Reading: Millenial Makeover

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This blog post is part of my ongoing weekly series discussing the role of social media and female athletics. It’s also a class requirement for a course I’m taking at John’s Hopkins University.

This week’s reading is called Millenial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics by Morley Winograd & Michael Hais.

This book is a story about me.

Why? Because I was born in 1985. I’m part of Generation Y -  I was born within the timeframe of 1982-2003.

Winograd & Hais refer to me as part of the “civic” generation -   my peers and I actually outnumber my “boomer” parents (by 10 million). We helped nominate and elect President Barack Obama, and, according to these authors, we will transform and dominate politics for the next 40 years.

Why?

Because we’re more engaged than any other population. “The attacks of 9/11 and the growing threat of terrorism and Islamic extremism” - are making us “pay attention” to things more.  Pop Culture is capturing the “comedy” of our attention, and the technology wave is at our fingertips…. and we’re using it… every day, to create change.

In short, we are powerful, we are the present, and we’re shaping the future.

Now think about how this relates to women’s sports.

35 years ago, we were granted (by Generation X) – the ability to play sports in high school and college. Now, if we want to play, we have the opportunity. The impact of this drastic change is still being seen and has yet to be understood.

We’ve seen a very steady, rapid growth in the number of female athletes.

However, we’ve still got a long way to go.

The Women’s Sports Foundation reports, “Although male and female participation in athletics has grown steadily, female students lag in every measurable category, including participation opportunities, receipt of scholarships and allocation of operating and recruitment budgets. Furthermore, female high school athletes receive 1.3 million fewer athletic participation opportunities than their male counterparts and female athletes receive 86,305 fewer opportunities at the college level. Thus, we have not yet reached the Title IX goal of gender equity?”

So how can we take a target audience of Generation Y Millenials that are female athlete’s and market to them? How do we make them advocates of their own field (or brands in their field)? Will these advocates fight for athletic opportunities with as much vigor as they did for Barack Obama?

Reading this book provides a great foundation for answers to those questions.