Tag Archives: TitleIX50

Guest Post: Heath Hardage Lee

Recently, I read Heath Hardage Lee’s book, The League of Wives, about a group of determined women who forced the American government to bring their POW husbands home from Vietnam. I loved this book! When I saw that Heath had moderated a Title IX panel at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, I asked if she’d share her thoughts. So, here she is on the blog today, and again, I love what she has to say!*

On February 6, 1969, President Richard Nixon faced the second press conference of his new administration. He fielded questions on a wide range of topics from a room packed with reporters. However, when Washington bureau chief for the North American Newspaper Alliance Vera Glaser got her turn, she asked him a question no one had expected.

“Mr. President, in staffing your administration, you have so far made about 200 high-level Cabinet and other policy position appointments, and only three have gone to women. Can you tell us, sir, whether we can we expect more equitable recognition of women’s abilities, or are we going to remain a lost sex?”

Glaser’s question became part of the push that the new administration needed to prioritize women’s rights and gender equity. In response to Glaser’s query, the President’s Task Force on Women’s Rights and Responsibilities was rapidly organized. The completed Task Force report, entitled “A Matter of Simple Justice” was sent to the President on December 12, 1969.

Righting the ratio

Among the major action items in the Task Force report was this recommendation: “The President should appoint more women to positions of top responsibility in all branches of federal government to achieve a more equitable ratio of men and women.” Barbara Hackman Franklin, one of the first female graduates of Harvard Business School and rising star in the banking world was appointed as Staff Assistant to the President in April 1971. Within this role, Franklin would lead all efforts to fulfill the Task Force recommendation. Her work would prove critical to the success of the administration’s efforts for women.

One of the many ripple effects of the Task Force recommendations and Franklin’s work was the proposal of the landmark Education Amendments, primarily authored by Rep. Patsy Mink, and strongly supported by Rep. Edith Green and Sen. Birch Bayh. These amendments include the now famous Title IX. President Nixon signed these amendments into law fifty years ago on June 23, 1972.

When the final regulations were issued in 1975, Title IX covered women and girls, students and employees, protecting them all from discrimination. This included sexual harassment, admissions policies, basically every aspect of education K-12 for institutions that receive federal funding.

Today Title IX is most often equated with women’s sports, but it was part of this broader movement towards women’s rights and gender equity across the board that began with Vera Glaser’s question, the Presidential Task Force for Women, and Barbara Hackman Franklin. This potent push meant that equity for women went from an afterthought under previous administrations to high priority under President Nixon.

Hearing from the athletes

On June 23 of this year, I helped celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX (renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002) at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. I was honored to set the historical context for the event and interview Barbara Hackman Franklin. Our chat was followed by a panel of outstanding Olympians: three-time gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings (beach volleyball), four-time gold medalist Janet Evans (distance swimming), and two-time gold medalist Courtney Mathewson (water polo).

What these young female athletes had to say was heartening. Each of the women noted that they had never felt discriminated against in the sports world due to their gender. Not once had any of them felt the sting of sexism that some of their athlete mothers had warned them about. Thanks to Title IX, all three women had grown up feeling safe, supported and empowered in their respective arenas. These Olympians had never known a world without the benefits and protections of consequential legislation which allowed each of them to soar athletically.

Thanks to women like Vera Glaser, who asked President Nixon that first question about women’s equality, and Barbara Hackman Franklin, who implemented that first real push for women inside the U.S. government, female athletes today enjoy the same playing field as their male counterparts. They are no longer “the lost sex” in the sports arena.

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* Get to know Heath Lee at her website. https://heathleeauthor.com/

PHOTO (left to right): Kerri Walsh Jennings, Heath Lee, Barbara Hackman Franklin, Janet Evans and Courtney Mathewson.

Why do we put up with it?

For the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing stories of women whose actions expanded Title IX to include sexual harassment and violence as a violation of the law. It got me thinking…

Why don’t we recognize sexual harassment when it happens to us? Why doesn’t it make us angry? Why don’t we all speak up?

I agree with the Yale student who said that sexual harassment is something that we all just expect. Something women just have to deal with. Maybe laugh about it with your girlfriends, roll your eyes, but otherwise let it go. It’s just the way it is.

But it isn’t the way it should be.

Safe in high school…

I got to thinking about my own experiences. In 1972, the year Title IX was enacted, I was entering high school. I knew nothing of the new law. I wasn’t an athletic girl; I was a geeky girl who played the flute and got straight As.

In my school, musical kids and top students were equally split between boys and girls as far as I could see, no discrimination. If you were the best instrumentalist, you were awarded first chair. If you got the best grades, you were ranked at the top of your class.

I spent my free class periods in the quadrangle of private practice rooms in the music wing. I was perfectly safe there. I had two male band and orchestra teachers. Mr. Thrall was a fatherly gentleman whom we all loved. The other music teacher was a younger man who was also perfectly proper in his dealings with students. I rode in a car with him across New York State to the Catskills and back for all-state band, no problem.

Title IX didn’t seem to apply to me. At least for three years.

… Until…

In my senior year, I was in an accelerated English program that allowed me to choose independent study. I was assigned to a male teacher who was familiar to me from drama club. He was known — known! and we put up with it! — to be handsy and overly familiar with female students.

I don’t remember what path of study I chose, but I remember that he chose one session. He assigned me to read an e.e. cummings poem.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.

Let me just tell you here that I was a very naive girl. I was brought up in a fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren household. It was an insular world that didn’t let in anything from the outside world, especially anything related to sex.

I think that explains my confusion when the teacher asked me what I thought about the poem. What did I think about the last lines?

and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new.

I don’t remember what I said. Nothing? He went on — maybe that session, maybe another — to ask me about what I and my boyfriend of two years got up to together. Had we… you know… surely by now…

Throughout the year, he would whisper things in my ear. “I’m going to marry you some day,” he’d say. Was that grooming? At the senior prom, he asked me to dance — he, a chaperone — but after graduation, thankfully, that was the end of it. I guess he just went on to the next unsuspecting girl.*

I consider myself fortunate that nothing physical ever happened. It certainly could have. I’ve often wondered whether this teacher got through his career unscathed. Whether he ever faced any consequences for his actions. Whether any girl was brave enough to stand up to him.

Because of this experience, I understand the deep desire to let something invasive go unchallenged. I respect women who pursue recourse, no matter their feelings of humiliation and the cost to themselves of going public. They challenged what we all thought we had to endure — we all just thought it was the way things were. Yet because of the courage of women like these, it’s not the way things have to be.

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* Unfortunately, that wasn’t my last experience with harassment. There was that Thomson newspaper executive who took me to dinner “to discuss my career advancement.” It wasn’t my career he had an interest in.

PHOTO: e.e. cummings

Harassment? What harassment?

In my last post, I introduced you to Christine Franklin, whose Title IX lawsuit expanded the gender equality law to cover sexual harassment. Although hers was the first successful such lawsuit, it wasn’t the first.

Five classmates at Yale University have that honor. In 1977, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, Lisa Stone and Ann Olivarius sued the university claiming sexual harassment.

The women didn’t want money — their suit didn’t ask for damages. They merely wanted the university to implement an effective way of addressing sexual harassment and assault. Yale had admitted women eleven years earlier, in 1968, yet their well-being wasn’t being protected.

The women’s complaints are familiar to almost every female on the planet. Ronni and Margery said they’d been physically harassed by a music teacher and a hockey coach. Pamela said she’d been the victim of what today is called quid pro quo harassment — a political science teacher offered good grades in exchange for sex. Lisa said an English professor had propositioned her and Ann Olivarius said she’d been threatened for helping fellow students pursue complaints.

Five women, five stories

The details of the complaints were ugly. Ronni was studying music and taking private flute lessons from Keith Brion. He began locking the door of the lesson room, eventually touching and fondling her. One day, after she had bumped her head on a door frame and suffered a concussion, he offered her a ride home, but instead he took her to his apartment and raped her. He forced her into sex a second time on another day.

Ronni told no one, believing it was her fault somehow. But when she quit music in her sophomore year, she began hearing from other women who quit their music studies. “Oh, me too,” the women would say, with a knowing glance.*

Margery was manager of Yale’s hockey team. One day, Coach Richard Kentwell grabbed her and began fondling and kissing her. She fled. After this happened a few more times, she quit the team.

Pamela Price said that her international relations professor, Raymond Duvall, demanded sex in return for a good grade on a paper. “Do I really, really want the A?” she says he began. When she refused, she got a C on the paper and in the course.**

Lisa also took lessons from Brion, and she arrived one day to find him undressing in the lesson room. She also gave up the flute. Two years later, she was talking with poetry professor Michael Cooke in his office. He put a hand on her knee and suggested making love to her. She fled the room.

Ann didn’t have her own complaint, but she’d heard plenty of women’s stories. She was incensed that they had no way of seeking justice.

Their point is made

The women filed suit as Alexander v. Yale University. For daring to speak out, they faced hostility, even from women.

“There was some sense that the women in the lawsuit were whining about issues they should have expected to face,” said student Betsy Scarf. “We all faced them: before Yale, at Yale, after Yale.”***

In the end, all but Pamela’s case was thrown out. In a pre-trial hearing, magistrates said Ronni’s and Margery’s cases were moot, because they’d graduated. They said Lisa and Ann had not directly suffered harassment — there was no concept then of a hostile workplace — so they could not sue.

In Pamela’s case, the courts ruled that she had not proved the quid pro quo deal. “I knew what that was about,” she said. “As an African American woman, I could not say that this white man had done this to me and be believed.”****

The women all went on to have successful lives and careers. Despite the defeat, they’d made their point. They’d stood up to a powerful university.

“We attend college to study, not to be playthings or sex objects for male faculty members,” said Phyllis Crocker, then of the grievance committee of the Yale Undergraduate Women’s Caucus.*****

Sadly, sexual harassment and violence still occurs on college campuses, but thanks to these five women, it is now recognized — and can be addressed — as discrimination under Title IX.

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* Nicole Allen, “To Break the Silence,” senior thesis on Alexander v. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale, 2009).

** “To Break,” p. 4.

*** “To Break,” p. 6.

**** “To Break,” p. 6.

***** Excerpts, Alexander v. Yale: Collected Documents from the Yale Undergraduate Women’s Caucus and Grievance Committee (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University, 1978), p. 19.

Photo: Ronnie Alexander, Ann Olivarius, Pamela Price

Guest post: Author Kathleen Stone

A time out for Mary Church Terrell

Recently, I invited Kathleen Stone, author of They Called Us Girls:Stories of Female Ambition from Suffrage to Mad Men (Cynren Press, 2022), to talk about anything that was on her mind. Kathleen’s book chronicles the lives of seven unconventional women of the 1900s who broke out of society’s expected roles for women. Just the right topic for this blog!

Kathleen’s eye fell on Mary Church Terrell, a woman who I also encountered while writing my book on the woman suffrage movement, Women Win the Vote! 19 for the 19th Amendment. I’ll let Kathleen take it from here. Enjoy this guest post that touches on women’s rights from suffrage to civil rights, to, yes, even Title IX.

When my alma mater, Oberlin College, renamed its central library for Mary Church Terrell, I didn’t know much about her, other than that she was an alumna. Since then, I have come to understand that she was pivotal in two movements that share a complicated history — the movement for civil rights for Black Americans and the movement for women’s rights.

Mary Church was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1863, the year Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, to parents who had been enslaved. Her mother owned a hair salon and her father was a successful businessman. Education was one of her family’s goals, an opportunity often denied to Black Americans, and Mary headed to Oberlin College in Ohio.

Oberlin was the first college in the country to admit both men and women as well as students of color, but its embrace of equality went only so far. To women, the college offered a two-year program, and to men a four-year program, including Latin and Greek. Mary’s friends urged her to take the two-year program — if she were too educated, they warned, she would intimidate men and never find a husband. She ignored their advice and completed the four-year course, earning her bachelor’s degree in 1884 before going on to get a master’s. She taught at Wilberforce University, the first private, historically Black college in the country, and later moved to Washington, DC where she taught in the district’s segregated system.

Despite warnings that she would scare off men, Mary did marry. Her husband, Robert H. Terrell, was her intellectual match; he was a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and a teacher, lawyer, justice of the peace and municipal court judge.

A dual role in activism

Mary stood at the intersection of the movements for women’s rights and civil rights for Black Americans. She was the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women, charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a member of the Women’s Committee for Equal Justice, the Civil Rights Congress, and the Women’s Republican League of Washington, D.C. She was the first African American woman to serve on the D.C. Board of Education.*

On March 3, 1913, the day before President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated, Mary marched down Pennsylvania Avenue with thousands of women, demanding the right to vote. When Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party staged picket lines at the White House in support of suffrage, she joined in, sometimes with her teenage daughter, even though violence and arrest were real possibilities.**

A dual disadvantage

After the 19^th Amendment was ratified in 1920, it must have been galling that some of her sisters-in-suffrage refused to involve themselves in the civil rights struggle. Mary tried to awaken them to her reality:

“A white woman has only one handicap to overcome — that of sex. I have two — both sex and race. I belong to the only group in this country which has two such huge obstacles to overcome. Colored men have only one — that of race.”***

Her rhetoric was not only informative but also pragmatic. When she urged the National Woman’s Party to address the difficulties Black women experienced when trying to vote, she said:

“Colored women need the ballot to protect themselves because their men cannot protect them since the 14th and 15^th Amendments are null and void. They are lynched and are victims of the Jim Crow Car Laws, the Convict Lease System, and other evils.”****

Despite her compelling logic, the party’s white leadership failed to take up her challenge.

That did not stop Mary. She continued her advocacy into the 1950s. At age 86, she joined a protest, ordering food at a restaurant in Washington, D.C., knowing that the segregated establishment would refuse to serve her. The subsequent lawsuit got to the U.S. Supreme Court where — a year before its landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education — it held that the restaurant had violated anti-discrimination laws.

A living legacy

Mary died in 1954, ten years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination on the basis of both race and sex. It would be another eight years before Congress passed legislation, including Title IX, that outlawed discrimination in education. That, too, would have spoken to her passion.

Not many of us will have as far reaching an impact as Mary Church Terrell did. That’s certainly true for me, but she nonetheless inspires me. She reinforces my belief that education is crucial, opening opportunities for work and ways to contribute.

Mary also demonstrates the importance of speaking up for others. When she advocated for Black women in the South who were unable to vote and whose husbands were in prison, she was not speaking for herself, the wife of a judge appointed by the president. She was reaching beyond herself to speak for those without access to the venues where she found herself.

From Mary, I take inspiration that I can do something similar in my life, even if my actions are smaller and my words less consequential than hers. She would agree, I believe, that we all can work to make life better for others.

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* Biographical information drawn from articles by Mary Church Terrell’s biographer, Alison M. Parker, and from Lisa Gulasy, “Learning from Activist Mary Church Terrell,” Oberlin College & Conservatory (February 13, 2016). For a deeper dive, see Alison Parker’s biography, Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

** Alison M. Parker, “Mary Church Terrell, the Forgotten ‘Face of African American Women’s Suffrage Activism,’” Ms. (February 13, 2021).

*** Mary Church Terrell, A Colored Woman in a White World (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), p. 29.

**** Alison M. Parker, “Mary Church Terrell: Black Suffragist and Civil Rights Activist,” National Park Service.

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.”

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* 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.

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* 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.