Assessing Gender Equality in Cricket and Ways Forward: A Sociological Study of Bichpuri Block of Agra District

Traditionally, cricket is considered as one of the male-dominated sports. It seems to be true. It was limited to men's cricket, and women's cricket was often not taken as seriously as men's sports. Over the years, women have faced many challenges in the sport of cricket, such as access to cricket sports activities, recognition, participation, willingness to take decisions, access to resources, salaries, financial incentives, proper sports facilities, media coverage, and organizational culture of sports bodies etc. Additionally, the impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic has further increased gender inequality in this field of the sports. However, there is no doubt that recent years have seen an unprecedented rise in the popularity of women's cricket worldwide, including India. Many initiatives have also been taken to promote women's cricket, such as the Women's ICC World Cup, the Senior Women's T20 World Cup, the launch of Women's Indian Premier League, and the announcement of a Pay Equity Policy by the Board of Control for Cricket etc. However despite these efforts, is women's cricket really able to close the gap with men's cricket? Women's cricket continues to have a long struggle to achieve gender equality with men's cricket because even today, gender inequalities in sports persist at the individual and societal level. There is an urgent to investigate this problem assessing gender equality in cricket & way forward.