Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company The Boston
Globe
June 20, 2002, Thursday ,THIRD EDITION
SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A15
LENGTH:
781 words
HEADLINE: ELLEN GOODMAN; NO LETUP IN MYTH-MAKING ABOUT WOMEN AND SPORTS
BYLINE: BY ELLEN GOODMAN
BODY: NOW THAT SCHOOL IS OUT, IT'S TIME TO SIT DOWN,
KIDS, FOR ANOTHER OF THOSE WONDERFUL LECTURES ABOUT THE BAD OLD DAYS:
When we were your age, Ashley and Michael, boys were
taught shop and girls were taught home economics.
When
we were your age, Matthew and Brittany, the boys played varsity sports and girls
were their cheerleaders.
When
we were your age, Megan and Christopher, the boys ruled the ballparks, the girls
held bake sales to pay for their own uniforms, and we walked 4 miles in the snow
to school.
OK, scratch the part about walking in the
snow - we just wanted to see if you were listening.
The reason for this lecture is the 30th anniversary of Title IX. On
June 23, 1972, a law banning sex discrimination in all schools that received
federal funds was signed by Richard Nixon. (He's a lecture for another
day. The intent of the law was to level the playing field
between men and women. Only in this case, it wasn't just a sports metaphor.
Title IX became best known for its impact on sports.
Before the law, there were only 32,000 women on intercollegiate teams. Today
there are 150,000. Before the law, there were 300,000 girls on competitive high
school teams. Now there are 2.78 million. As a new report from the National
Women's Law Center shows, girls are still second-class (or second locker room)
citizens in a lot of places. But that's still a whole lot of soccer moms,
lacrosse dads, and basketball daughters.
Nevertheless,
if the success of the law is most apparent in the sports arena, so is the
opposing team. Right from the get-go, opponents of Title IX have disparaged the
goal of equality in sports as (1) a feminist fantasy or (2) a radical plot to
destroy football.
As a 30th anniversary gift, a group
of college wrestlers and coaches has gone to court, blaming Title
IX enforcement rules for squeezing out (their) male sports to make room for
women. At the same time, their political fans are chanting "quotas, quotas" from
the stands.
No one has yet labeled the Mia Hamms of the
world "quota queens," but you get the idea.
The concept
of a zero-sum game - as girls' sports rise, boys' sports fall - doesn't fit
reality. Since the law was passed, the number of men's teams has gone up, not
down. So has the number of men in intercollegiate play. More than 70 percent of
the schools that added women's teams did it without cutting men's teams.
Title IX is simply not the cause of wrestling's decline.
After all, every school has a right to decide how to allocate the sports budget.
It's just easier to tackle - if that's the right word - women than, say, the
football team.
Football? Did I say football, boys and
girls? There is an unshake able belief that football pays the bills for more
than huge salaries, titanium face masks, and a mahogany-paneled coach's office.
But whose football fantasies are we talking about when 58 percent of the big
college teams don't even break even?
As for rigid
rules, regulations, and quotas, Title IX is one of the most lenient civil rights
laws. In fact, one of the three ways for a school to stay within the law is to
prove only that it is making progress. It gets a most-improved campus award and
a pass.
Those who attack the law don't just say that
the men who want to play sports are being cut out. They also insist that women
who don't want to play are being corralled off the street to fill up the
slots.
Colleges spend less money recruiting women, less
money on their teams, less money on their scholarships. Then some of the same
schools complain that they simply can't find enough girls to play.
"What's behind all these attacks," says Marcia Greenberger
of the NWLC, "is the basic view that despite the increase in women's
participation, despite the benefits for girls, despite the country's pride in
women's teams, despite all the signs of how important teamwork and winning are
for women, playing sports is still acting like boys." It's still male turf.
It's unlikely that the wrestlers will win in court. Eight
courts of appeal have rejected similar reasoning already. But the real threat is
the possibility that the Bush administration will change the guidelines or relax
enforcement of the law. Neither the president nor his attorney general nor his
party has been more than half-hearted fans of Title IX.
Here's one last story, boys and girls. Once upon a time, when women
were only 10 percent of the team players, opponents of Title IX argued that
women just weren't as interested in sports as men. Now women are 42 percent, and
they make the same argument.
Hmm. Maybe these are the
bad old days.
Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is
ellengoodman @globe.com.
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