Sex discrimination affects climate change

January 9, 2023
Author events Book news Title IX

What does sex discrimination in education have to do with the fight against climate change? Lots. In this slow week for Title IX news while students are on winter break, I’ll mention just one.

By Andrewholmes24. Top photo of windmills and solar panels at Rim of the World High School, Lake Arrowhead, Calif. by Santeri Viinamaki. Both via Wikimedia Commons.

Think about it — we need armies of electricians to combat the climate crisis. Many more than we have right now. They need to be installing solar panels and windmills and heat pumps and electric convection stoves instead of gas- and oil-using products. Building electric vehicles. Designing more energy-efficient electronics. And all of that a.s.a.p. if we’re to have any hope of slowing climate change.

But in the United States today, only two percent of electricians are women. This is not simply a coincidence. Title IX advocates fought long and hard in the 1970s and 1980s to make sure that this law that prohibits sex discrimination in education applies to what used to be called vocational education and now is referred to more commonly as career and technical education. Students in K-12 vocational programs more than doubled in 1966-1976 to 7 million students, and those in postsecondary programs sextupled to 1.5 million. But girls and women usually got shunted to lower-paying vocations to become hairdressers or cosmetologists, for example, instead of electricians or carpenters.

Strong cultural stereotypes create political roadblocks to women entering previously male-dominated professions of any kind. But that’s the 50-year quest of Title IX, isn’t it? To break those road blocks. By 2013, the proportion of women in “nontraditional” Career and Technical Education programs had risen from close to 0% to only 13%. What can you do about that? Read the recommendations in this 2017 report by the National Coalition for Girls and Women in Education.

If we’re only training men and boys to be electricians, we’re missing half the workforce that we need to save the world.

Elsewhere

A federal judge ruled that West Virginia could continue its ban on transgender girls or women competing in school sports. LGBTQ+ advocates criticized a Pasco County, Fla. schools decision to require that students use sex-segregated bathrooms according to the sex assigned them at birth, not gender.

The University of Missouri agreed to pay $400,000 to two women who said the university failed to properly investigate a basketball player who allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted the women. Police arrested a former school counselor in California after investigating allegations that he sexually molested a former student in the 1990s. Two former track and field athletes sued Houston Christian University and accused a former coach of sexual assault and other misconduct.

Economics journals subject article submissions from women to higher standards for writing, a study found.

On the up side

The Oregon Department of Education updated its guidelines for respecting LGBTQ+ students in records and in classrooms. Oregon was one of the first states to issue such guidelines, in 2016.

Where you’ll find me

Tuesday, February 7, 2023, 7:00 p.m. CT — I’m honored to be speaking at Iowa State University, giving the 35th Mary Louise Smith Chair Lecture hosted by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics. I’ll meet with students in the late afternoon and speak at 7:00 p.m. in the Durham Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

Tuesday, March 21, 6:30 p.m. ET — In the first of a series of bookstore events I’ll be doing in March for Women’s History Month, I’ll be at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, N.H., the capitol of the Granite State. We’ll talk politics and education and, of course, Title IX.

Thursday, March 23, 5:30 p.m. ET — I’ll speak and sign books at the wonderfully named Bedlam Book Cafe in Worcester, Mass. Come have a bite and talk books with me.

Saturday, March 25, 2:00 p.m. ET — Meet me at Tatnuck Booksellerand Cafe in Westborough, Mass., and bring a friend!

Sunday, March 26, 3-5 p.m. — As part of the Be The Change series, I’ll be speaking at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass. with special guests from Know Your IX and the Women’s Sports Foundation. Each group will receive a donation equivalent to 20% of book sales during the event. I hope you can join us if you’re in the area. If not, please consider supporting these organizations.

*** Would you like to set up an in-person or Zoom session with me for your organization or book club? Reach me through my Contact page.***

I enjoyed speaking with folks from Equal Rights Advocates in a public Zoom posted on December 13, 2022. The 40-minute event starts with a 12-minute video of ERA’s great work on Title IX issues, then we chat. Check it out:

You also can sit in on my 50-minute conversation about Title IX and 37 Words with Georgia Institute of Technology President Angel Cabrera, part of his “Conversations with Cabrera” series:

More online talks: Check out a video of my 25-minute talk at wonderful Left Bank Books in St. Louis. You can watch my six-minute interview on the Bridge Street morning show on WSYR-TV, the ABC affiliate in Syracuse, N.Y. Or, watch the video of an October 19, 2022 online conversation about Title IX and 37 Words hosted by the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Women in Law; find it here.

The Nation magazine published an excerpt from my chapter 5, which introduces Title IX’s application in the movement against sexual violence. I published an article in the Washington Post’s Made by History section, this one on “The true mother of Title IX. And why it matters now more than ever.” The Christian Science Monitor included 37 Words in two articles — a cover story on “Title IX at 50” and a sidebar examining the racial gap among women athletes in colleges. Read about the Supreme Court’s history of curtailing Title IX and other civil rights laws in my article in The Washington Post Made by History section. The Washington Monthly gave 37 Words a fine review — check it out. See other previous appearances and media coverage of 37 Words listed here.