Every year, thousands upon thousands of workplaces create “office pools” for the NCAA College Basketball Tournament (aka “March Madness”).

But let’s be clear about something–9 times out of 10, these office pools are *only* for the NCAA *Men’s* Tournament.  Despite the fact that there’s no gender distinction when people remark on the tournament, that is what they’re talking about.  In fact, the only time the gender distinction is given is when one is specifically talking about Women’s Basketball.

SO MY CHALLENGE FOR YOU IS THIS!

If your workplace goes in for such an office pool, and goes around and asks various coworkers if they want in…honestly, be the first to ask, “which tournament?” You’ll probably get a blank stare at first, and they might think, “oh, they don’t understand what ‘march madness’ is?” and before they patronizingly explain to you what basketball is in the first place, beat them to the punch and say, “no, I mean men’s or women’s tournament?”

Seriously, I expect the answer to be another look of surprised, followed by some stuttering, because frankly, THEY NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT BEFORE! Wait, what? There are TWO tournaments during March?  Women play basketball too!?!?

Yes, and it has been looked over FAR TOO MUCH.  And why is that?  Whether you’re a fan of the University of Connecticut’s team or not, it cannot be denied that the UCONN’s women’s basketball team can DRIBBLE CIRCLES around so many of these men’s teams, and have won the most NCAA championships consistently.  But like so many sports played by women, women’s college basketball is often ignored by the media (better hope you have the odd cable package to catch a game if you want to watch one at all) and further ignored by such things like office pools.

And while I personally do not condone gambling, at the same time I think we need to bring attention to this too often ignored sport, and demanding that your office pool take notice is one way to do that.

So if your coworker who is responsible for getting names to the pool just stares at you blankly and stutters that “we’ve never had a pool for women’s basketball before”, then say, “well let’s start one this year!” And if that means you have to take responsibility for getting it started? THEN DO IT. Confront your coworkers with their internal institutional sexism, get them to realize “hey, why don’t we have an office pool for the women’s tournament?”

Even if that means not partaking of the men’s tournament, go around and ask people “hey, want to be a part of this bracket?” And if they say no, kindly ask “oh, ok, but why?” Get them to think about it!  And if it’s because “oh, I put so much money in with the men’s one, I can’t put extra money in with the women’s” then take money out of the equation.  Make it a reward with a restaurant gift card or…something, but seriously, DO NOT LET THEM IGNORE IT.  Because if we can ignore one group of people based on gender, then we can also ignore (as our society has been doing for far too long) things like the wage gap and equal rights of women in the workplace.

So that is my challenge this March! 

BRING ATTENTION TO THE NCAA WOMEN’S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT THIS SEASON! 

Brackets will be announced TONIGHT (Monday, March 12), for the women’s tournament, so tomorrow is a perfect time to start getting people in on that “office pool”.