Here's just a couple:
"
while the opportunity to participate in sports is ever present for women, there is the perception and socially conditioned notion that women should not participate in masculine sports because it makes them appear lesbian and causes them to be ridiculed. However, women athletes that are perceived as beautiful and graceful, are able to get media coverage, but not for their actual athletic abilities, only their appearance. Research shows that sport is still strongly masculine, and strongly in favor of men as the primary controller of sports."
[SOURCE:
http://thesportjournal.org/article/examination-of-gender-equity-and-female-participation-in-sport/]
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With strength and speed as the factors governing success, men’s athletics will always be more popular."
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According to the NCAA, the average attendance for women’s basketball games at the Division I level was 1,517 per game in 2015.... Division I men’s basketball teams averaged three times more than women’s games with over 4,700 fans per game.... The NCAA tournament attendance average for women was 5,708, while the men’s tournament averaged 20,550 per session."
[SOURCE:
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/04/16614/]
That article even shows how the Women's World Records are compared to Division III and High School results. When high school boys beat the Women's World Record, it says a lot about women's athletic ability. And sports fans/viewers want to watch the best at their chosen sport, not second rate, sub-par athletes.
It's scientifically proven that men like sports, play sports, and watch sports, more than women. Here's just one article
http://time.com/4322947/men-women-sports-evolution/
"
In a study of college students who grew up under the influence of Title IX, Hardin and Greer found that these students code certain sports as masculine or feminine, and do so along the same lines that researchers did in 1965. They found that “sports that emphasized overt displays of aggression or strength were typed as masculine, and non-contact sports that are either traditionally dominated by women (volleyball) or emphasize aesthetics (gymnastics) were typed as feminine.”
[SOURCE:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto..._love_watching_female_figure_skaters_but.html]
"
Metheny (1965) proposed that acceptable sports for girls and women were individual activities that emphasized aesthetics. Sports, such as gymnastics, would be perceived as acceptable, because the participants did not engage in bodily contact or use bodily force against a heavy object. Research has supported Metheny's model of acceptable sports for girls and women (for a review, see Gill, 1994). Support for Metheny's model indicates that the arena of sport is biased; individuals may be judged not on how competent they are in an activity, but if an activity is gender appropriate."
"Over the past 30 years, such researchers as Kane and Snyder (1989) have examined Metheny's work. Kane and Snyder's results (the latest study to date on Metheny's work) supported Metheny's model; college students perceived "female athletes, and the gender-appropriate/inappropriate sports of gymnastics and basketball in very traditional, stereotypic ways" (p. 90). Additionally,
the results indicated that the physicality of the sport was the major feature for the gendered nature of sport"
[SOURCE:
https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-104733217.html]
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There's tons more but this should get you started.
