Growing up a girl in a heavily male dominated industry such as Major League Baseball, I learned quickly that I was to be seen and not heard. My father coached for the entirety of my life in minor and major league baseball. Being the coach's daughter gave me many first hand opportunities to see how a team is put together and run. Though I was cycled through many different players, coaches, and managers, one thing was quite obviously a trend and that was the absence of women in the baseball clubhouse. Occasionally there would be a female athletic training intern, none of which were ever rehired. When I was younger, I never thought anything of it. I loved the time with all "my boys" and took my role as the only girl with pride, however now as I am spending thousands of dollars on tuition as a sports major with hopes of a career in major league baseball, I am getting discouraged. I am simply not satisfied with being a receptionist for a major league team, which is one of the more common female roles in the sport. I am going for the top spot: general manager.  I know I have the baseball knowledge to carry me and I learn more and more about the business everyday, however I still get incredulous looks from people when I tell them of my goal. It's quite insulting really. Why should I not be considered for a job that I may eventually be extremely more qualified for?  


There are already female coaches, managers, and general managers in many of the high profile professional sports industries such as the NFL and the NBA, why is the MLB holding out? 



To start finding answers to my question, I turned to the facts.  An article about Title IX by Maya Dusenberry and Lee Jaeah gave me a closer look at how Title IX has affected women in sport and the outlines given to women and athletics under the law. Arguing both the positive and negative things that have been changed because of Title IX, the article did take a stand for further equality between boys and girls athletics in all of education.  The authors used many statistics to show the drastic inequality between everything from funding to participation. While this article was written by women and used an account of one of the women who helped to draft the bill, it was written with easy bias to the support of women.  Having statistics makes the article more credible and will later give me more credibility in the argument I make for why women are underrepresented in major league baseball. 




Next, I took into consideration the popular opinion. An article discovered on the Huffington Post about the recent hiring of a female football coach with the Buffalo Bills, titled, "Women Have no Place in Professional Sports?" immediately peaked my interest.  After further examination, I was more pleased to have a male opinion of females in professional sports in all aspects. An opinion close to mine will add depth to my claims and ideas. Grametbauer supported the women of sport and even took some female fans opinions of the game. It was quite apparent that he is in favor of women in professional sports and will get a great deal of attention because of the popularity of the sports column in the Post. Adding this opinion to my argument would show that not all males are against women in sport and would also strengthen my argument in the similarities of opinion.



After reading the article by Grametbauer, I got curious about the highest-ranking women in major league baseball and came across an article titled "Will Kim Ng be MLB's first female GM?"  Kim Ng is the current senior vice president of baseball operations for major league baseball and is the only woman to have ever been an assistant manager for an MLB team. When I came across this I was shocked for a few reasons, first being that I had never heard her name in baseball at all. Not 


on ESPN or even in casual conversation at the ballpark. Second, this article was not published on ESPN's regular website but instead on ESPNW, a side network for women's sports. The author, Jim Caple shows that Ng is obviously qualified for her job and beyond, but her male counterparts have simply overlooked her. This article gives a counter argument to my original ideas about women not having high-grade jobs in major league baseball.

The question of women's representation in major league baseball is arguable because of the lack of women involved with all aspects of the sport. Also the lack of women in baseball that have reached these positions in other sports is absolutely astounding. The aforementioned sources will be beneficial to my plan of action because they all support the claim that women are in fact underrepresented in professional sports. The perspectives are generally aligned with my own except the Kim Ng article. I had no clue she even existed before, so the absence of her in my argument shows weakness on my part. This discovery has changed my ideas and therefore will alter my argument to include this as evidence of the rare cases that women do actually make it to a very high position in major league baseball. 

