Athletics

Happy Friday! Hope you’ve all remembered that today is also the opening day of the 2012 London Olympics. And just in case you haven’t heard it yet, 2012 marks the first time that there are more women on Team USA than men. Team USA totals 530 athletes, 269 of them women. To celebrate this achievement and to tip our hat to the influence Title IX has on this year’s team (in its 40th anniversary year, no less!), we created this graphic and posted it to our Facebook page! Please share it with your friends to spread the good news about Team USA and to support our team in London.

And speaking of the Olympics, it seems like there’s a bit of kerfuffle over what some of the uniforms female athletes will be wearing to compete in. While women were required to cover their legs when first allowed to compete in the 1900 games, these days we typically see things like female beach volleyball players competing in bikinis. Starting this year, female volleyball players are allowed to wear shorts and sleeved tops. Of course, this has sparked some debate and is winding up to be just another step in a long history of concern – often times misplaced concern – over women’s Olympic sporting attire. Read more »

Yesterday, Megan Greenwell laid the blame for the decline in the number of female coaches at Title IX’s feet, calling the lack of female coaches “the dirty little secret of Title IX.” This is a classic case of “blame the victim.” Title IX has steadily increased the number of opportunities for girls and women in sports, although the playing field is still far from level.

But the growing opportunities for women and girls in sports are in no way responsible for the lack of opportunities for women in coaching.

Remember: correlation is not causation. As Greenwell acknowledges, now that female coaching jobs are higher-paying and more prestigious they are desirable jobs. Put that together with a hiring process that relies on informal male-dominated networks and voila, no women coaches. Read more »

This is quite a year of firsts for the Olympics!

• The first time every country is sending at least one female athlete.
• The first time the U.S. is sending more women than men.
• And now for the first time, in the summer games, since 1920, a pregnant woman will be shooting – literally – for gold.

Nur Suryani Mohamed, a 29-year-old Malaysian athlete, will participate in the women’s 10-meter air-rifle event. She will be 8 months pregnant when she competes. Read more »

Pennsylvania recently joined a handful of other states that require schools to publicly disclose gender equity in sports data every year, which will help communities learn more about how their schools are treating girls and boys in athletics. The Equity in Interscholastic Athletics Disclosure Bill requires Pennsylvania middle and high schools to disclose the numbers of athletic opportunities provided to boys and girls, broken down by race/ethnicity, as well as team expenditures, coaches’ salaries, and other gender equity information. The first reports are due November 2013 and will be available on schools’ websites as well as the state Department of Education’s website.  The law is similar to ones on the books in Georgia and New Mexico.

Schools already collect or have this information but are not required to disclose it publicly, which puts the burden on individuals wanting to know more about a school’s sports program to file an open records request and navigate that process. Data bills like the one enacted by Pennsylvania make it easier for parents and students to access critical information to evaluate whether girls are boys are being treated fairly in their school sports programs (see recent article highlighted by our colleagues at the Women’s Law Project, who were instrumental in getting the bill passed).  At the college level, the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act has been in place since 1994 and has helped identify many problems at colleges and universities across the country. Efforts have been underway for many years to pass a similar federal law that would apply to all secondary schools.

Things I learned this week: apparently rape is funny after all! Who knew? Apparently comedian Daniel Tosh does. This story and more in today’s weekly roundup.

Let’s start with this Daniel Tosh story. (For those unfamiliar: Tosh hosts a clip show on Comedy Central – called “Tosh.0” – that culls its content from funny web clips. How funny the show/the clips are is actually debatable.)

Anyway, back on track: over the weekend, a friend of the writer over at Cookies for Breakfast relayed the story of her trip to a comedy show at the Laugh Factory last Friday. She was unfamiliar with Tosh prior to the show – and was not expecting it to start off with “some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny.” Here’s what she says happened next:

“I didn’t appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should find [rape jokes] funny. So I yelled out, ‘Actually, rape jokes are never funny!’ … After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then, he says, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now?’” Read more »

In November 2010, NWLC filed 12 complaints with the U.S. Department of Education, pointing out that twelve school districts across the country were failing to provide equal athletic opportunities for girls, in violation of Title IX. This effort was part of a national campaign, Rally for Girls Sports, to raise awareness about the barriers girls face in in high school sports.

This week, we all had a lot to rally around. The U.S. Department of Education announced that they reached settlement agreements with four of the districts, all of which reported that they were not offering sports opportunities in equal numbers to boys and girls. In Deer Valley, Arizona; Houston, TX; Wake County, North Carolina; and Columbus, Ohio, disparities between the percentage of sports opportunities offered to boys and girls translates into 6,000 lost opportunities for girls to play sports. Read more »

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. Read more »

Playing sports was a never a question in my life, it was just something I did. Maybe I was simply following in the footsteps of my big sister or maybe being active was just a fact of life the way my mother raised us. Either way, from fifth grade until my high school graduation, nearly every day ended with a two hour practice or a game.

It was a grueling schedule (or so I thought then – until I learned about all-nighters in college) that I reveled in, immersing myself in school and sports. Waking up sore was glorious. My teammates and I would commiserate over how we couldn’t even sit gently anywhere including the toilet, but rather had to let ourselves drop onto the seat our thighs were so tired and weak from conditioning. With field hockey, soccer, and basketball, I never had any breaks, and that was how I liked it.

I was rarely called MVP, but I was always one of the fastest, most aggressive players even if I didn’t score the points. By my senior year I captained every team I was on and nearly had a six pack. Blistered feet were the norm and bruised knees were so commonplace they might as well have been my signature look. Being an athlete is a lifestyle; you have to live it in order to understand why athletes are so passionate about what they do and why they love it. Read more »

That's me in the white

I don’t have one of those poignant stories that describes how athletics saved my life or became my ticket to college (though they exist). However, the lack of uniqueness in my experience is the strength of my narrative—these days, it is the story of millions of American women. I was just a normal girl who became empowered by athletics.

I have been an athlete for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I played every sport I could—soccer, swimming, tennis and volleyball. I even played on an all-boys soccer team for a few years. It never crossed my mind that my gender would hold me back from becoming a deeply competitive athlete.

When I was selected for my high school’s varsity volleyball team as a freshman, I knew it was time to focus on one sport. From that point on, I poured myself into volleyball. The hard work paid off. I broke many high school records and was quickly recruited by colleges.

Four years later, I started on my college team. Between 40 hours a week of practice and starting college, my first semester was a bit rocky. But, it was a sink or swim situation, and I eventually learned how to manage my time and love being busy. For the final two years of my volleyball career, I was elected team captain.

It’s been almost four years since I played my last collegiate volleyball game, but I still feel the effects of that experience in my everyday life. Read more »

This has been quite a week! On Tuesday the Senate voted on the Paycheck Fairness Act (unfortunately opponents blocked the bill on a procedural vote) and on Thursday Judy Waxman, our VP of Health and Reproductive Rights, spoke on a panel at a White House town hall on women’s health. For your end-of-the-week reading we’ve got stories on new research on how emergency contraception works, a new book from ROC United, and an inspirational story of how teen athlete Meghan Vogel helped an opponent in need. Let’s get to it!

New research out this week shows that emergency contraception pills don’t work the way we think they do – and the way they really work should help squash some anti-abortion qualms about them. Read more »