Tag Archives: gender equality

Trans bans reach finish line

Last week, the governing bodies for three sports banned or delayed trans women from competing against biological women. Hallelujah! say those who believe Title IX should protect women’s space in the sporting world.

            FINA, the swimming world’s governing body, now permits only swimmers who have transitioned before age 12 — the onset of male puberty — to compete in women’s events.

            Cycling’s governing body will force transitioning riders to wait longer to compete. The International Cycling Union doubled the transition period on low testosterone to two years and lowered the maximum acceptable level of testosterone.

            And finally, rugby’s governing body banned transgender women from playing in women’s international matches while it works out a policy. The International Rugby League hopes to have something in place before the upcoming World Cup in October.

Wrestling with the issue

            Eventually, every sport will have to wrestle with the issue of transgender participation in women’s sports. These three athletic organizations are saying that males have inherent advantages over biological females that cannot be erased after the onset of puberty, even with hormone therapy. On average, biological males who have gone through puberty can move faster, jump further, throw longer, and lift heavier objects than females, creating large performance gaps in almost all sports. 

            Although there are no transgender competitors currently at elite levels in swimming, FINA’s ban would affect swimmers who hope to compete at national and international competitions and at the Olympics.

            Of course, the first person to come to mind is Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who competed for the University of Pennsylvania, setting a world record in the NCAA Division I 500-yard freestyle event. Lia has eyes on the Olympics, which are now out of the question. 

            FINA says it’s preparing to address this issue. It has proposed an “open competition category” that would allow transgender women to compete separately. The details of this new swimming category are being worked out.

            These bans address only sporting events at the elite level. But at the same time, nineteen states have enacted laws or issued statewide rules that bar or limit transgender sports participation at all levels.

The yays and nays

            Reaction to the bans was immediate — and predictable. Spokespersons for LGBTQ advocates call the bans discriminatory. Those hoping to protect biological women from having to compete against biological males favor the restrictions.

            “The eligibility criteria for the women’s category as it is laid out in the policy police the bodies of all women, and will not be enforceable without seriously violating the privacy and human rights of any athlete looking to compete in the women’s category,” said Anne Lieberman of Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ advocacy group.*

            “When it comes to sport, you cannot deny biology and facts. And the facts say that men and women are so different, different enough that in order to give girls and women an equal opportunity to participate, they need their own team,” said Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a four-time Olympic swimming medalist and a longtime advocate for women’s rights in sports.**

            Former Olympic decathlete Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender woman, agreed.

            “It worked! I took a lot of heat — but what’s fair is fair! If you go through male puberty you should not be able to take medals away from females. Period,” Jenner said via Twitter.***

            Many people believe the issue can be settled  by creating a separate category or by instituting a system of handicapping, which is an accepted way to address disparities in sports like golf. But the future really is unknown.

            “If we want to see women winning Olympic gold medals or earning professional sports contracts then we can’t be having men in the category,” said Joanna Harper, a sports scientist and transgender woman who is a runner.**** “Can we have trans women who have gone through male puberty in the category? That, admittedly, is not yet a settled question.”

                                                _____________________________

*  Ciarán Fahey,  “World swimming bans transgender athletes from women’s events,” AP News (June 22, 2022).

** Justin Barney, “Olympic gold medalist Hogshead-Makar: Transgender ruling positive news for female swimmers,” WJXT News4Jax (June 20, 2022).

*** Khaleda Rahman, “Transgender Swimming Ban Praised by Former Olympic Athletes,” Newsweek (June 20, 2022).

**** Dan Roan and Katie Falkingham, “Transgender athletes: What do the scientists say?,” BBC Sport (May 11, 2022).

PHOTO:  Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas

Happy 50th Anniversary, Title IX!

Today’s the day! Fifty years ago today, President Nixon signed Title IX into law. Let’s step back in time and see what reaction to the proposed law was like in its early days.

The good

“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.” — Title IX

“My mail tells me it is the most important subject in the United States today.” — Caspar Weinberger, director of the Office of Management and Budget (1972-73).

The bad

“A girl just can’t do those things and still be a lady.” — a sportswriter of the day, referring to vigorous sports like basketball and baseball.

“Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow.” — John Clark Fitzgerald, a Connecticut judge ruling against allowing a high school girl to be on a cross-country team.

“Impending doom is around  the corner if these regulations are implemented.” — NCAA director Walter Byers.

“If this passes, you are going to have male stewards.” — a male House member, speaking of airline flight attendants.

“I would have had much more fun playing college football if it had been integrated.” — Sen. Peter Dominick (R-CO), joking about Title IX’s impact on sports.

“I’m all for women’s athletics, but if we had to split our budget it would bankrupt us.” —University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant.

“The Federal Government’s ever‐expanding role in the affairs of American higher education has struck home. And I am not happy about it.” — Fred C. Davison, a New York Times writer who supported exempting revenue-producing sports like football from Title IX compliance.

The truth

“We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on the graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a ‘man’s place’ on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the ‘weaker sex’ and it is time to change our operating assumptions.” — Sen. Birch Bayh (D-IN), Senate sponsor of Title IX.

“The truth is that all our problems stem from the same sex-based myths. We may appear before you as white radicals or the middle-aged middle class or black soul sisters, but we are all sisters in fighting against these outdated myths.” — activist and feminist Gloria Steinem.

“Women have not been encouraged to participate in athletics at least partly because the traits associated with athletic excellence — achievement, self-confidence, aggressiveness, leadership, strength, swiftness — are often seen as being in contradiction with the role of women.” — Margaret Dunkle, whose research helped set the groundwork for Title IX.

“My research was much better than my badminton volley!” — Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, the “Godmother of Title IX,” on her efforts to collect data and anecdotes illustrating the need for gender equality laws.

“All I want and all I ask is that if two individuals, a man and a woman, come to a college or university and they have equal credentials and apply for admissions, that they shall be treated as equals.” — Rep. Edith Green (D-OR), who co-wrote Title IX.

“Millions of women pay taxes into the Federal treasury and we collectively resent that these funds should be used for the support of institutions to which we are denied equal access.” — Rep. Patsy Mink (D-HI), Title IX co-sponsor.

“There were only 27 of us but we were a talky bunch.” — a female lobbyist, about efforts to gain approval for Title IX in the House.

“To create trench warfare between men and women is terrible. If it happens, women will be blamed, and they don’t have to be. The idea is to comply without being retaliatory.” — Olympic swimmer, sports broadcaster and sports activist Donna de Varona, on how collegiate athletic budgets could be fairly apportioned under Title IX rules.

The future

“Unfortunately, certain restrictions placed in the law by the Congress mean that we will not be able to realize fully our principles of equity. But as confidence develops in the new programs, we look forward in the near future to having a set of Federal student assistance programs devoted to the goal of equalizing opportunities for all.” — President Nixon on signing the Education Amendments of 1972 into law (but making no mention of Title IX).

The Mars to Venus gap

Last week, a national poll found an astonishing split between men’s and women’s perception of the impact of Title IX.

            Poll results showed that 61 percent of men say that due to Title IX, the country has made a “great deal” or “a lot” of progress toward gender equality. At the same time, only 37 percent of women say that is the case, according to the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the National Women’s History Museum.*

            That’s a gap of a full 24 percent! Indeed, men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

            Other women said that the country has made only “some” progress toward gender parity. Half of women held that view, while 13 percent said the country has made just “a little” or no progress.

            Overall, 63 percent of those responding said they approve of Title IX, including majorities of men and women.

The end times

            I guess, in the grand scheme of things, this is progress. In 1974, two years after the passage of Title IX, the executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) predicted that the end of the world was nigh.

            “Impending doom is around  the corner if these regulations are implemented,” warned Walter Byers.**

            At the time, just 2 percent of college athletic budgets went to women’s sports. I guess Mr. Byers thought that was just too much already.

            Still, 5 percent of those responding to the poll did not approve of Title IX at all (really?!?), while the rest said they were neutral or not sure.

            One reason people might not be sure of whether we’ve  benefited from Title IX is that they might not know what the law covers. Its reach has expanded beyond its original scope. In 1972, when the law was passed, its intent was to open colleges and universities to women. Its application in the realm of sports quickly followed.

            Today, the law is being applied to matters of sexual harassment and sexual assault. You can easily see why — sexual violence creates a hostile environment for women on college campuses. And administrations historically have swept women’s complaints under the rug. Women often say they were raped twice — once by an attacker and then again by her college.

Whose turn is it?

            The unequal perception unearthed by the poll doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Men and women also have widely different views on equality in other settings. For example, a 2021 Pew Research  poll found that in the home, 55 percent of men say they are satisfied with the division of household chores. But women? Only 38 percent say they are satisfied with how labor is divided. Laundry anyone?!?

            And let’s talk about talking. Australian author and researcher Dale Spender found that in a college classroom environment, men believe conversation is equally divided between men and women when women speak 15 percent of the time. Fifteen percent! She found that men also believe women dominate conversation when they speak 30 percent of the time. 

            Spender’s conclusion? Men have no idea how much they talk or who they talk over. And, ultimately, men would prefer that women remain silent.

            One of the respondents to the Title IX poll summed up the situation well. Progress that started in the ’70s seems to have stalled, said Brenda Theiss, a 68-year-old retired optician in Vinemont, Alabama.***

            “We’ve fought a lot, we’ve gained a little bit, but we haven’t really gained equality,” she  said.

                                               ——————————–

* Collin Binkley, “Men, women split on equity gains since Title IX, poll shows,” AP News (June 15, 2022).

** Karen Blumenthal, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005), p. 65.

*** AP News poll.

A champion denied

Today, let’s talk about another elite athlete who turned her success into a life of activism.

            In 1960, 13-year-old Donna de Varona qualified for the Olympic swimming team. She held a world record in her best event, the 400-meter individual medley.

            The problem? That event wasn’t on the Olympic program. People still believed women shouldn’t exert themselves. (Though, in the pool, who can see you sweat?) In a 1962 Sports Illustrated cover article, the writer felt it necessary to comment on the photo of Donna (above) that “some good, tough muscles show on her otherwise ladylike figure.”

            At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, organizers added the event and Donna won gold in the women’s 400-meter individual medley. She defeated the second-place finisher by an astounding six seconds and set an Olympic record. She also took home gold as a member of the world-record-setting U.S. team in the 4 x 100 freestyle relay.

            But this being the 1960s, Donna’s stellar swimming career came to an abrupt end. Back then, female athletes couldn’t get college athletic scholarships so there was no path forward for her.

            “After finishing my last race at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, I went back to the arena and climbed the highest tower overlooking the pool,” she said. “I sat there and looked out at all those empty seats, thinking, ‘What’s next?’”*

Pivoting to activism

            Well… a lot came next! She enrolled in UCLA and at age 17 began a decades-long broadcasting career for ABC, going on to cover eighteen Olympics. At the same time, she began her lifelong activism for Title IX.

            “I never forgot how the lack of scholarships forced me to cut my swimming career short. It made me a passionate advocate for gender equality in college sports,” she said.**

            Donna worked with Congress to pass Title IX, so that future generations of women could have the opportunities she was denied. In the mid-1970s, she and Billie Jean King founded the Women’s Sports Foundation, serving as its first president. One of its focuses was ensuring that Title IX’s mission was being accomplished. In 2007, she hosted, wrote and produced a documentary for the 35th anniversary of Title IX.

A rising Title IX issue

            Today, Donna has entered the fray in the highly controversial issue of whether transgender women should compete in women’s sports. Last year, she and other elite athletes founded the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, whose mission is to provide equitable ways to include trans women yet protect women from competing against biological males who have physical advantages that can’t be erased. “There is a middle way,” the group insists. 

             “Those that want to compete as transgender male to female athletes should be accommodated in a separate or more creative manner,” Donna says.***

            The group’s answer is two-fold: to provide men and women with equal opportunities on the basis of biological sex, and to provide ways to include trans girls and women in ways that would ensure fairness and playing safety in competitive sport without diminishing the protection of biological females. They advocate for national standards that would ensure fairness across all states and sports.

             “Those of us who fought for Title IX, it has been a war for a long time,” she said. “We had to research and prove our point that we deserved to have an equal opportunity, not just to compete but to learn so many valuable tools from the foundation sports provides us. 

            “So what is the answer? It is complicated and people don’t want complicated.”***

            Donna would like to see her sport lead the way in crafting policy. “The voices are going to get louder and we have to find solutions,” she says.****

            If anyone can find an answer, it’s Donna de Varona. She’s proved she’s a champion both in the pool and out.

                                                ____________________________

* Donna de Varona, “At 17, I’d won two Olympic gold medals for swimming. I still couldn’t get a scholarship,” Vox (July 13, 2016).

** Vox. Ironically (and sadly), in 2000, de Varona sued ABC Sports for $50 million, saying she was fired because of her sex and age. She dropped the suit in 2002 when ABC rehired her.

*** Dan D’Addona, “Donna de Varona: Transgender Swimming Dialogue Must Continue,” Swimming World (January 4, 2022). De Varona was responding to the controversy over trans woman Lia Thomas, who swam for the University of Pennsylvania, winning an NCAA Division I national championship this year in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event. Thomas’s final collegiate ranking in this event jumped from 65th on the men’s team to first on the women’s team. In a March 17th article, Swimming World’s editor said, “Lia Thomas’ victory is an insult to the biological women who raced against her. Against those who fought for Title IX and equal opportunities for female athletes. Against science, and the unmistakable physiological differences between the male and female sexes.”

**** Swimming World.

That’ll leave a mark

Recently, I’ve heard several elite female athletes say they want to be more than athletes. They want to use their success — and their position in the media spotlight — to achieve other personal goals.

            This seems to me like a sign that Title IX is doing its job. For a woman to have the opportunity — and the luxury — of choosing how to leave her mark on the world is not a case of abandoning hard-won opportunity, but of embracing a life that has been made possible by the gender equality law.

            This certainly has been the case for Maya Moore.

            Maya ruled the basketball court, no doubt about it. She played forward for the University of Connecticut, winning national championships in 2009 and 2010. She was the first overall pick in the 2011 Women’s National Basketball League (WNBA) draft, joining the Minnesota Lynx. 

            From 2011 to 2017, Maya led the Minnesota Lynx to four WNBA championships and in 2014 was named league MVP. Her team made the playoffs in all eight of the seasons she played, and she was named to the All-WNBA squad seven times. She won two Olympic gold medals.

            So why did she walk away from it all?

Life off the court

            Off the court, Maya and her family were part of a Christian prison ministry at Jefferson City Correctional Center in St. Louis, Missouri. There, in 2007, as an 18-year-old, she met Jonathan Irons, a Black prisoner who had been convicted in 1998 of breaking into a suburban St. Louis home and shooting the homeowner in the course of a burglary. He was serving a 50-year sentence.

            Maya became convinced of Irons’s innocence. His lawyers said he was convicted on the basis of false identification, a false confession and the omission of crucial evidence at trial. Maya backed the legal team with her own money, convinced that Irons was the victim of a racist justice system. In 2019, she stepped away from her basketball career to focus on social justice issues.

            In March 2020, a judge ruled that the case against Irons was weak, with a lack of evidence linking him to the crime, and further efforts to keep him imprisoned failed. On July 1, Irons walked out of prison after 22 years behind bars. As Maya watched, she dropped to her knees, cradling her head in her hands.

            “It was kind of a worshipful moment, just dropping to my knees and being so thankful that we made it,” she said. “When I stepped away two springs ago, I wanted to shift my priorities to be more available and present for things that mattered more than being a professional athlete. This is one of the biggest and most direct results of that.”*

A new freedom

            In September that year, Maya and Jonathan married, and the couple began working together to help others who they believe have been treated unfairly by the justice system. In 2021, Maya won the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly (ESPY)’s Arthur Ashe Award, an honor given to individuals whose contributions transcend sports, joining the ranks of Muhammad Ali, Pat Summitt and Billie Jean King. ESPN produced a “30 for 30” feature on Maya titled “Breakaway,” and through their nonprofit, Win With Justice, the couple is using their own story as an agent of change.

            “There is a life we want to live, things we want to do, things we feel called to do together to help make our world a better place,” she says. “This sense of freedom is huge for both of us now.”

            And that’s the kind of freedom made possible by Title IX.

                                                ______________________________

* ABC’s Good Morning America program. Robin Roberts’s interview with Maya Moore and Jonathan Irons (June 25, 2020).

** Kurt Streeter, “After Helping Her Husband Gain Freedom, Maya Moore Savors Her Own,” New York Times (May 17, 2021). Irons has filed a federal lawsuit, naming those he says caused his wrongful imprisonment.

PHOTO CREDIT: Maya Moore

Tackling the football ban

Last week, Karen O’Connor Self shared her experience as an 11-year-old girl who wanted to play on her middle school boys basketball team. That made me curious — did any other girls sue for the right to play a sport?

            Yes, indeed! Thirteen years after the passage of Title IX, one young girl challenged her state’s ban against girls playing on boys teams that were considered contact sports. Contact sports were defined as those sports whose “main activity” involved bodily contact. In most states, football, wrestling, boxing, rugby, ice hockey and basketball were all closed to mixed-sex sports teams.

            But Jacqueline Lantz wanted to play football.

            In 1985, Jacqueline sued for the right to try out for the junior varsity football team at Lincoln High School in Yonkers, New York.

            “I love football,”’ she said. “And I wanted to play. I wanted to know what it was like to be on the field rather than to be a spectator.”*

            For both her junior and senior years, Jacqueline attempted to try out for the all-male squad. Both times, the coach turned her away because of New York’s ban on mixed-gender teams in contact sports.

Coach v. Court

            Jacqueline’s mother filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to have the ban stricken on the grounds that it violated both Title IX and the 14th Amendment’s right to equal protection under the law — the same argument made five years earlier by Karen O’Connor Self.

            The Lantzes also sought an order that would allow Jacqueline to join the team before the suit was decided. Lincoln had a no-cut policy, so Jacqueline would automatically be placed on the squad, although that didn’t mean she would play in any games.

            Jacqueline’s desire to play a rough contact sport like football was puzzling to some people. Why would a girl want to play a sport like that? Good question!

            “It’s so much excitement. It seems so great, they figure, ‘Why not do this?’” said Tom Tutko, a sports psychology professor at San Jose State. “They’re willing to risk it. They don’t care about social embarrassment.”**

Who needs protection?

            On October 30, 1985, the decision came down. The court said that Title IX did not apply in Jacqueline’s case, because Title IX covered only programs that receive federal funding. Even if Title IX had applied, the law specifically excluded contact sports.

            The court conceded that the state had proved its point that the ban was intended to protect the safety of girls. The state’s data showing that “as a general rule,” boys were stronger and more physically developed than girls at that age was persuasive.

            But the court didn’t stop there.

            “These data, however refined, inevitably reflect averages and generalities,” the court concluded. “No girl, and simply because she is a girl, has the chance to show that she is as fit, or more, to be on the squad as the weakest of its male members.”

            That being the case, the court concluded, New York State has no right to exclude an athlete from competition simply because of her gender. The 14th Amendment prevailed!

Teaming up for the future

            Jacqueline never did get to suit up with the team. The season ended just two weeks after the ruling. Yet she wasn’t upset.  

            “I still won because other girls will now be allowed to play,” she said after she heard the outcome.

            And, in fact, other girls have shown that they do want to play this sport. For the 2018-19 school year, 2,404 girls played tackle football on boys teams at the high school level.*** Admittedly, that’s a tiny percentage of the 1,006,013 high school boys who played football that year, but, then again, sports isn’t always a numbers game. It just takes one to win.

                                             ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________________

* Gary Kriss, “Yonkers Student to Sue in Effort to Join Male Football Team,” New York Times (September 29, 1985), Section 11, p. 1.

** Roger Campbell, “Girls in Football: It Isn’t Working Out,” Los Angeles Times (October 30, 1986).

*** Source: National Federation of State High Schools Association. The data is from the latest year for which statistics are available. It’s interesting that boys’ participation is dropping year to year, perhaps in part because of current-day safety concerns.

A lil’ history for you

Did Title IX spring up out of nowhere?

            Of course not! It was part of a growing awareness of the inequities women faced in society. Today, I’ll share a smattering of the events, laws, books and movements that fueled changing societal attitudes about women.

            Here we go!

The Equal Rights Amendment. Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman introduced the ERA as the Lucretia Mott Amendment in 1923. They worked for the gender equality law for the rest of their lives, although as of today, the amendment has not passed.

Equal pay laws. In 1945, Congress introduced the Women’s Equal Pay Act. It didn’t pass, but in 1955, Rep. Edith Green (D-OR) introduced the Equal Pay Act. The law passed in 1963, and Rep. Green went on to help write Title IX.

Civil rights movement. Women played a crucial role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, especially at the grass roots level. For example, Septima Clark designed programs to teach African American citizens how to read and write. Her idea for “citizen education” became the cornerstone of the movement. From women like Clark and suffragists like Mary Church Terrell, who lived into the mid-1950s, women learned how to mobilize for a cause.

The President’s Commission on the Status of Women. President John F. Kennedy established this commission in 1961 to address discrimination against women in education, the work force, and federal benefits programs like Social Security. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt headed the organization.

The Feminine Mystique. Betty Friedan’s book, published by W.W. Norton in 1963, examined the lives of her Smith College classmates, finding that women weren’t totally fulfilled as wives, mothers and household managers. “There was no activism in that cause when I wrote it,” she said. “But I realized that it was not enough just to write a book. There had to be social change.”*

NOW. The National Organization of Women was founded in 1966 by 28 women, including Friedan and Shirley Chisholm, who became the first Black congresswoman two years later. NOW addresses both gender and racial inequality. Today it has about 500,000 members around the country.

The bra burners. In 1968, a group of women staged a protest at the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They threw bras, lipsticks, pots, pans, mops and high heels into a “Freedom Trash Can.” (The can wasn’t actually burning, as police put the kibosh on fires.) The protest drew in women who had been on the fence about feminism. “We were young radicals, just discovering feminism because we were tired of making coffee but not policy,” said organizer Robin Morgan.**

The Women’s Equity Action League. Elizabeth Boyer and members of NOW founded WEAL in 1968 to raise women’s status through legal action and legislative change. WEAL officer Bernice “Bunny” Sandler, the “Godmother of Title IX,” discovered the loophole in Executive Order 11246, signed by President Johnson in 1965, that barred discrimination by federal contractors based on sex. Because almost all colleges and universities had federal contracts, she thought the order could apply to them.  It was the foundation for Title IX.

Our Bodies, Ourselves. This 1970 book, self published by a group of women in Boston, celebrated women’s bodies, health and sexuality. It encouraged women to view themselves as independent, whole persons rather than as passive partners for men. By 1972, publisher Simon & Schuster came calling, and today the book has sold more than 4 million copies.

Ms. magazine. Journalist and activist Gloria Steinem started Ms. magazine in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine. It quickly eclipsed the day’s women’s magazines, which focused on fashion, food, husband hunting and child raising. By 1972, it was a stand-alone magazine. BTW, civil rights activist Sheila Michaels invented the “Ms” title in 1961, when she wanted to complete forms without including a marital status. “There was no place for me [as a single woman]. I didn’t belong to my father and I didn’t want to belong to a husband,” she said.***

            So there you have it… a brief course in the birth of the women’s movement!

                                              _______________________________

* Ben Wattenberg. Interview of Betty Friedan for The First Measured Century. (weekly PBS program).   https://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/friedan.htm

** “100 Women: The truth behind the ‘bra-burning’ feminists,” BBC News (September 7, 2018). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45303069 Morgan later said she regretted targeting the contestants. “After all, they were mostly working-class women trying to get a free scholarship.” 

*** Eve Kay,“Call Me Ms.” The Guardian (June 29, 2007).

NOTE: Image shows Septima Clark (left) and a Miss America protester (right).

What a difference a decade makes

Kaitlin Calogera traipses around Washington, DC, for a living. Her company, A Tour of Her Own, offers tours of historical sites and events that highlight women and their achievements.

So how does Title IX figure into Kaitlin’s story? The law was well in the rearview mirror when she was born in the late 1980s.

“We were the first generation of women to benefit from Title IX,” she says. “As an athlete, I was always in female spaces and I thrived on female energy.”*

I connected with Kaitlin after she saw my post about Olympic softball player Dot Richardson. “Dr. Dot” was an early inspiration for Kaitlin.**

“Her book was the first autobiography I’d ever read by a woman,” she says. “Not only is she an athlete, but she’s a doctor. She’s such an inspiration!”

Heads up!

Growing up in Old Bridge, New Jersey, Kaitlin was an athlete through and through. She faced off against two older brothers and played on Little League, basketball and hockey teams, often with the boys. One of the only girls in her neighborhood, she had to keep up.

“It was either hit the ball or get hit with it!” she recalls.

She admits she wasn’t much of a student,  although she kept up. “I needed good grades in order to play sports. That was my incentive,” she says.

For two years, she played softball at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, but she took a gap year and coached softball in Germany, traveling to other countries for tournaments. Back in the States, she coached softball at the Jenny Finch Academy at Diamond Nation in New Jersey and then at Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she got a history degree.

Despite Title IX, discrimination didn’t magically disappear. While at Diamond Nation, she learned that a male coach was making twice her salary, despite their identical qualifications.

 “Even then, we were still subconsciously being taught just to be grateful for what we had. We weren’t sure when to make a fuss,” she says.

Is that all there is?

Kaitlin didn’t make a fuss. She left for Washington, DC, where she volunteered as an assistant coach at Georgetown University. But she realized it would take years to make a life as a college coach — years that she didn’t want slipping by.

She took a corporate job arranging travel, hotels and restaurants for visiting groups. But she envied the guides who took people around the city.

“I wanted to know — Who were these people who got to go to the Lincoln Memorial every day?” she says.

Kaitlin’s envy led to certification as a tour guide and her own rounds of the city. It was eye-opening.

“It was all about presidents and wars,” she says. “I started to wonder, Is that all there is? Is this really me?”

It wasn’t her. She was curious about women’s lives and appreciated the female role models in her life. But start a tour company centered around women? She wasn’t sure.

“Is it a thing?” she asked a friend. “I think this needs to be a thing.”

On the road again

So was born A Tour of Her Own. Kaitlin and her guides love sharing the hidden lives of women. And she sees a natural connection between Kaitlin the athlete and Kaitlin the entrepreneur.

“The skills I learned as an athlete serve me well now,” she says. “I was used to always being on the road. My mother would be driving and I’d be navigating with the map. I know how to be loud and take up space. I gained discipline, commitment and a tough skin.”

All good skills for her, but she also loves what she’s created for others.

 “I love having a team of women who are as close knit as my sports teams were,” she says. “As an athlete, I always wanted to be with my teammates, and that’s how my business is. It’s like going to the World Series every day!”

If you aren’t lucky enough to catch a TOHO tour, you can read Kaitlin’s book. In 2021, she co-authored with Rebecca Grawl 111 Places in Women’s History in Washington, DC, That You Must Not Miss.*** But I’m close to DC, so I think I’ll book a tour soon!  

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* Kaitlin’s quotes come from my interview with her on May 31, 2022.

** Find Dot Richardson’s story at https://www.nancybkennedy.com/cut-my-hair-and-call-me-bob/ . She is an orthopedic surgeon and currently is head coach of Liberty University’s softball program. Her book is Living the Dream (Kensington, 1998). https://amzn.to/3NKlEEA

*** 111 Places in Women’s History in Washington, DC, That You Must Not Miss (Emons Publishers, 2021). https://amzn.to/3x61bU2

Put me in, coach

In the early years of Title IX, one 11-year-old girl and her family took a gender equality case all the way to the Supreme Court.

From an early age, Karen O’Connor Self was an outstanding athlete. Basketball was her main sport, but she also played soccer and baseball. She was skilled enough that she often played on boys teams. And if a coach objected, Karen’s mother set him straight.

“If a coach told my mother I couldn’t play on his team, she told him about Title IX and made him put me on the roster,” Karen says.*

Karen started playing basketball as a toddler. She learned the game from an uncle who was an assistant coach at Harvard and later head coach at Connecticut’s Fairfield University.

We’ve got a problem

All was going along swimmingly until Karen entered sixth grade at MacArthur Junior High School in Prospect Heights, Illinois. The school had a girls basketball team, but the level of play wasn’t challenging enough for her. She wanted to play on the boys team.

In August 1980, Karen’s father asked the school board to allow her to try out for the boys team.

 “My feeling was, ‘Let me try, Coach,’” Karen says. “If I’m not good enough, you can cut me.”

The coach refused.

Karen and her family considered the refusal a form of discrimination that ran afoul of both her constitutional rights — of the kind guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment — and of Title IX. And so they sued.

Separate and unequal?

The school’s position was that single-sex teams didn’t discriminate. The girls had a separate but equal chance to participate in sports, so the school wasn’t in violation of either the Fourteenth Amendment or Title IX, it said. 

Karen’s family won in a lower court, but the decision was overturned on appeal. Surprisingly, the case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

In the end, the Supreme Court left the verdict of the appeals court intact, and the school was victorious. The school had a right to offer “separate but equal” teams segregated by sex, the Court said.

“In essence, the Supreme Court was saying that I — that girls — had a right to participate, but not a right to grow as an individual,” Karen says.

Many people saw this ruling as the right one for girls sports. If the most skilled girls played on boys teams, girls teams wouldn’t thrive. And, conversely, if boys played on girls teams, girls would be shut out.

“Letting in one girl here or there doesn’t really help the overall picture of women in sports,” said Jennifer Nupp, then of the Women’s Equity Action League. “Equal opportunity for the individual can even retard equal opportunity for the group.”**

It turned out okay

Karen never played for MacArthur’s sixth grade girls team. The next year, her father’s job took the family to California, where she was welcomed onto the junior high boys team. But by eighth grade, the boys were gaining in height and weight, making it harder for her to compete.

“That was the first year I wasn’t the leading scorer,” she recalls.

After another move, this time to New York State, Karen had a stellar high school career at Hyde Park’s Franklin D. Roosevelt High School. She made the girls varsity team as a 14-year-old freshman. Playing with 17- and 18-year old girls provided all the competition she needed to up her game. And as a senior, she helped coach the freshman boys basketball team.

Karen went on to play basketball at Arizona State University, but a back injury ended her playing days. At age 23, she became head coach at Seton Catholic Preparatory in Chandler, Arizona. In her 30 years at the school, she has taken the team to the championships 17 times, winning 12 state titles.

“I’ve built a life around coaching girls sports,” she says. “Title IX came around at just the right time for me. We were just adjusting to the right to play, and it opened up so many doors for us.”

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* All of Karen O’Connor Self’s quotes come from my interview with her on May 13, 2022. Her lawsuit came almost immediately after the final Title IX guidelines for sex equity in sports were approved at the end of 1979.

** Ellen Goodman, “Her Aim Was Fine, Her Timing Off,”  The Boston Globe (December 8, 1981), p.1. The Women’s Equity Action League was founded in 1968 to address discrimination against women in employment and education. It operated until 1989.

Saved by the game

High school is a memorable time for many of us, but for Melissa Isaacson, it was more than nostalgia that made her write about the girls basketball team that won the 1979 Illinois state championship.

Melissa’s book, State: A Team, a Triumph, a Transformation, is about a team of girls who beat not only their opponent, but a society that only recently had let them be athletes.

“This story is about one group of girls sitting innocently at a monumental place in our nation’s history,” Melissa wrote. “It’s about the sheer joy of getting our first uniforms, packing the same school gym where we were once not allowed to practice, and gaining access to life lessons previously only available to boys.”*

The girls of the Niles West team of Skokie, Illinois, made their way onto the court in the early years of Title IX. They came from varied, and sometimes neglectful and even violent, families. They believe to this day that playing basketball not only changed them, but saved them.

They had strong backers and role models. Nicholas Mannos, the principal who fought for girls to have the same opportunities as boys. Their first coach, Arlene Mulder, who’d never coached basketball but who mastered the game and pushed the girls to be their best selves. Billy Schnurr, the boys basketball coach who secretly mentored Mulder and helped mold the girls into fierce competitors. Gene Earl, their second coach, who delighted in the girls’ spirit and took them to the championships.

Who’s that I see?

When the team arrived at the championship game in 1979, they found they’d be facing East St. Louis, a powerhouse of a team with a secret weapon — Jackie Joyner, the extraordinary athlete who went on to win six Olympic gold medals. That didn’t faze Melissa or her teammates.

“After 25 games, and for most of us, two or more years of running stairs and scrimmaging at five in the morning behind us, we could say with confidence that no team in Illinois was better conditioned or more in sync,” she said.**

It was a hard fought battle, but when the final buzzer sounded, they had won the game 63-47. Melissa, who had suffered an injury that year, only came in for the final minute. Holding the ball at the buzzer, she flung it skyward as the stands rocked to the chant, “We are! State champs!”

Years later, at a team reunion, Holly Andersen Blanchette shared what sports meant to her.

“People accuse me of being competitive sometimes,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m a sore loser; it means that sports has empowered me. It gives you self-confidence and makes you more determined.”

A scandal spurs a career

Melissa played club basketball at the University of Iowa, where she earned her B.A. in journalism. Her interest in the profession arose from the seminal political event of the 1970s, the Watergate scandal.***

“Journalism was suddenly a glamorous profession. Reporters were celebrities,” she says. “And it was a natural interest for me, as I loved writing and lived in Chicago, a town that had three daily papers.”

For 30 years, Melissa was a sportswriter, working for the Chicago Tribune and USA Today among other newspapers. In the ‘90s, she covered the Michael-Jordan-led Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Bears, the first woman in those reporting roles. She worked for ESPN, covering everything up to and including the Olympics.

A woman sportswriter — in choosing her career path, Melissa opened up an avenue previously unavailable to women. Today she is a lecturer at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.  

Melissa once had the opportunity to interview Birch Bayh, the Indiana senator who co-wrote Title IX with Reps. Edith Green and Patsy Mink. She ended the call on a personal note.

“Thank you,” I told him. “What you did changed our lives…. it gave me and my teammates an identity and self-esteem that girls just a few years older didn’t have the same chance of having.”

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* Quotes in the present tense (says) are from my telephone interview with Melissa Isaacson on April 19, 2022. Quotes in the past tense (said) are from her book, State: A Team, A Triumph, A Transformation (Chicago: Agate Midway, 2019). https://amzn.to/3yBR0cf

** When the team suffered a rare loss that season, Coach Earl comforted the girls with this memorable thought: “Trust me,” he said. “You are not going to remember this when you’re giving birth to your first child.”

*** So I wasn’t the only one! I went into journalism because of Watergate, too.