Saturday, June 23, 2012

Also today...

...is the 40th anniversary of the signing into law of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which states that:

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.

 Despite the long list of exceptions that qualified this mandate, the passage of Title 9 was an important milestone of the second wave of the US feminist movement. While it is best known for equalizing opportunities for girls and women in school and college athletics, it has also been an influential piece of legislation in other ways.

The Title IX Blog  has a list of links to resources about Title IX and its effects on society, and posts about today's anniversary that you can find here and here. The Web site TitleIX.info has additional resources.

You might also want to read this thoughtful essay by Catherine R. Stimpson on women and sports. Among Stimpson's points is this:
On balance, the Utopian feminist fan thrills to the radical vision and uses it as the horizon of possibility. I hope that the presence of women in sports will be a rebuke to corruption and a murderous desire to win; that it will provide a moral and psychological leavening; and that it will weaken gender as one of life's organizing principles. Interestingly, the currently major study of collegiate athletics found the women athletes less materialistic than the men.[25] At the same time, the liberal feminist fan believes in that old shibboleth of "being effective." I seek gender equity in sports. Women should have as many athletic opportunities as men, be able to play as hard and well as possible, be recognized and rewarded with an income and the currency of hard-earned celebrity for it.

Given the political culture of the United States, with its oscillations between gender conservatism and belief in equality of opportunity, the liberal vision of sports is implemented more often than the radical. The push and pull towards equity is notoriously incomplete, jagged, and uneven. As the century turned, women were 56% of United States undergraduates, but in the major schools, they had only 36% of the athletic operating budgets and 32% of the recruiting dollars.[26] Even the liberal vision wrenches the guts of the diehard sports traditionalist.

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