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Still Working Toward a Level Playing Field by Karen West

Sports vendors traditionally have doled out new sneakers, warm-ups and gear bags to Seattle-area boys’ basketball teams while the girls’ teams often receive nothing.

A sports league of 11 schools in Washington proposed changing the girls’ basketball and soccer seasons in order to give the boys better access to the gym in winter and exclusive use of the soccer fields in the fall.

Several girls’ softball teams throughout the state still play in substandard parks, while many boys’ baseball teams have fully equipped stadiums with electronic scoreboards, covered dugouts, lights and batting cages.

Scenes like these illustrate that the playing field between girls’ and boys’ athletic programs have yet to be leveled, despite a 37-year-old federal law — known as Title IX — banning sex discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funds.

The Women’s Sports Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington are teaming up to turn that tide. The organizations have targeted Washington state, along with California and Pennsylvania, in a campaign to ensure that all athletes receive equal treatment in public school and community sports programs.

The national campaign — “V is for Victory. So is IX” — includes free educational workshops, an interactive Web site and other programs to educate the public about the importance of Title IX in promoting fairness in athletics. The campaign is “providing people with tools so they can become advocates for fair treatment in their community,” says ACLU-WA Executive Director Kathleen Taylor. “Participating in sports is just as important for girls as it is for boys.”

A “grade your school and share your story” feature is available on a parents’ resource site, www.Vis4Victory.org and a youth site, www.Vis4Victory.org/girls. In addition, “Tying the Score” workshops are being offered for athletes, coaches, school administrators and parents in Seattle and throughout Washington, outlining Title IX compliance issues and helping to identify problems and low-cost solutions. Similar workshops are being held in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

“Those of us at the national level can work hard toward change but when it comes down to it, it has to be mom and dad and coach to educate themselves about the issues so they can feel empowered to make change at the local level,” says Marj Snyder, chief program and planning officer for the Women’s Sports Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit organization founded by tennis great Billie Jean King.

Title IX, which was enacted by Congress in 1972 — the same year Washington’s Equal Rights Amendment was adopted — bans sex discrimination and sexual harassment in federally subsidized educational programs including athletics, drama, band and other extracurricular student activities.

Since its passage, opportunities for girls to participate in school sports has increased tenfold — from less than 300,000 to almost three million, according to Sarah Dunne, legal director of the ACLU of Washington. Before the federal law was passed, only one out of every 27 high school girls played varsity sports. Today, that number is one in 2.5. College participation has more than quadrupled, from 31,000 to over 128,000.

But participation alone is not enough and inequities still exist, says Dunne. “They might be on the bus but they are still riding in the back.”

In 2007, female athletes were still receiving 1.3 million fewer participation opportunities than boys at the high school level, says Snyder. “Many schools aren’t providing the resources and support for girls in sports that could foster their talent or help them pursue their interests.”

Beyond Title IX

As part of the “V is for Victory” campaign, Washington Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Rep. Christine Rolfes are going a step further, co-sponsoring legislation to ensure equal treatment for male and female athletes in government-funded community recreation programs, not just publicly funded schools. Title IX does not cover city leagues and private sports programs and facilities.

The proposed legislation, which was still pending at press time, would apply the same standards to organizations such as youth soccer leagues and would strengthen and clarify state protections against discrimination. It specifically would prohibit a city, town, county, park or school district from sex discrimination in community athletic programs for youths and adults.

“While we’ve made a lot of progress toward equal treatment for male and females in athletics, we’re not yet where we need to be,” says Kohl-Welles, who has taught about Title IX for more than two decades in a class on gender and education at the University of Washington. “This legislation will help ensure that both male and female athletes get a sporting chance.”

During a February hearing on the bill, Kohl-Welles testified that the legislation will help “level the playing field” and enhance the spirit of Title IX. “When I was in school (before Title IX), my grade in physical education was based on the number of showers I took.”

Rolfes, author of the House companion bill, says the legislation is not just about discrimination but about fairness. “Despite Title IX’s passage 37 years ago, it’s surprising to learn that inequalities still exist. As a mother of school-aged girls, I want them and all others in this state to grow up without barriers.”

Society has created a type of caste system in which girls get the clear message that their sports are second class, says Linda Mangel, sports equity advocate for ACLU-WA who is leading many of the “Tying the Score” workshops. “If school programs openly elevate boys over girls, and the community acquiesces in this arrangement, we are sending a powerful message to girls about their place in society.”

School officials often don’t realize they are violating Title IX provisions, and when they are challenged, many work out solutions. Mercer Island High School, for example, is working on a plan to equip girls’ sports teams with free sports equipment, after a long-standing tradition of the boys’ teams getting free gear from private vendors.

“Schools may be out of compliance with these standards for any number of reasons,” says Dunne of the ACLU. “Many of the disparities, however, can be fixed without litigation — especially if there’s an effective, transparent policy known to everyone in the school community.”

For Bow, Wash. residents Molly and Maggie McTaggart in Skagit County, it took the ACLU of Washington’s intervention to solve their problems. In September 2007, the middle school students discovered that their school’s athletics league was implementing an “alternative sports season,” which would have moved the girls’ basketball season from winter to fall so that the boys’ basketball team could have exclusive use of the gym during the winter. The move also called for switching the girls’ soccer season from fall to winter, forcing the girls to play outside in the darker, soggier months.

The girls’ parents, Jack and Angela McTaggart, complained to numerous school officials to no avail. Jack McTaggart is a retired coach and physical education instructor with the Burlington-Edison School District and Angela is a PE teacher at Sedro-Woolley High School. The middle school league, which covered 11 schools, restored the original sports schedule after the ACLU informed them their proposed plan would violate Title IX.

“Getting a bigger hammer is the way to go to get things accomplished,” says Angela. “It was frustrating that we had to go that far.”

She remembers when she was her daughters’ age she wanted to play Babe Ruth baseball, but the coach wouldn’t let her. Fortunately, her father was a member of the Sedro-Woolley City Council and he overruled the coach. She went on to play and developed close ties with her male teammates, many of whom are still her friends today. “Again, it took a bigger hammer to get it done.”

Wide Gap Remains

While taboos still exist for female athletes, Ohio State University Professor Sarah Fields, author of Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sports in America, says Title IX has had a profound impact on the way society views women in sports. “Title IX convinced girls and their mothers that they could and should play sports.”

At the same time, however, she says, “we are not done yet” in terms of comparable funding and facilities. “We have not reached the point where society takes women’s sports as seriously as men’s. We won’t see more funding for women’s sports until we get more social support.”

Fields, who plays in an “over 40” soccer league, remembers how hard it was for her to play on a boys’ soccer team when she was in second grade — just three years after Title IX became law. “I was the first girl to play on the soccer team because my parents threatened to sue under Title IX. I never had a problem with the boys, but I remember the parents yelling nasty things from the sidelines.”

With a law degree and a Ph.D. in sports studies, Fields credits her early athletic years as the foundation upon which she has built her career in sports education. “It taught me the importance of lifetime fitness.”

Critics of Title IX argue that the law has resulted in the loss of athletic opportunities for men’s sports, including men’s wrestling at some schools. Fields argues that many schools use Title IX as a scapegoat and exercise “addition by subtraction. It’s contrary to the spirit of Title IX.”
The reality, she says, is that minor men’s sports at large universities historically have been cut because of administrative budget choices, and not necessarily because schools are trying to comply with Title IX.

The ACLU agrees, saying that in some cases, it is the wealthiest athletic programs in NCAA Division I-A that are dropping men’s minor sports, typically because they are shifting those funds to compete in football and basketball programs.

Tradition of Bias

Women’s athletics have long taken a backseat to men’s. In the 1960s at Washington State University, for example, the athletic director for women’s intramural sports had to make do with a $1,200 budget to cover all the expenses of the volleyball, gymnastics, basketball, field hockey, skiing and tennis teams.

College administrators in Washington and other parts of the country didn’t begin embracing women’s sports until they were challenged in court, says former WSU track star Karen Blair Troianello. She was the student plaintiff in the landmark 1979 women’s rights case, Blair vs. Washington State University, which paved the way for equity in public four-year colleges and universities throughout the state.

Filed by the Northwest Women’s Law Center in Seattle under the Washington State Equal Rights Amendment, the lawsuit argued that the university allotted less money and gave inferior facilities to female athletes in comparison to men. Blair Troianello’s testimony, along with that of coaches, faculty members and other athletes, persuaded the court to agree. In 1987, the Washington Supreme Court directed WSU to make its participation rates and scholarships reflect the ratio of female undergraduates to male undergraduates.

Blair Troianello, who graduated in 1980 and who now works as a newspaper copy editor in Yakima, says her case prompted WSU officials to take women’s athletics more seriously, and helped people begin to take stock of what athletics should mean in an institution of higher learning: Are athletics entertainment and a source of income, or are they a part of the well-rounded experience that should be available on a campus?

“I think our case improved chances for young women to get scholarships and pursue athletic careers,” she said. “When women have opportunities in college, there is more likelihood for them to return to teaching and coaching in high schools.

“There are a lot more opportunities for girls now, with volleyball and soccer leagues that are very competitive,” she says. “The club system has taken sports to higher levels. Now it may be a class discrimination more than anything else, because parents have to be willing to pay for their kids to participate in these team sports that compete all over the state.”

But when she was an athlete, there weren’t many opportunities for women beyond college sports, except maybe for tennis and golf.

“In college, you could tell that women’s sports were not on the same level as the men’s. We drove university cars, caravanning everywhere, while the men rode in buses,” she says, adding that many of the men were international athletes, recruited specifically to run for WSU. “Some great guys, but it certainly wasn’t fair to say, hey, the women’s team doesn’t have national champs like we do, when the women’s team wasn’t made up of recruits.”

She also remembers vast differences between the men’s and women’s sports facilities and other amenities. “In my day, we shared locker space with the phys ed department,” she says. The women’s cramped weight room had barely usable, outdated equipment, while the men’s was “very plush with free weights and plenty of room.”

But after getting a tour of WSU’s new facilities during a Celebration of Women in Athletics event a few years ago, she was pleasantly surprised. “All the athletes share very high-tech weight and exercise facilities and each team has separate locker rooms. Pretty fancy.”

Blair Troianello says girls’ sports programs have come a long way since her legal case. Her 15-year-old son played on co-ed baseball teams in his earlier years and his cross-country track team shares coaches and trains together with the girls’ team. “I’ve been so glad to see sports as a viable opportunity for girls. I don’t think girls who like to compete are ridiculed today. There’s more acceptance and I think that is great.”

But girls sports still has far to go, says Mangel, a former attorney at the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, who has been touting Title IX to parents and administrators throughout Washington on behalf of the ACLU. She says school sports is the last place where the law still allows “separate but equal.”

“But as we have seen throughout history with other attempts at separate but equal, it’s hard to overcome cultural biases. As a society, we have come to expect that sports is a male-dominated arena. So, when schools set up a two-tiered sports program — elevating boys above girls — it seems entirely acceptable.”

She says it’s important to remember that sports are part of a school’s educational program just like any other class or activity. “If a school wanted to build a new chemistry lab just for boys, we’d never allow it. If a wealthy donor wanted to buy new laptops for just the white students, we’d be outraged. But, when we want to shortchange girls in sports, it is widely accepted and even defended.”

Karen West is a Bainbridge Island-based freelance writer.

©2009 Caliope Publishing Company