38 Years and Counting: Continuing the Work of Title IX

By Caitlin Endyke

My mom never got to play soccer, she never went to basketball practice, she never finished first in a swim meet. She graduated from high school three years after Title IX was passed, and so she never got to enjoy its benefits. When I was born, 16 years after that groundbreaking legislation, she made sure that I would never miss out on any athletic opportunities. As soon as I learned to walk, she put me on skis (later, I would go on to win medals for ski racing). I got my first soccer uniform at age 5, and was swimming competitively by the time I was 8. I cannot remember a time when I did not know the meaning of competition, teamwork, and athleticism. As we celebrate the 24th year of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, I cannot help but think of how lucky I was to grow up in a time when girls were celebrated for their athleticism as well as their other attributes.
When I consider the person I’ve become, I feel as though I can attribute almost all of my most valued characteristics to my participation in sports growing up. The Women’s Sports Foundation, the organization behind National Girls and Women in Sports Day, reports that the benefits girls receive from playing sports are numerous, although they may be somewhat surprising. According to research conducted by the Foundation, girls who play sports are more likely to get better grades and graduate high school than girls who don’t. They experience higher levels of self-confidence and lower levels of depression and often have a positive body image. The Foundation also argues that girls who miss out on athletic opportunities as youth have a harder time excelling in their jobs later on.
In a male-dominated workplace, men are praised for skills they learned from athletics growing up. On the field boys learn teamwork, goal-setting, and other achievement-oriented behaviors - skills that are critical to doing well in the workplace. Sports, it seems, are necessary for success. It’s no surprise that 80% of female executives at Fortune 500 companies identified themselves as former “tomboys”, having played sports growing up.
An increasing number of girls are becoming involved in athletics, partially due to the efforts of organizations like the Women’s Sports Foundation that encourage young women to be active. However, even though boys and girls may be participating in increasingly equal numbers, we cannot assume the job started by Title IX is done. While boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 9 are equally interested in sports, by age 14 girls stop playing at a rate 6 times higher than their male peers. Even if young women do continue to pursue athletics they often are not encouraged to be, or respected as, serious competitors. Almost every female athlete I know has felt this on a personal level. While I have played soccer competitively for 16 years, I was met with resistance from my teammates when I was placed on an all male team in the co-ed intramural league at my university. They questioned not only my abilities on the field, but went as far as to ask if I was “serious” about the game.
This tells me that even though men have begun to accept that women should have the opportunity to play sports, they still seem resistant to think of women as equal competitors or as legitimate leaders in the sports industry. In fact, according to our Benchmarking Women’s Leadership report, women’s leadership in college coaching has declined since Title IX. Now less than half (43%) of coaches for women’s collegiate sports teams are female. Even in the WNBA, a bastion of female athletic competition, only 6 of 13 teams have female coaches. Similarly, the organization that represents the highest levels of athletic competition- The US Olympic Commission- is almost completely void of female leaders. With the Winter Olympics drawing near, an article in USA Today noted that all of the most important figures running the US Winter Olympic effort are men. This is sad considering the US depends on outstanding female athletes to bring home the gold.
This male-dominated athletic world might even be detrimental to the health of female competitors, argues a study recently published by the University of Alberta in Canada. The research found that female athletes are injured playing sports more than their male counterparts- 2 to 6 times more depending on the injury. ACL tears, for example, are reported 10 times more often in female athletes than in male. The study goes on to argue that this is due mainly to the fact that most training plans are designed by men for male athletes, and they fail to address the differences in body composition between males and females. Minor changes in exercise routines are all it would take to eliminate the imbalanced injury rates. In 2008, FIFA, the international soccer federation, took this advice to heart and admirably implemented a series of small changes to training plans in order to meet the needs of its female players. In one year the program “virtually eliminated” the once-common ACL injury amongst 1,400 participants.
While we must continue to encourage girls to get involved in sports, but we must also make sure those numbers remain proportionate to the amount of women who lead and excel in the sports industry. Participating in sports provides young women with the skills and confidence necessary to succeed in life off the field. And more women entering the upper echelons of sports leadership would ensure that women athletes stay healthier on the field. Let us not forget that there is work to be done to maintain progress - The first step seems simple: provide positive reinforcement of young female athletes. Just as we encourage a girl to pick up her first basketball, we must also make sure she knows that to keep playing is not to deny her femininity. We have to surround her with examples of people who prove that the terms woman and athlete are not mutually exclusive. If sports have taught us anything it’s that 90% of the game is mental. If you believe you can win, you will.