get equal budgets for women and men.