Chapter 5: Spoil Sports - Boys Benched
On June 23, 2009, Title IX turned 37 years old. Below is the USA Today Blog Article about it:
It’s been 37 years since the passage of Title IX, an event that will be commemorated today in a conference at the White House at 2:30p.m. ET. Billie Jean King and Dominique Dawes are scheduled to participate.
TitleIX’s purpose is to level the field for women in athletics andacademics. It also has facilitated the growth of women's professionalathletics, including the WNBA and WPS.
“Time will show that this is the most important law in our culture over the last 40 years,” says USA TODAY’s Christine Brennan, who will be attending the conference.
“Weare empowering our daughters through sports the way we empowered oursons for generations. I believe women will be running for presidentevery four years in the 2020s, ’30s and ’40s, and the commondenominator for all of them will be that they played sports.”
(You can follow Brennan's tweets from the conference here. Also, the roundtable will be streamed live on the web.)
One of the highest-ranking women in the Obama administration offers her admiration for Title IX.
“What I learned from my coaches and teammates extended well beyond the basketball court,” United Nations ambassador Susan Rice wrote in an entry on The Briefing Room blog at whitehouse.gov. Rice played basketball, tennis and softball at National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C.
“Beingpart of the basketball team taught me some valuable life lessons andhelped shape me as a person. As the United States Ambassador to theUnited Nations — I’m often reminded that in basketball as in diplomacy,you have to know when to throw elbows and when to show finesse.
“So, as the 37th anniversary approaches, I’m grateful for Title IX and what it means to young women across America.”
What do you think? Is Title IX the most important or most harmful law of this day? Why or why is it not important?
Having only briefly heard about Title IX a couple of years ago after asking why ASU doesn't have a men's NCAA soccer team, I went to look up the controversy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_ix#Controversy
So initially, my reaction was that Title IX is a terrific example of PC sexism that discriminates against males. In order continue playing soccer or lacrosse at ASU, a male athlete has to join a club team? There are three more NCAA sports available to females than to males at ASU? Ridiculous.
But then I saw the other side of it. I can just imagine the raw deal female athletes would get if Title IX did not exist. Girls' sports would be among the first programs to be excised from a school's budget during hard times. Women's practice fields would be reappropriated as men's practice fields, due to perceived "lack of interest" among female athletes (as even with Title IX, male athletes far outnumber female athletes--see http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/).
So while Title IX is an example of creating equality by taking one group down, instead of helping the other up, I see no better way to guarantee women at least a decent opportunity to participate in NCAA sports.
P.S. - I hope my input is welcome here. At first, I was reluctant to post in the girls-only club, but then I remembered that I'm not dealing with THAT type of feminist.
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