Category Archives: Women in Congress

Put Suffragists on the Mall!

News flash! There’s a movement afoot to construct a monument to the woman suffrage fight on the National Mall. You know… where all the monuments dedicated to men’s achievements are.

I received an email from the National Women’s History Alliance urging me to contact the appropriate congressional representatives about the location of the monument. Which I have done!

Now, I want to spread the word. If you are on board with this project — and I hope you are! — contact the House and Senate using the links in the email, which I’ve pasted below. Thanks a bunch!

National Women’s History Alliance Email

Dear friends involved with the suffrage movement,

I wanted to make sure you knew that since 2020 there has been a drive to fulfill the legislation authorizing a Women’s Suffrage National Monument in Washington D.C., https://www.womensmonument.org

This is exciting news and the effort is steadily progressing.  One early concern is that the eventual Monument should be located (like all the male-oriented ones) on the National Mall.  This very question is being debated in Congress now and your input would be most welcome, particularly before the end of June.

Please encourage your congressional representatives THIS MONTH to support or co-sponsor the bill to have the women’s suffrage monument located on the National Mall. 

If your Representative or Senators have not signed on (see list below), please reach out directly to their DC offices – and ask 10 of your closest friends to do the same!  Those calls make a huge difference. 

Now is the time to influence how this legislative effort is regarded in Congress based on the popular support shown.  Let’s show them how much we believe women’s triumph deserves official, central and permanent recognition on the National Mall.

Here are the government links, and summaries and co-sponsors are below:

Regarding House legislation: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1318?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22HR+1318%22%5D%7D&s=1&r=1

And regarding Senate legislation: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/886/cosponsors?s=3&r=2&q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22suffrage%22%5D%7D

Thank you for voicing your support and helping this effort succeed.

Robert Cooney, National Women’s History Alliance

Monument contacts:Anna Laymon orKimberly Wallner, Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation   womensmonument.org   info@womensmonument.org.

HOUSE BILL        

______________________________________________________

H.R.1318 – Women’s Suffrage National Monument Location Act

118th Congress (2023-2024)

Women’s Suffrage National Monument Location Act

This bill authorizes the location of a monument on the National Mall to commemorate the women’s suffrage movement and the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

Sponsor:Rep. Joe Neguse, [D-CO-2] (Introduced 03/01/2023)
Committees:House – Natural Resources

Co-Sponsors:                                                                                 * = Original cosponsor

Rep. Lesko, Debbie [R-AZ-8]*

Rep. Fitzpatrick, Brian K. [R-PA-1]*

Rep. Velazquez, Nydia M. [D-NY-7]*

Rep. Porter, Katie [D-CA-47]*

Rep. Wild, Susan [D-PA-7]*

Rep. McGovern, James P. [D-MA-2]*

Resident Commissioner González-Colón, Jenniffer [R-PR-At Large]*

Rep. Watson Coleman, Bonnie [D-NJ-12]*

Rep. Carter, Troy [D-LA-2]*

Rep. Lee, Susie [D-NV-3]*

Rep. Carbajal, Salud O. [D-CA-24]*

Rep. Pettersen, Brittany [D-CO-7]*

Rep. Lofgren, Zoe [D-CA-18]*

Rep. Escobar, Veronica [D-TX-16]

Rep. Bice, Stephanie I. [R-OK-5]

Rep. Green, Al [D-TX-9]

Rep. Lee, Barbara [D-CA-12]

Rep. Lawler, Michael [R-NY-17]

Rep. DeGette, Diana [D-CO-1]

Rep. Landsman, Greg [D-OH-1]

Rep. Gottheimer, Josh [D-NJ-5]

Rep. Krishnamoorthi, Raja [D-IL-8]

Rep. Chavez-DeRemer, Lori [R-OR-5]

Rep. Sherrill, Mikie [D-NJ-11]

Rep. Budzinski, Nikki [D-IL-13]

Rep. Vasquez, Gabe [D-NM-2]

Rep. Manning, Kathy E. [D-NC-6]

SENATE BILL

__________________________________________________________

S.886 – Women’s Suffrage National Monument Location Act

118th Congress (2023-2024) | 

Sponsor:Sen. Tammy Baldwin, [D-WI]    (Introduced 03/21/2023)
Committees:Senate – Energy and Natural Resources

Co-Sponsors:                                                                     * = Original cosponsor

Sen. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN]*

Sen. Bennet, Michael F. [D-CO]*

Sen. Lummis, Cynthia M. [R-WY]*

Sen. Duckworth, Tammy [D-IL]*

Sen. Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [D-NY]*

Sen. Shaheen, Jeanne [D-NH]*

Sen. Hyde-Smith, Cindy [R-MS]

Sen. Feinstein, Dianne [D-CA]

Sen. Capito, Shelley Moore [R-WV]

The Title IX 100

Last year at this time, I made a New Year’s resolution. I vowed to write about Title IX this entire year, the 50th anniversary of the gender equality law. And I kept my resolution! Here it is, one year and one hundred blog posts later. Yay me!

            You can browse through the posts here at my website. In total, the 100 posts add up to around 70,000 words — about the length of a book!

            I started last January simply, with the wording of Title IX.  “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

            Before I knew it, I was drawn into the drama of this law that I once knew nothing about. It has its humorous moments and its heartbreaking moments. It changed a centuries-old male-centric world while remaining relevant to the current day. In short, it was groundbreaking.

Words become deeds

            Until you have the time to read my fractured 100-chapter book, today I’ll share with you in brief bullet points what I learned about the landmark 1972 law this year.

            So, hold onto your seats. Here we go!

* It took the eagle eye of one woman — Bernice Sandler — to spot how an existing law could be turned into a gender equality law.

* We needed Title IX! The two authors of the law, Rep. Edith Green and Rep. Patsy Mink, had both been excluded from the education and jobs they wanted.  

* Title IX was part of sweeping changes in the way Americans thought about women, their place in society and what they could accomplish.

* But a lot was happening in 1972, so the law passed with a whisper instead of a bang.

* At first, no one recognized the bill’s potential to revolutionize the sports world.

* But the athletic fields needed a revolution! Women were excluded there just as in educational programs.

* Once people did make the Title IX sports connection, men didn’t like it. They tried to take the teeth out of the law.

* Women got creative (and sometimes naked) to force entities to comply with the law.

* Title IX’s enemies weren’t always men. And its defenders weren’t always women.

* Most often, progress came — and still comes — through lawsuits.

* Almost all lawsuits are settled out of court. But one high-profile lawsuit might finally go the distance.

* Title IX claims some astonishing victories. Equal pay in some professional women’s sports is one of them.

* Title IX paved the way to the Olympics for women. In 1976, the first women’s basketball team went to the Olympics, and when women dominated team sports in the 1996 Olympics, it became known as the Title IX Olympics.

* It opened a path for athletic careers off the playing field, too. Coaching , broadcasting and sports management, to name just a few.

* Women found success in whatever field they chose because of their athletic experience.

* Title IX’s reach is constantly expanding. It addresses athletic scholarships, sexual harassment, age discrimination, gender issues, COVID-19, school lunches, fraternity hazing, even hair.

* The success stories stemming from Title IX are thrilling! The stories of women “firsts” are inspiring.

* But there’s still more work to be done. Title IX gets a failing grade in many realms. It’ll take a lot more work on our part to reach Title IX’s goal of parity.

It got personal

            For me, personally, writing about Title IX taught me a lot about women’s history. I knew vaguely that women had always been discriminated against — I’d written a book about the woman suffrage movement — but I had no idea of the extent of society’s damning of women.

            But to be more specific, I learned about my own ignorance of the pervasive societal view of women. So often, when I interviewed women for the blog, they shared instances of blatant discrimination. Privately, I was thinking that in my own life, I hadn’t suffered from similar dismissals of women’s personhood. But I had!

            I grew up in a church ruled by men who silence women from public worship, tell them what to wear and box them in to child care and meal preparation. I chose the career of journalism, which was opening up to women in the newsroom but still excluding them from management positions. I specialized in financial journalism and felt the scorn of men who thought women were barely intelligent enough to balance a checkbook.

            Even today, I hear men joking that women are airheads, bad drivers and shopaholics. I bank where the branch manager calls his employees “the girls.” I attend family gatherings where the women cook and clean up while the men watch TV and snore away on the sofa. My husband and I coach our son on how to negotiate his salary and benefits in the job market, which makes me realize that women rarely get this kind of mentorship.

            It takes a village, they say. In reality, it takes a nation. And so the fight for gender equality will go on. Title IX is just a starting point.

Hair’s to Title IX

Is hair a Title IX issue? To cousins DeAndre Arnold and Kaden Bradford it was.

            In January 2020, Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, suspended the two Black students for violating the district’s dress code. Their infraction was the length of their locs.* The district’s dress code required that male students not have hair extending below their eyebrows, earlobes or tee-shirt collar.

            If the boys did not cut their hair, the school said, they wouldn’t be allowed back in class. When they didn’t comply, the two were placed on in-school suspension, which Kaden says was like prison. They were confined to a room and got no instruction from teachers, leaving them to complete their studies and homework on their own. They couldn’t participate in extra-curricular activities, a huge blow to Kaden, who was in the marching band.

            In addition, the school said it would bar DeAndre, a senior, from his graduation ceremony, while Kaden, a sophomore, would be indefinitely on in-school suspension.

            DeAndre and Kaden filed a lawsuit, claiming discrimination under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit pointed out that the district had no such rule for female students.

It’s cultural, too

            For DeAndre, the case was about both gender and race. Locs are a part of his culture and heritage, he said, as his father is from Trinidad. Both DeAndre and Kaden said they tied up their hair to comply with the dress code.          

            “I really wish the school would kind of be open to other cultures and just at least let us try to tell you some things,” he said. “Don’t just shut us out.”**

            But the district doubled down in 2020, adding the phrase “when let down,” to the hair length policy, meaning that the boys’ hair didn’t comply even if they tied it up.

            The district maintains that it can legally enforce a gender-specific dress code, and that the hair requirement for male students is just to ensure a neat appearance and doesn’t bar any particular style.

            “There is no dress code policy that prohibits any cornrow or any other method of wearing of the hair,” the district’s superintendent, Greg Poole, said. “Our policy limits the length.”***

            Poole even placed the dispute in the context of the civil rights movement, claiming that exempting Black students would enforce unequal treatment of Black and white students. (The district is 97 percent white, and 3 percent Black, Hispanic or other.)

Photo tell-all

            But Christina Beeler, an attorney interested in the case, leafed through old Barbers Hill yearbooks and came up with photos of white students with long hair.

            “White male students aren’t being held to same standard,” Beeler said. “It’s so clear that white male students and Black students are being treated differently.”†

            No matter what the district says, to suspend students because of their hair is ridiculous, DeAndre’s mother said.

            “It’s just hair, it’s not going to define how well they are going to do in school or how their behavior will be,” said Sandy Arnold.†† In the lawsuit, she also claimed gender discrimination, saying she was harassed after contesting the dress code.

Still with the hair!

            The U.S. District Court in Houston eventually barred Barbers Hill from enforcing the hair length policy. Yet on the first day of school in 2021, the district tagged 36 high school students for hair length violations. Twenty-two of the students were white, 12 Hispanic and two “other.”

            Meanwhile both DeAndre and Kaden left Barbers Hill to attend Ross S. Sterling High School in Goose Creek, Idaho. Kaden is finishing high school back at Barbers Hill, while DeAndre is at college studying to be a veterinarian. He got help with his tuition from Ellen DeGeneres and Alicia Keys, who presented him with a $20,000 check on DeGeneres’s show.

            Despite the emotional and educational toll the lawsuit took on the cousins, Kaden says he’s just glad they could make a difference.

            “Our main goal has always been to change the policy to where it wouldn’t discriminate against different racial groups,” he said.†††

                                                _____________________________

* The lawsuit uses the term “locs” instead of “dreadlocks,” noting that slave traders used the term “dreadlocks,” meaning “dreadful,” to refer to Africans’ hair.

** Associated Press, “Ellen DeGeneres surprises Texas teen told to cut dreadlocks with $20K for college,” The New York Post (January 31, 2020).

*** “Ellen DeGeneres.”

† Raga Justin, “Texas school district’s dreadlocks ban discriminatory, federal court rules,” The Texas Tribune (August 18,2020).

†† Tiffany Justice, “Barbers Hill ISD facing backlash once more about controversial dress code policy,” Fox News (August 25, 2021)

††† “After 2 Black students were suspended, court rules hair policy is discriminatory,” ABC13 (August 18, 2020).

PHOTO: DeAndre Arnold (l) and Kaden Bradford (r)

Lawsuits spread like a virus

In my last post, you met Sage Ohlensehlen, a swimmer for the University of Iowa who brought a lawsuit against the school after it cut four sports teams, including the women’s swim/dive team, claiming hardship from COVID-19.

            As it turns out, the UI lawsuit is only one of many that female athletes have brought against their universities for the same reason.

            “Under the cover of COVID, folks are trying to drop women’s sports,” charges Donna Lopiano, president and founder of Sports Management Resources.*

             Here are just a few universities whose purported COVID-19 cuts female athletes have challenged, along with the resolution:

Stanford — reversed its decision to cut men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, coed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling. Athletes on the five women’s teams challenged the cuts based on Title IX.

Brown — reinstated women’s fencing and equestrian in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Dartmouth — reinstated men’s and women’s swimming and diving and golf, and men’s lightweight rowing after the school received a letter from the women’s lawyer threatening a Title IX lawsuit.

William and Mary — reinstated women’s varsity gymnastics, swimming and volleyball after student athletes threatened a Title IX suit.

East Carolina State University — reinstated women’s swimming, diving and tennis in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Michigan State — last month, the Supreme court refused to hear MSU’s appeal of a lower-court ruling in favor of the women’s swim/dive team that had been cut due to COVID-19 (the university claimed). The lawsuit can now proceed.

An athlete’s view

            Lopiano — as well as many others — believe athletic directors are using the virus as a cover for cutting programs so they can increase the budgets of the juggernaut men’s programs like football and basketball.

            “The problem is that at the same time they’re pleading poor, they’re spending up the wazoo to protect their one or two revenue-producing sports,” Lopiano says. “That’s the mentality of the athletic directors. They are not treating it as educational sports, but as a business.”

            Lopiano isn’t an ivory tower theorist. She knows the athletic world from experience. She is a six-time National Champion, nine-time All-American, and three-time Softball MVP. She is a member of thirteen halls of fame.

            For ten years, she played for the Connecticut Brakettes, a national championship women’s softball team. As a pitcher, she compiled a career record of 183–18. She finished her Brakettes career in the top ten of several categories including hits, RBIs, runs and home runs.

            Overall, she participated in 26 national championships in four sports and was a nine-time All-American at four different positions in softball.

            Following her athletic career, Lopiano became an assistant athletic director at Brooklyn College, where she also coached basketball, volleyball and softball. In 1975, she became the first director of women’s athletics at the University of Texas, where she worked for seventeen years.      

            Early on at the University of Texas, though, Lopiano thought she might be fired. She testified against a proposed amendment to Title IX — the Tower Amendment — that would have exempted the powerhouse men’s programs from Title IX regulations. The amendment failed to pass and Lopiano kept her job.

No need to cut teams

            Lopiano says there are many ways for schools to cut athletic costs. For example, instead of cutting teams, they can cut expenses across the board.

            “Any athletic director worth their oats knows that they don’t have to cut any sports in order to keep their athletic program intact,” she says.

            “There is a lot of mythology here — 98.4 percent of all athletic programs are losing money and they are getting subsidized,” Lopiano says. “And it isn’t institutional money, rather it is student tuition dollars and mandatory athletics fees. There is no leadership in higher education that is saying ‘stop this madness’ in terms of expenditures in sports programs.”**

            Maybe a few more lawsuits will do the trick.

                                                _____________________

* Carrie N. Baker, “Athletes Win First Round in Title IX Challenge To Cuts To Women’s Sports,” Ms. (January 1, 2021). This quote and the next two come from this article.

** Dom Amore, “As Title IX turns 50, visionary Donna Lopiano still sees much left unfinished in gender equity in sports,” The Hartford Courant (June 21, 2022).

PHOTO: Lisa Helfert/Knight Commission

Title IX meets COVID-19

What do Title IX and COVID-19 have in common? A lawsuit!

             In December 2020, the University of Iowa announced it would cut its men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis and men’s gymnastics programs starting with the next school year, claiming the hardship of the virus. The women were devastated.

            “When Iowa cut the swim and dive team, that was the worst moment of my life,” said Sage Ohlensehlen, the women’s swim team captain.*

            Team member Alexa Puccini agreed. She recalls the meeting at which the women heard the news.

            “The coaches were lined up against the wall. The athletes, socially distanced, sat in chairs. Athletic director Gary Barta delivered the stunning news and left,” she said.

            “It was very, very emotional. I just couldn’t believe it,” Alexa said. “It was such an awful experience.”**

A widening gap

            Something about the cuts didn’t sound right to the women. This was a Title IX issue, not a Covid issue, they decided. Sage, Alexa and two other swimmers brought a Title IX lawsuit.

            In the lawsuit, the women charged that UI didn’t have enough athletic opportunities for women even before Covid, and cutting their team created an even greater disparity. Women make up 53.56 percent of the student body, the lawsuit stated, but in the pre-Covid 2018-19 academic year only 50.77 percent of athletic opportunities were for women.

            In the 2018-19 year, the lawsuit continued, the university committed $6.7 million to men’s athletic programs and  $6.4 million to women’s athletic programs. That’s a ratio of 51 percent to 49 percent in favor of the men. Close but no cigar!

            The lawsuit goes on to say that the gap in the number of male to female athletes stood at 47 athletes in the 2018-19 school year, a gap that grew to 92 athletes for the 2019-20 school year, and, with the cuts, an expected gap of 141 athletes.

            Further, the women charged, the university failed to meet any of the criteria for Title IX compliance, including financial assistance, equipment and supplies, tutoring, locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities, housing and dining and recruitment.

Gains and losses

            For its part, the university said the cuts were necessary to compensate for the $75 million drop in revenue caused by lost ticket sales and other revenue because of COVID-19.

            “In 2019, the Office for Civil Rights closed its investigation with no findings of any violation in the thirteen categories of Title IX. The university remains committed to staying in compliance with Title IX.

            “In fact, impact on gender equity and Title IX compliance was one of the factors used to determine which sports to eliminate due to the fiscal financial crisis created by COVID-19,” the university said.***

The damage is done

            Even so, the University of Iowa eventually settled the lawsuit. In February 2021, it reinstated the women’s swim and dive team and created a women’s wrestling program.

            But because of the uncertainty of whether they’d be able to swim, many of the women had already made plans to transfer to other universities. Alexa Puccini, for example, is finishing her collegiate career at the University of Arizona. The lawsuit came in Sage Ohlensehl’s senior year, so she reaped no benefit from the decision, but she is currently studying law at Southern Methodist University Law School.

            “The lawsuit literally led to me moving fourteen hours away because I wanted to be someplace where I wasn’t known as the girl who sued Iowa,” she said. “I lost a lot of friends, and I had relatives say rude things to me.”†

             Her senior year was heartbreaking, she said, but she’s certain she and her teammates made a difference for other women.

            “Because of our efforts , 70 MORE WOMEN will have the opportunity to compete as a division one athlete at the University of Iowa (35 swimmers/divers and 35 wrestlers). This result makes the hell that I’ve been through worth it,” Sage said on social media.

            “I’m so happy that Iowa is taking these steps for equality,” she said,†† “and I’m hoping that this case will set a precedent for all other schools.”

                                                            _____________________

* Chloe Peterson, “Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement in Title IX lawsuit,” The Daily Iowan (September 23, 2021).

** Erica Hunzinger, “Hawkeye swimmers wondered if Title IX suit was ‘going to work’,” AP (June 15, 2022).

*** Daniel Perreault, “Judge temporarily stops University of Iowa from cutting Women’s Swimming and Diving,” KWWL (December 3, 2020).

† “Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement” and “Judge temporarily stops.”

†† Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement.”

PHOTO: Sage Ohlensehlen (left) with unidentified teammate. I’m working on it!

Thanks but no thanks

Susan Kaplowitz chose an interesting topic for her doctoral thesis: “Guidelines for Establishing Equitable Interscholastic Athletic Programs for Boys and Girls in Public High Schools.” That’s not surprising. Susan was well aware that women were discriminated against as athletes.  

            We met Susan in my last blog post. The Bronx native was athletic from an early age, but girls had no organized sports in the 1950s and ‘60s. She couldn’t play for a school until she went to Hunter College, where she majored in physical education. She went on get a masters at Kean University and a doctorate at New York University. Her doctoral studies in physical education coincided with the passage of Title IX.

            After writing her dissertation, Susan had a great idea. Why not show it to area athletic directors, so they can assess whether their sports programs were fair to girls? She shared her findings with thirteen public high schools, hoping they would use them to see if their programs complied with Title IX guidelines, and to move them toward compliance if they weren’t.

            And then crickets.

            Eventually, one of the thirteen athletic directors said he would use her guidelines to audit his sports program. “The other twelve said that their programs were fine as they were,” she said.*

Strikeout after strikeout

            Susan went on to marry and have children and continued with her love of sports as a player, coach and referee. She played on adult softball and volleyball teams. She refereed softball and basketball. She even coached college basketball for Stern College, the women’s college of Yeshiva University.

            In 1979, Rutgers University was looking for an assistant basketball coach, and she applied.

            “Despite my qualifications and my experience, I didn’t get the job, and I always wondered why,” she said.** She suspected her gender factored into the decision.

            The years went by, but even post-Title IX, society’s view of women didn’t change overnight. In 1984, when Susan’s son was six, she wanted to coach his t-ball team. She walked into the coaches’ meeting, and a man approached her.

            “’Miss, this meeting is for coaches,’” he said, stopping her.

            “I responded, ‘I am a coach and wish to coach a team,’” she said. “After all these years, I still remember his look. When I asked for an assistant coach, not one man volunteered to help me. So, I coached the team myself.”

            In 1988, she applied for a position as the sports and recreation director at a local Y. Again, her gender was a barrier.

            “One of the interviewers said, ‘This job involves coaching and night and weekend games. You have two children. How would you be able to do this?’” she recalls. Three men and Susan were up for the job, and she didn’t get it. She suspects the men weren’t asked about their childcare arrangements.

A flourishing career

            But Susan wasn’t deterred by any of this. She went on to teach at Rutgers University as a professor of exercise science until her retirement last year. At Rutgers, she started the Center for Exercise and Aging and taught students to be physical education teachers, physical therapists and recreation specialists, among many other careers. She’s worked with children of all ages, she’s a personal trainer and has been a consultant for gyms and Ys. She’s even coached her grandson’s teams with no opposition from anyone!

            In an interesting twist, Susan’s son Andrew married Lisa Stern Kaplowitz, a student athlete at Brown University in the 1990s. Lisa was on the women’s gymnastics team that brought a Title IX lawsuit against the university in 1991 for cutting the team. I’ll be talking to Lisa soon!

Pride as a pioneer

            Susan’s lived during a time of tremendous upheaval in society’s view of women and  gender equality. Sometimes, she says she regrets being born too soon to benefit from Title IX. But she also understands the unique privilege she’s had of being part of the generation that changed everything.

            “I am filled with pride and happiness to see the progress that girls and women in sports have made,” she said. “I know there are miles to go, and examples of inequality still exist, but mothers and fathers are teaching and playing sports with their daughters as well as their sons, just as my dad did with me. Through their parents’ strong influence, children will learn how beneficial athletic participation can be — for boys and girls.”

                                                ___________________

*  From my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

** Susan Kaplowitz, “My Title IX Story: The Personal Perspective of a Female Athlete and Coach,” Shape America (May 24, 2022). All remaining quotes are from this article.

“We do not accept girls”

Susan Kaplowitz grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s and ‘60s. But her baseball loyalty didn’t lie with the Bronx Bombers. Instead, her grandmother turned her into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

            When she was 10 years old, Susan learned that before each Dodgers game, a child was chosen to play catch with a player.

             “I said to my Grandma and Dad, ‘Wow, I want to do that!’ she recalled. “So they sent in my application.”*

            A form letter came back.

            “We do not accept girls.”

            “I was heartbroken,” Susan recalled. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I?’ But the idea of equality, or fighting for equality, wasn’t on our radar yet.”

Cleanliness before competition

            Susan loved sports of all kinds. But she had few opportunities to play. Girls had no recreational teams or school teams. Gym classes were separated by sex, and while the boys had a full array of sports, in the younger grades, girls classes were mainly exercise, jumping rope and marching. She says they were graded on the cleanliness and color of their sneakers and gym uniforms!

            In high school, Susan finally got to play sports in gym class. In addition, the school had play days for girls. We’ve talked about “play days” before — after-school inter-scholastic events for girls. The teams were mixed between the schools and afterward the girls were made to socialize with each other. The structure of play days discouraged competition, which was thought to be unfeminine and detrimental to women’s health.

            Most women I’ve talked to remember play days scornfully, but Susan welcomed them.

            “I finally got to meet girls who were interested in sports,” she recalled. “We’d take buses to each other’s homes to play tennis or whatnot. It had a positive impact on me.”

            When she could, Susan played with her father, a male cousin, and her brother, although he wasn’t that interested in sports. She would play anything — basketball, baseball, tennis, touch football.

            But again, when she’d walk around her neighborhood and see boys playing Little League, she’d think, “Why can’t I do this?”

            In  the summer, Susan’s family would go to the Catskills. It was there at the Windsor Hotel that she finally got to play on a team. She practiced with the hotel’s summer softball team every day. At 11-years-old, she was five-foot-ten and strong. Everyone agreed, “She can play if she wants to play!”

Playing, kind of

            The first time Susan got to play for her school was in 1962 at Hunter College, where she was on the women’s basketball, softball, tennis and field hockey teams. She was ecstatic to finally play! But the inequities weren’t erased. The women’s basketball team, for example, had to practice at 7:30 a.m., while the men got the gym in the more reasonable afternoon hours.

            And although she got to play basketball, the game was ultimately unsatisfying. The college played the ancient “girls” game that had been started by Smith College’s Senda Berenson in 1892. The rules were intended to prevent “nervous exhaustion” from a game that was too strenuous for girls.

            In this game, the team had just six players, and the court was divided into three sections. Players couldn’t leave their section. They couldn’t dribble more than three times before passing or shooting the ball, and they couldn’t hold the ball for more than three seconds. Guarding was forbidden and falling down was a foul. Players couldn’t grab the ball from another player.

            Susan chafed under the rules.

            “I loved to shoot and I couldn’t shoot!” she said. “The coach looked at my height and put me on defense, where all you did was rebound.”

Women have to make do

            At Hunter, the women’s softball field was poorly maintained, while the men’s baseball team had an immaculate field. The men had varsity locker rooms, while the women used the gym class lockers. The women’s uniforms were hand-me-downs while the men’s teams had new uniforms every year. The women traveled to away games on old school buses while the men went on chartered buses.

            Most disappointing of all was that women did not have athletic scholarships. Because of that, college was out of reach financially for many women. Fortunately, Hunter College was doable for Susan’s family. Hunter didn’t even charge tuition until 1963.

            In my next blog post, Susan talks about how she made a life in sports with the little opportunity and encouragement she was given.

                                                            _________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

PHOTO: Susan Kaplowitz with students from Rutgers University. I’ll explain later!

Ohio hears a “who”

Title IX is getting another spin through the washer on transgender rights. In November, a group of inter-faith parents sued an Ohio school district for allowing transgender students to use gendered bathrooms.

            The parents are suing the Bethel Local School District of Dayton, Ohio, for using students’ stated gender identity rather than their biological sex to determine which bathroom they can use. In the lawsuit, filed on their behalf by America First Legal, the parents accuse the district of violating Title IX and state gender protections. They claim the district is forcing families to conform to its policy favoring transgender students, which infringes on their parental rights.

            “Boys are boys, girls are girls, and every student has the right to privacy in intimate spaces that has been enjoyed by every single generation of students before them,” said lead counsel Gene Hamilton. “We are proud to fight for our clients in this important area.”*

Silent switcheroo

            Specifically, the parents claim damage because the policy is causing health problems — rather than use bathrooms that allow access to students of the opposite biological sex, students have tried to avoid using bathrooms during school  hours, holding their urine for uncomfortable and unhealthy amounts of time. If they do use the restroom, the lawsuit says, it causes anxiety and emotional distress. Girls go to the restroom in pairs or groups in order to make sure they are safe and their modesty protected. 

            The parents are equally upset that the school district actually has gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students to use. In one case, a group of Muslim families donated money to have a gender-neutral bathroom built. But after the new policy went into effect in January 2022, the district stopped requiring transgender students to use the gender-neutral bathrooms. Even worse, the parents say, is that the district didn’t even inform them of the policy change.

            Before filing the lawsuit, the parents aired their concerns to school officials. His clients, Hamilton said, “tried to find solutions that would value and respect all members of the community,” but they were ignored.

Anybody home?

            Not only does the lawsuit claim Title IX infringement, it also targets the state of Ohio, whose officials have been equally as obtuse, the parents say. The state says it can’t help.

            “Over the past several years, we have received many questions from local school districts on the topic of accommodating transgender students and whether specific accommodations are required, given the guidance in place at the time,” said Sara Clark, chief legal counsel for the Ohio School Boards Association.“We encourage districts to work with students requesting accommodations on a case-by-case basis.”**

            Guidance at the federal level is also MIA. In June 2021, the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission applied the 1964 Civil Rights Act to gay, lesbian and transgender people in schools and workplaces. The guidance would apply to schools that accept federal financial aid, extending transgender protections to include use of restrooms and locker rooms.

            But twenty states, including Ohio, sued the federal government in 2020 over transgender rights policies. A federal judge blocked the administration’s new rules until these lawsuits are resolved. This ruling brings the whole issue of transgender rights to a standstill. Lacking federal legal protection makes it unlikely that individual states can set and enforce their laws.

Title IX tug-of-war

            So, Ohio has kicked the can back to the schools while the issue of transgender rights chugs its way through the agonizingly slow legal process. In the absence of guidance, individual school districts are being forced to form their own policies — and, not surprisingly, are running into legal backlashes like this one.

            And the group of parents whose children are in the Bethel school district are happy to push back. “The parental right to direct the education, safety, and upbringing of their children is the oldest fundamental right recognized by the Supreme Court,” they say.

            For its part, the Bethel School Board is using Title IX to support its claim that it had no choice but to open the restrooms to transgender students. The move was made to comply with Title IX, it says, because “the federal government was threatening school funding, and potential litigation was imminent.”

            I guess we’ll just have to hold our… breaths… waiting for the final outcome.

                                                ___________________

* Jeremiah Poff, “Ohio school district sued for transgender bathroom policy that caused students to ‘hold their urine,” Washington Examiner (November 22, 2022). This quote and the next come from this article.

** Jim Gaines, “Transgender rights in Ohio: Protections at stake with challenges underway,” Springfield News-Sun (July 4, 2022).

A walk-on wonder

It’s almost December, that dreary time between the World Series and spring training, and I’m so happy to have a baseball story for you!

            Last week, Olivia Pichardo made college baseball history. The 18-year-old freshman at Brown University became the first female athlete in NCAA Division 1 history to be named to a varsity baseball roster.

            Here’s how she describes finding out that she’d made the team.

            “It was definitely a surreal moment for me because it’s something that I’ve wanted since eighth grade,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy to know that I’m living out my dream right now and my ideal college experience that I’ve always wanted.”*

Softball? Nope!

            Olivia grew up in Queens, New York, and has been playing baseball since she was 5 years old. Her father, Max, had played street and sandlot ball in the Dominican Republic, and was equally in love with the game. He teamed up with his daughter to make her goal a reality.

            She played varsity ball for Garden School in Queens and travel baseball on Long Island. She played club ball for the New York Crush and Next Level Baseball and made the Olympic Women’s National Baseball Team. She went on to intern in the New York Mets’ amateur scouting department.

            Over the years, coaches and mentors pressured her to play softball, where she would undoubtedly succeed and have a secure athletic future. But Olivia pushed back.

            “Each year, I would be told that the game I love would leave me behind,” Olivia said. “I just kept playing and working harder.”**

            Olivia was determined to play baseball, even if it wasn’t at the D1 level. She had several offers to play college ball, but Olivia chose Brown, having no guarantee of playing. She participated in a walk-on tryout followed by an intense assessment process. Head coach Grant Achilles was impressed with her athleticism, versatility and strength as a middle infielder, outfielder and pitcher.

            “Olivia put together the most complete walk-on tryout I have seen from a player since becoming a head coach,” said Achilles.***                   

Team spirit

            Olivia’s teammates have been equally as supportive. When Achilles introduced her to the team, they gave her a round of applause.

            “I’m getting an overwhelming amount of support and it definitely feels very good to feel supported like this,” she said.†

            Baseball For All, an organization that advocates for girls and women in baseball, keeps a list of colleges and universities that consider talented players, regardless of gender. Eight women, including Olivia, are on varsity college baseball rosters for the spring of 2023. That makes Olivia happy.

            “I’m just really glad that we’re having more and more female baseball players at the collegiate level. No matter what division, it’s just really good to see this progression,” she said.†† “It’s paving the way for other girls in the next generation to also have these goals that they want to achieve and dream big and know that they can do it.”

                                                _________________

* “At Brown, Olivia Pichardo makes history as first woman on an NCAA Division I varsity baseball team,” Brown University press release (November 21, 2022). Read about other female baseball firsts here.

** https://oliviabaseball.com

*** “At Brown.”

† Julian McWilliams, “A lofty plan by a dad and his daughter 14 years ago produced Brown’s Olivia Pichardo, the first woman on a Division 1 baseball roster,” The Boston Globe (November 22, 2022).

†† “A lofty plan.”

Stemming the bias

Title IX’s most visible impact has been in athletics, but the law dramatically changed the academic universe for women, too. Evelynn Hammonds was in the first wave of women to break through the barriers women interested in science had faced.

            Born in 1953 in Atlanta, Evelynn was intrigued with science and the physical world from the very beginning.

            “As a young child, I was always very interested in science,” she said. “I had all these different kinds of science kits — I had a chemistry set, I had a microscope, I had all kinds of building kits, and it just spurred in me an interest in wanting to understand how the world worked.”*

            In high school, Evelynn’s interest in physics emerged. A National Merit Scholar, Hammonds attended Spelman College, where she entered a joint engineering program with Georgia Institute of Technology. She also took physics courses at Morehouse College. She graduated in 1976 with degrees in physics and electrical engineering.   

            Evelynn got her first chance to work in a physics lab in Bell Labs’ Summer Research Program for Women and Minorities. After graduation, she began a PhD program at MIT, but instead of finishing, went to work as a software engineer for five years. She completed her PhD at Harvard in the history of science.

Making inroads

              Today, she is Professor of the History of Science and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard. She was a dean at Harvard for five years, but returned to teaching in 2021.

            Women like Evelynn are paving the way for women in the sciences. Many of the degrees women seek today are in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. In 1970, two years before Title IX was passed, women comprised just 8 percent of STEM workers. Today, that number is 27 percent.

            But men still dominate: men make up half of all U.S. workers, but 73 percent of the STEM workforce. Engineering and computer science — two of the most lucrative STEM fields — remain heavily male. Only 21 percent of college engineering majors and 19 percent of computer science majors are women.

It’s the culture, stupid

            Part of the problem is a culture that is unwelcoming, and even hostile, to women. Evelynn found that to be true as early as her college years.

            “You’re in a culture where, on any given day, somebody might think you were a secretary, or a janitor, or anything but a graduate student in physics,” she said. “It was made very clear to us by some people that we didn’t fit, that we didn’t belong, that we were only there because of affirmative action, that we could never be successful. We were constantly finding those attitudes.”**

            Because of that, Evelynn authored her first published paper as E.M. Hammond, so people couldn’t tell she was a woman or African American. She was following in a long line of female scientists who have had to fight for recognition. Women in earlier generations had always been victims of the culture.

            “I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin,” said Nancy Grace Roman, the first female executive at NASA. “She looked down her nose at me and sneered, ‘What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?’”***

What’s to be done

            Evelynn and others are working to erase the hurdles that still exist for women in STEM fields. Some possible fixes: universities should diversify their faculty and courses should teach social issues, journals should reject research that doesn’t consider gender and sex, and Title IX should be used as a lever to force institutions to comply.

            “We’ve fought our fight as my generation, but we’re going to have to keep fighting for a while,” she said.† “We have a lot of work to do. The attitudes and the culture haven’t changed as much as they absolutely have to.”

                                      _____________________

* Jennifer Berglund, “Challenges and Change for Women of Color in Science – A Conversation with Evelyn Hammonds, Chair and Professor of the History of Science,” Harvard Museum of Sciences and Culture (August 20, 2020).

** Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, “Women in STEM need more than a law,” Harvard Gazette (June 20, 2022).

*** Report: “The STEM Gap: Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics,” American Association of University Women. Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018) is known as the “Mother of the Hubble Telescope” for her role in planning the telescope.

† “Challenges and Change” and “Women in STEM.”