A June 27 article in Newsday ,“Female athletes don’t have to beat men to be the best in their sport”, discusses tennis star John McEnroe comparing world-class talent Serena Williams with male players. He called her the greatest woman to play tennis, “but if she had to just play… the men’s circuit that would be an entirely different story.”

In the article, Mary Jo Kane, Ph.D., School of Kinesiology professor and co-director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, weighs in on the prevalence of comparing women athletes to male counterparts. “The broad issue is why can’t great female athletes simply be great without the constant comparison to men?” she says in the article. ““When North Carolina wins the NCAA Tournament, people don’t demand they go beat Cleveland or the Golden State Warriors. In boxing, you don’t ask the middleweight champion to beat the heavyweight.” When we compare men to women, she says, “it takes away from their greatness. They aren’t allowed to be great on their own.”