Washington (AFP)
The NCAA, a university sports body which organizes in particular the "March Madness", the very popular and lucrative final basketball tournament, announced Thursday launching an independent audit on the inequalities of treatment between men and women in all the disciplines in which it intervenes.
The announcement comes as the NCAA, a billion-dollar association, is under fire for disparities in the facilities available to the men's and women's teams of the "March Madness".
In Indiana and Texas, where the matches of these championships take place in various bubbles sheltered from the coronavirus, basketball players thus had access to large, perfectly equipped weight rooms, when their female counterparts had to sit down. content with a few yoga mats and a few weights to lift.
Faced with the controversy, a New York law firm, Kaplan, Hecker & Fink, has been hired to conduct an audit in all sports, said NCAA President Mark Emmert, for whom more needs to be done to "deal with material differences (...) having an impact" on the holding of men's and women's events.
“As part of this effort, we are evaluating the current and past allocation of resources for each championship, in order to have a clear understanding of costs, expenses and revenues,” he continued.
"Although it is still very early in the process, we hope to have these preliminary evaluations at the end of April, with a final report this summer after all of our championships are over," Emmert said.
In addition to basketball, the NCAA is particularly involved in college competitions in running, football, gymnastics, skiing, track and field, tennis, volleyball, golf, etc.
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