50 years after Title IX passed, what have female athletes gained — and lost?
Growing up in the '90s, I never had to worry about whether I could play sports. Instead, the question was, "Which ones?" I did so many: softball, soccer, track. As a girl, the exhilaration of sprinting to my first home run kept me coming back for more. As a teenager, I remember being surprised when someone called me "small." I beat everyone on the field to the soccer ball, who cared about my size? |
What they say about sports is true: They are genuinely empowering. This is especially true for girls, who are gearing up to spend their whole lives being judged by the rest of the world about whether they're enough: pretty enough, thin enough, likable enough. Sure, sports are still about competition. But for me, they changed the metric. Playing sports taught me that my body was more than something for other people to look at. It was mine; it was strong. |
All of this was due to a piece of legislation that passed 50 years ago today: Title IX. It guaranteed girls and women the same rights to school sports enjoyed by boys. And it transformed America into the top incubator of female athletic talent in the world. |
In the past 50 years, girls' participation in sports has skyrocketed. But for all its successes, Title IX was really a Pyrrhic victory, as I argue in an essay. The upsides are real, of course; I've lived them. But in my decade of reporting on gender and sports here at The Times, I have realized another, uncomfortable truth: Too often, women's sports function as a JV to men's varsity. This is the case in many arenas: funding, promotion, coverage. At their worst, girls and women's sports also mirror the challenges women face in society — they can be breeding grounds for discrimination and abuse. |
In my essay, I look ahead to the next 50 years and propose a new deal for women's sports, one that is not derivative of men but based on a women-first model. What would that look like? I hope that the thoughts in this essay are just the start of a larger conversation; I'd love to hear from you about how you think sports can change to reflect the needs of women and girls. |
Because Title IX may have been the best thing to happen to women's sports when it was passed 50 years ago. But now, I think the best is yet to come. |
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