Thrilled to be guest-blogging here. I write about girls and media. Girls as in under 18 years old (just to be clear!). As the founder of New Moon Girl Media, I’ve worked with girls ages 8-15 creating media since 1992 when my daughters Mavis & Nia and I and my husband Joe Kelly started New Moon Magazine. In Sept. we’re launching a brand-new online community for girls ages 8-12. More about that another time. This post is about how things have changed and not changed since I was a girl.
As a girl in the 1960′s, I was a huge baseball fan, falling asleep on muggy summer nights listening to the Yankees on the radio. Mickey Mantle was the undisputed star but my favorite was the shortstop Tony Kubek. To this day, listening to a baseball game on the radio is guaranteed to relax and entertain me at the same time.
I loved playing catch with my dad, brother and cousins. Once I even manged to break my cousin Rich’s nose with a hard throw! (I don’t remember ever playing catch with another girl or a woman.) But I never thought of myself as an athlete and instead put my physical energy into modern dance, which I also loved.
When I was 18, Title IX – the federal law that illegalized gender discrimination in any educational instituition that receives federal funds – was born. I didn’t hear anything about it at the time. But today I’m telling Myles Brand, president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association it’s time for his support of Title IX to be demonstrated in their PSAs.
Well-known now for its dramatic effect on equalizing athletic opportunities for girls and young women, Title IX stayed totally off my radar screen until a good 20 years later when my friend Emily, a rabid hockey player who took up the sport in her twenties, started fighting for the creation of girls’ hockey teams in Minnesota high schools. She and an equally passionate group of women made it happen, against many odds. And Title IX was the key they used to open the door of ice arenas all over the state to girls. Emily’s daughter Laurel went on to play Division I hockey at Boston University, a great testament to her mom’s vision.
So by the time Title IX turned 36 years old earlier this week (June 23), I had become a huge fan of it. That was a quick 1/3 of a century! The results of Title IX’s ban on gender discrimnation in education are all around us in girls’ high school & college teams, and in the WNBA. Less well-known but just as important is how Title IX pried open the door for admission of many more women to medical schools, law schools, engineering schools, architecture school and traditionally male-dominated careers like auto mechanic and computer programmer.
While there’s been resistance to Title IX in many educational institutions, the NCAA has become a strong supporter of Title IX under the leadership of Myles Brand. When the Bush administration mounted a full court press in 2003-05 to weaken Title IX, the NCAA joined the Women’s Sports Foundation and many others to successfully defend Title IX.
So imagine my surprise and dismay when I saw this NCAA psa while watching the underdog Fresno State team win the College World Series. The PSA shows 10 athletes playing basketball, dressed as professionals ranging from doctor to judge to police officer, making the point that most NCAA athletes “go pro” in something other than sports. (Of course, that’s especially true for women since there are still very few sports that even the most talented women can “go pro” in!)
The thing that irked me is that only 3 of the 10 athletes on the court in the PSA are women. The message that sends to both girls and boys is painfully clear – even 36 years after Title IX became law, things still aren’t fair to female athletes and professionals. I have to admit that’s reality, but I hate to see the NCAA present a powerful vision of inequality that will stick with both girls and boys sub-consciously. It’s the subconscious “realities” and biases that are the toughest to change.
Mr. Brand, it’s unworthy of the NCAA to create and air anything giving a message of inequality. I’m very disappointed and hope for better next year. I know you can make that happen.
Note: Readers can help by emailing Myles Brand with your Title IX stories and your suggestion for future NCAA PSAs.
Thanks for this post Nancy!
As someone who’s been playing sports since I could walk and who now works as an engineer (and grew up wanting to be an architect), I owe a lot to Title IX.
Great post. I graduated from high school in 1970. My HS was very large, over 4000 students, and there was not one competition sports team for girls. The only sportist type activity was cheerleading or dance, both non-competitive.
My daughter, born in 1986, ran track and cross country in HS and was a division I rower at the University of Minnesota. She and the other girls and women of her generation have opportunities that we never even dreamed of.
At UMN rowing is an NCAA sport for women but not for men. Like many large schools they use minor sports like rowing to balance the large numbers of men in sports like football.
You founded ‘New Moon?’ Before I get on to the content of that post, I have to tell you how important that magazine was to me when I was 12 in 1992. I love, love, love your magazine. The issue on rites of passage has to be one of my favorite magazine issues of all time. (A close second is the issue of Cricket that had Sojurner Truth’s famous speech, ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ which gave me goosebumps.) Okay, fanwomanness over.
Turning to Title IX, as a high school water polo player, it was very important to me. Even though I lived on the liberal left coast, and my high school club (so not school-sponsored) water polo team had more members than the football team (and was good!) we had to fight to get the district let us become an official school sport, even though we didn’t have parity between male and female athletes, and we were a really strong team. How ridiculous is that? If it hadn’t been for athletics, I don’t think I would have become the same person—it really made me leave my geek-shell and learn to work on a team with others, which has proved very useful.
I’m glad you wrote the letter. We need to have more images of women athletes in the media.
-Ismone
Go BU! :) That’s my undergrad alma mater, and provides an interesting point of (unfortunate) contrast to your post: during homecoming my freshman year, the announcement was made that the (men’s) football team was being cut. My understanding is that the reasons were primarily financial (and attendance at games was atrocious), and yet of course Title IX was trotted out as at least partially to blame.
So, in short, as you pointed out, women athletes still don’t get the recognition they deserve, and yet Title IX is so often the scapegoat for myriad issues. *sigh*
I haven’t taken advantage of Title IX like I should, but I definitely have to second Ismone’s comment about New Moon.
It made a huge difference in my life (although I was 12 in 2000). I donated my collection to the local library when I grew out of it, but have hung on to a few select issues that I really enjoy.
Anyway, thank you so much for making that possible, may New Moon live forever! There really are not any other magazines for girls like this.
Contemporary with my subscription to New Moon I also received Girls’ Life which, when I began the subscription, felt like a mainstreamed New Moon with more fashion tips thrown in. Over the course of just a few years I saw it slide into a typical women’s magazine, feeding body shame to girls who haven’t even hit puberty. I recently ran into an issue in a waiting room somewhere and flipping through it made me almost physically ill. As someone who grew up with great feminist parents (and, of course, New Moon!) I can see right through their sexist articles and unhealthy pre-teen models, but I can’t imagine that most girls who receive the magazine can do the same.
/offtopic rant
Once again, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the magazine.