Welcome to this week’s roundup! This has been such a busy week leading up to the 40th Anniversary of Title IX on Saturday. Help us celebrate! Visit our new Faces of Title IX website and our Title IX anniversary blog carnival to read different women’s personal experiences with this milestone law. Want to share a Title IX story of your own? Let us know what it is here!

This week, we also have stories about one blogger’s experience with online sexual harassment and bullying, how Olympics sports commentators don’t give female athletes credit where credit is due, and some updates on the Michigan state representative banned for saying “vagina” mid-debate – read on for more!

Even after 40 years of Title IX, we still have a lot of work to be done to end sex-based discrimination. It occurs on the field, on the job and also on the internet, and many women are the targets of online sexual harassment and cyberbullying. Anita Sarkeesian, pop cultural blogger for Feminist Frequency, was violently threatened and attacked for wanting to cover women’s portrayal in video games in her Kickstarter project the other week.

We’re not the only ones appalled by the vitriol spewed at Sarkeesian over this incident. The silver lining: Sarkeesian You can refuses to be silenced despite the misogyny and violent attacks directed at her – and to us, this is a clear-cut example of bullying, digital or not.

Tags: Athletics, Michigan, Reproductive Rights, Title IX | Add new comment

Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education

Posted by Mira Nair, Outreach Intern | Posted on: June 22, 2012 at 01:53 pm

On June 20th, NWLC participated in a National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE) event on Capitol Hill celebrating the anniversary of Title IX and the release of “Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education,” a comprehensive report to help give educators, parents, students, and lawmakers a better understanding of Title IX’s impact and the equity challenges that remain in many areas of education.

Lisa Maatz of AAUW started off the event by acknowledging how Title IX has come so far but we still have lots of work to do, particularly in contexts outside of athletics: “Imagine if we could get women and girls interested in STEM the way we got them interested in sports.” Congresswoman Gwen Moore then gave us perspective what it was like before Title IX, when it was not illegal to deter pregnant and parenting women from completing school and women were given few or no scholarships and incentives to pursue a college education.

Tags: Title IX, Education & Title IX | Add new comment

Title IX: Because the World Needs More Female Scientists

Posted by Mira Nair, Outreach Intern | Posted on: June 21, 2012 at 03:15 pm


	My grandmother and me

Many people associate Title IX primarily with women’s opportunities in athletics. They don’t realize that the same legislation which has empowered countless female athletes also requires that women and girls be given equal opportunities to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields free from discriminatory barriers. To better understand the obstacles women in STEM encounter, I interviewed my grandmother, who was educated and trained as a biochemist.This is her story.

My now 85 year old grandmother from Costa Rica defied familial and societal expectations to pursue a career in biochemistry. She had the means to pursue a university education but her father did not support her ambitions. Women of her social class were supposed to get married after high school. So she ended up working in a lab to pay her own way through school.

My grandmother’s impressive work at the lab won her a scholarship to The Ohio State University and a rare and important opportunity to acquire training in Canada extracting and analyzing tree samples. However, the male research director of this project wanted to revoke my grandmother’s scholarship because of her sex. He justified canceling her scholarship, claiming he “did not want to risk her catching cold in the Canadian winter.”

Tags: STEM, Title IX, Education & Title IX | Add new comment

Mira Nair, Outreach Intern

My Take

NWLC in the News: July 4 - July 10

NWLC in the News: June 20 - June 25

NWLC’s Weekly Roundup: June 18 – 22

Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education

Title IX: Because the World Needs More Female Scientists

How You Can Help

Follow Us on the Web

Mira Nair, Outreach Intern

My Take

NWLC in the News: July 4 - July 10

NWLC in the News: June 20 - June 25

NWLC’s Weekly Roundup: June 18 – 22

Title IX at 40: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education

Title IX: Because the World Needs More Female Scientists

How You Can Help

Sign Up for Email Updates

Follow Us on the Web