Tag Archives: #TitleIXTuesday

Vaulting to Title IX success

Gymnastics was one sport available for women long before Title IX. But that doesn’t mean it was free from discrimination. In fact, gymnasts at Brown University brought a precedent-setting lawsuit in 1992, two decades after Title IX became law.

            In 1991, Brown University cut women’s varsity gymnastics, along with three other teams. It wasn’t that the program was failing; just the year before, the team had won Brown’s first-ever Ivy League title for gymnastics.

            Amy Cohen, the incoming captain of the team, was devastated.

            “We begged for another solution; we suggested the athletics director ask all coaches to trim 5 percent from their budgets to spare these four teams,” she says. “He told us in no uncertain terms that he had made the decision and that his decision was final.”*

Who got rid of whom?

            The possibility remained of keeping the team at a club level, and the women got to work fundraising. Over the summer, they raised enough money — from the community, not the university! — to continue. In the fall, Amy arrived on campus proud of saving the team and expecting the athletic director to congratulate the women.

            Well, that didn’t happen.

            “He locked us out of our locker room and informed us that we could not see the athletic trainers, use the varsity weight room or hold home meets on weekends,” she said. “At one point, he even muttered, ‘I thought I got rid of you.’”**

            The university had cut the teams — men’s water polo and golf, and women’s gymnastics and volleyball — in response to a mandate to trim $1.6 million from its budget. It claimed it was acting fairly by cutting two women’s and two men’s teams.

            Amy saw it differently — women were already underrepresented in sports at Brown, so the cuts disproportionately affected them.  At the time, women comprised 53.8 percent of the 5,600 enrolled students, yet they represented just 38 percent of the 900 varsity athletes.

A civil rights warrior

            In 1992, Amy became the lead plaintiff in a Title IX lawsuit against the university. The case wound its way through the courts, handing the women victory after victory. In 1997, they finally won in district court, but Brown didn’t give up. It appealed to the Supreme Court.

            “The ruling leaves the university no choice but to set aside up to 51 percent of its varsity opportunities for qualified women because 51 percent of its students were women,” said a spokeswoman for the university. “That stark numerical quota was required without regard to the fact that women do not represent 51 percent of all interested athletes.”***

            This well-worn argument is sort of a chicken-and-the-egg line of thinking. Women aren’t as interested in sports as men are, one side says. Women would be just as interested in sports if they had as much opportunity as men, the other side says.

            When the women won their case in 1997, Amy was no longer a student. Then a second-grade teacher, Amy said her students likened her to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

            “I think they understand Title IX better than most of the nation’s athletic directors,” she said.****

Fast forward to today

            Ultimately, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case and the ruling stood. The university set in motion a plan to increase minimum team sizes for women’s sports, cap team sizes for men’s sports, restore the four cut teams, and add a women’s lightweight crew team.

            That wasn’t the end of the story, though. In May 2020, Brown cut several women’s teams even though male athletes already had a larger share of the school’s athletic resources. The women went back to court and emerged with a settlement requiring the university to reinstate two of the teams and extend enforcement of the decree for several more years.

            For Amy, this decades-long battle for equality became bigger than just one team.

            “We realized that this case was about much more than just getting our gymnastics team back. We became Title IX warriors,” she said. “Over the past 50 years, progress has been made towards equality and equity in sports but, I am sad to say, we still have a long way to go. I hope that in my lifetime I will see true equity and equality.”*****

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* “Class Action Hall of Fame, Class of 2022: Title IX Champions for Equality in Women’s Sports,” Impact Fund (February 2022). Amy and her teammates were honored by this social justice organization for their activism. https://www.impactfund.org/social-justice-blog/cahof22

** “Class Action,” Impact Fund.

*** “Women gain a victory in access to athletics,” The Philadelphia Inquirer (April 22, 1997), p. 5.

**** Susan Ware. Title IX: A Brief History with Documents (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press Inc., 2007), p. 85.

***** “Class Action,” Impact Fund.

PHOTO: Brown University women’s 1990 gymnastics team. Amy Cohen is in front, above the “O” in the sign. Source: National Museum of American History.

An athlete turned author

Title IX slashed a definitive before-and-after dividing line. But recently I’ve been reminded that women did play sports long before the 1972 law. Today, let’s go back to the early 1900s.

            A hundred-plus years ago, golf was one of the few sports “approved” for women. It was a genteel pursuit that didn’t involve sweat. But, of course, it was a sport only for the privileged. There were tony country club golf courses and golf pros back then as now. Only a few dozen women competed at an elite level.

            But one woman not only played golf, she excelled at it and she wrote about it!

A teen sensation

            In the early 1900s, Genevieve Hecker topped the charts of the women’s golf circuit. She was born in Darien, Connecticut, in 1883, and began playing at the Wee Burn Golf Club in Noroton.* Her success at the game led to her eventual election as captain of the women’s team. In 1901, the family switched its membership to Apawamis, a course in Rye, New York, named with the Native American words for “covering tree.”

            Genevieve was only 16 years old when she won her first tournament, the 1900 Women’s Metropolitan championships. She won again in 1901. That year, and in 1902, she also won the Women’s National Golf Tournament sponsored by the United States Golf Association (USGA), the highest achievement a woman could attain in those times.

            “It is admitted by every critic who has ever seen her play that in style and grace, she is absolutely in a class by herself,” one sportswriter declared.**

            But Genevieve also was eager to test her skill against men. In 1902, she led the Apawamis Club’s women’s team against the men’s team in an intramural match. She won her match by three holes against Maturin Ballou, the USGA secretary at the time.*** (And here I thought that the Billie Jean King v. Bobby Riggs “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match was the first ever gender battle in sports!)

Sharing the good stuff

            That year, Genevieve also began writing about golf. In 1902, Harper’s magazine published a series of her articles. Two years later, in 1904, she wrote the first book of golf instruction for women, Golf for Women, published by Baker & Taylor. It cost $2, was a bestseller and went into many subsequent printings. (The publisher thought it necessary to identify the author on the cover not only by her own name but in parentheses as Mrs. Charles T. Stout. It’s only proper, right?)

            “No woman player, however skilful, can fail to profit by a careful study of it,” reported the New York Post in its review.**** 

            Although Genevieve remained an enthusiastic player, she bowed to the conventions of  the time and left competition while she bore and raised children. But in 1925, at the age of 41, she won a New York Women’s Metropolitan Golf event. Once a champion always a champion!

            Today, around 25 million people play golf, according to the National Golf Foundation. About a quarter of the players are women. And, if you want, you can still pick up a copy of Genevieve’s book***** — it was reprinted as recently as 2017!          

                                                            _____________________

* Genevieve’s father, John V. Hecker, was a flour miller in New York City, and no ordinary one at that. He was described at the time as a millionaire.

** W.E. Burlock, Jr., “Genevieve Hecker Tells Post Readers How Famous Women Golfers Are Preparing for Championship Tournament to be Played at Brookline This Week,” Boston Post (Sept. 28,1902), p. 48. However, Burlock also believed that Genevieve didn’t always play her best, “owing more, I have always thought, to indifference and carelessness than to lack of ability.”

*** But the men won the handicap competition 8-6.

**** Associated Press, “She Wrote the Book,” New York Daily News (June 19, 2022), p. 70.

***** Here’s one copy on AbeBooks. https://bit.ly/3yv4cPD

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.