DES MOINES, Iowa guard Caitlin Clark cCelebrates after the overtime win of an NCAA college basketball game against Nebraska in the final of the Big Ten women’s tournament, Sunda
There may be no bigger college basketball star in the United States than Caitlin Clark –the Iowa Hawkeye who has created a surge in ticket sales viewership and attention on women’s college basketball. Country superstar Tim McGraw even wore her #22 jersey during his recent concert in Des Moines. But a new national poll shows that half of Americans think women’s sports get less attention than they deserve when compared to men’s sports.
See the full Grinnell College National Poll results here.
The Grinnell College National Poll of 1,005 adults found that a significantly higher percentage of women compared to men believe that women’s sports don’t get enough attention: 62% to 38%.
“Despite all the excitement right now, there’s a recognition that we could be doing better,” said Dr. Peter Hanson, Grinnell College associate professor of political science and the poll’s director. “There could be a wider array of coverage.”
More than four million people watched Clark break the all-time college basketball scoring record against Ohio State.
The poll also found differences among respondents when considering a person’s political affiliation. 70% of Democrats said that women’s sports get less attention than they should. 43% of independents felt that way. 41% of Republicans agreed with this.
Whether people voted for Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump in 2020 became a hint about whether they like Taylor Swift, one of the most popular musicians in the world.
70% of respondents who supported Biden had a favorable opinion of Swift, according to the poll. 38% of people who said that they voted for Trump had a favorable opinion of Swift.
Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer believes that both Swift and Clark would be valuable influencers for politicians. “The idea of what’s happening in pop culture and the idea of political entities trying to leverage that…you certainly have a Caitlin Clark opportunity, certainly have a Taylor Swift opportunity. We’ll see what happens next.”
Selzer and Hanson also explained why Trump has moved ahead of Biden in the national poll in the race for the presidency and how their support varies significantly by gender. Watch that here.
Following a record-smashing performance by University of Iowa basketball star Caitlin Clark, now the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I basketball, novelist and former professional squash player Ivy Pochoda joins host V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about portrayals of women athletes in media, literature, and film. Pochoda considers the gender binary that continues to divide most sports and how athletes from Serena Williams to Lynette Woodard to Clark have been treated differently due to systemic bias. She discusses the lack of adult literary fiction featuring women athletes, as well as her new favorite novel in this category, the Booker-nominated Western Lane. Pochoda also reflects on how her athletic training helps her as a writer and reads an excerpt from a middle grade fantasy book she wrote with Kobe Bryant, Epoca: The Tree of Ecrof, in which sports play a central role.