Reference no: EM133244431

This week, you are learning about the importance of Title IX protections and protected classes. One of the segments of society in which this is perhaps most visible is in sports. To explore the importance of Title IX this week, we will examine the case of the 2021 NCAA basketball tournament.

As teams settled into the tournament site of San Antonio, Texas, images began to emerge on social media that revealed some shocking disparities between the treatment of women's and men's teams. On Thursday, March 18, a coach from the Stanford women's team posted a photo showing the disparities between the men's and women's facilities. Then, Sedona Prince, an Oregon basketball player with nearly 700,000 TikTok followers, shared a video on the platform that went viral, fully highlighting the disparity between the women's weight rooms at their tournament bubble in Texas and the men's setup in Indiana. The video showed the vast gym with modern equipment for the men, and a few treadmills and a set of handheld dumbbells for the women. Price noted, "If you're not upset about this problem, then you are a part of it."

The controversy deepened as more disparities were revealed, including no-frills box meals for the women compared with a buffet with steak fillets and lobster mac 'n' cheese for the men, and swag bags that included highly gendered items for the women as opposed to custom athletic gear for the men.

But perhaps more disturbing was the disparity in public health precautions to help protect the players and staffs from COVID-19. University of Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma told reporters that the school's men's team was being tested daily with highly accurate PCR coronavirus tests, but his women's team was receiving antigen tests, which are less accurate. The NCAA later confirmed that the two tournaments are using different testing methods.

On March 20, the NCAA responded. NCAA President Mark Emmert said, "I want to be really clear . . . This is not something that should have happened and, should we ever conduct a tournament like this again, will ever happen again.'' Dan Gavitt, the N.C.A.A.'s vice president of basketball, apologized for "dropping the ball, frankly" and promised to address the problem as soon as possible. In addition, the NCAA upgraded the women's training facilities.

Critics of the NCAA have criticized the treatment of women's sports and have suggested that the NCAA office appears more interested in using women's sports for positive PR than in investing time and money in them. The proof is in the funding. Although there is no doubt that men's sports tend to bring in more money, they also receive much more internal and external funding from both university budgets and alumni donations. The women's tournament brings in much less money than the men's tournament-about $35 million a year in broadcasting contracts compared to nearly $1 billion for the men's league. A 2017 report on NCAA Title IX compliance found that men received more funding than women by well over 10%. But many critics note that the disparities go beyond funding. As the legendary South Carolina coach Dawn Staley pointed out, even the NCAA's trademarked "March Madness" branding is reserved explicitly for the male half of the sport. The NCAA's @marchmadness Twitter bio calls the account "the official NCAA March Madness destination for all things Division I NCAA Men's Basketball."

This case illustrates an organization that is at odds with itself. The narrative of the NCAA is one of equity, where the organization exists to support college sports for the benefit of the athletes playing the games. Moreover, the NCAA is officially a nonprofit-a tax-exempt entity. Although much of the NCAA's branding is dedicated to highlighting women in collegiate sports, their actions suggest a deep-rooted marginalization.

Consider the case study of the NCAA use of Ed Schein's Model of Organizational Culture (Chapter 6) to address the following questions.

• Artifacts: What are the artifacts of this case? What products and behaviors illustrate the inequalities of the case?
• Values and Beliefs: What values and beliefs are present? How do these relate to the artifacts of the case?
• Underlying Assumptions: What are the cultural cornerstones that values and beliefs emerge from? What cultural norms are illustrated by the case? What assumptions do we make about value and gender?

Be sure to include concrete examples from the reading and case study to help develop your response.