Three new books about Title IX have recently hit the shelves, and one of them promises to kick up some dust in the debate over gender equity in sports.
Equal Play: Title IX and Social Change, edited by Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Andrew Zimbalist (Temple University Press, 2007) and the Encyclopedia of Title IX and Sports, by Nicole Mitchell and Lisa A. Ennis (Greenwood Press, 2007) each offer a wealth of information on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the landmark federal law that, among other things, swelled the ranks of the nation’s college and high-school athletic programs with women.
Ms. Hogshead-Makar, a lawyer and an Olympic gold medalist in swimming, and Mr. Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College, have compiled a collection of previously published articles from leading thinkers on gender equity, primarily those who support Title IX. In addition to several new, original essays by the authors, the book includes key court opinions and federal laws and regulations that shaped the implementation of the legislation in the years following its passage.
The Encyclopedia, meanwhile, serves as a pithy desk reference for Title IX, with brief entries on the people, organizations, and court cases that have figured prominently in the law’s 35-year history.
But it is Playing With the Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal in Sports, by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano (Oxford University Press, 2008), that suggests a major shift in the way Americans view sports.
Ms. McDonagh, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, and Ms. Pappano, a journalist who is currently a writer in residence at Wellesley College, are careful to credit Title IX with giving women more opportunities to play sports. But they say the law has created a sex-segregated structure for athletic competition that is separate and unequal. The result is a system of playing and competing that reinforces the idea that women are physically inferior to men.
Through a series of examples of women competing on men’s teams — and of the court rulings that permitted them to be there in the first place — the authors argue that sports teams at all levels should be integrated by gender, with sex segregation serving as the final, rather than the first, resort.
The Chronicle recently interviewed both authors.
Q: You argue that women have been unfairly excluded from competing in sports with men for a variety of cultural and historical reasons, and that differences between the sexes are not sufficient to justify separate, sex-segregated competition. What, then, needs to change? And how?
Laura Pappano: If you look in any room of men and women and you decide you’re going to form a softball team, you wouldn’t put all the women on one side and all the men on the other, but that’s what we do in sports at all levels. It seems patently absurd that we divide people first by gender, and that that overrides any skill or ability. We need to re-examine that equation. You create more opportunities for males and females to play together. What I’m talking about is normalizing co-ed sports. Just because [co-ed leagues] exist doesn’t mean they are welcoming.
Q: You say that Title IX reinforced, rather than challenged, the notion that women are physically inferior to men. How does this fit into the debate over Title IX?
Eileen McDonagh: The ongoing debate about Title IX focuses on virtually everything except sex segregation. It’s focused on other forms of discrimination. … One thing that is extremely interesting is the distinction between how we frame and define race discrimination as compared to sex discrimination. If asked to give a primary form of race discrimination, people would say “segregation.” But segregation by sex is really tolerated.
L.P.: Title IX was absolutely critical to focus attention on matters of gender inequality in institutions. But in some ways, we can argue that Title IX has been very poorly enforced, that it never demanded equality, and that it is structured in a way that allows many things to slip through the cracks. Title IX sex-segregated sports and made men’s sports the standard and women’s sports the nonstandard, the second-class-status sports.
Q: Is your goal to have people view Title IX differently?
L.P.: Absolutely. We don’t want to diminish the importance of Title IX, but what we’re saying is it’s time to look again at it. We need to re-examine the structure of the way sports are organized in this country, and we need to press for some cultural changes, but we also need to look at the legislation itself. And the difficult thing is that it’s been taboo to question Title IX if you are a feminist, if you support women’s sports because it’s been so under fire. And yet the reality is that Title IX has created some limitations, and we’re bumping up against them.
http://chronicle.com Section: Athletics Volume 54, Issue 14, Page A25
