NCAA sexism clouds basketball records

During Women’s History Month and March Madness 2024, NCAA sexism clouds the all-time record-breaking greatness we’re witnessing in intercollegiate basketball. It’s a pity. The NCAA’s actions distract from the achievements of University of Iowa basketball great Caitlin Clark, who this month scored more points than any other collegiate basketball player ever, woman or man. And in the process, the NCAA disrespected the highest-scoring women’s basketball player before Clark, Lynette Woodard. That’s a pity, though I can’t say it’s a surprise. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has a long history of trying to block and minimize women’s sports that continues […]

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Journalists ignore women’s sports

I saw ghosts in October. I could sense that female athletes were out there being sportsy and all, but in my local newspaper mostly they were invisible. I decided, on an irritated whim, to monitor the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage of women’s sports for one month and write a Letter to the Editor each day, a horrifying exercise that left me cursing the Chronicle. Jump to the Oct. 31 letter below for a recap and the curse. Or follow along in these excerpts: Oct. 1: 10 pages, 22 stories, 13 photos. Women = 2 sentences. Nothing on the two exciting WNBA […]

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Office for Civil Rights helped, hindered Title IX

Republican and Democratic Administrations have different track records for Office of Civil Rights enforcement of Title IX. (The OCR is part of the Executive Branch.) Three videos in this blog — with former OCR officials Martin Gerry, Cindy Brown, and Deborah Ashford — give a taste of that divide from the 1970s under the Nixon, Ford, and Carter Administrations. After Title IX became law in 1972, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) had to write regulations to implement the law. That’s standard procedure, usually accomplished in a matter of months for many laws, but the Nixon and Ford […]

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37 words that inspired thousands

Bernice Sandler wanted to be a professor. Patsy Takemoto Mink hoped to be a doctor. Meg Newman wanted to play baseball in high school. Emma Sulkowicz just wanted to feel safe on a college campus. Thirty-seven words make those dreams possible today — too late for some of these women, but possible for millions of others, and only because women fought back when the people in charge told them to go away. These battles are not over. They’re in the news every day. Those 37 words make up Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the most important legislation for U.S. […]

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