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Even After All These Years

I know that preteen e-mail chain letters are not reliable indicators of, well, anything really, but a recent one sent to my 11-year-old daughter reminded me that the battle of the sexes rages on.

With the subject line “Girls Rule!!!” the message called for help in correcting a classroom slight: “A boy in my class said that girls aren’t as athletic as boys. So I want every girl who gets this to add their name (and favorite sport) and when I get 400 to 500 names, I’m going to send it to that boy and we’ll prove him wrong!”

Boys versus girls was a big deal when I was that age, but if I’d decided to pass a petition to prove girls’ athleticism, my friends and I would have had a much shorter list of sports than that e-mail, which included soccer, volleyball, dance, tennis, basketball, baseball, running, track, lacrosse, gymnastics, snowboarding, skiing, biking, ultimate Frisbee®, football and roller derby.

As Karen West points out in her story, “Still Working Toward a Level Playing Field,” the number of girls in school sports has increased tenfold since 1972, and where only one in 27 girls played on a high school varsity team prior to the passage of Title IX, one in 2.5 girls now have varsity experience.

Yet despite this progress in girls’ sports, there are still inequities as middle school soccer players in Skagit County found out. Their season was shifted to the winter to give the boys’ teams exclusive use of the fields in the fall. It took help from the ACLU to work out an equitable solution to the shortage of fields. The ACLU and the Women’s Sports Foundation have launched a campaign in Washington and two other states to empower parents and coaches to identify and then help correct lingering inequities in public school and community sports programs.

On other fronts, like employment, the gains have also been great, but we aren’t there yet either. A recent New York Times article compared male and female earnings in 200 professions using U.S. Department of Labor numbers, and found that in nearly every field women fall short, even in professions dominated by women like teaching in the elementary and middle schools and nursing.

A Closer Look, a report by the Women’s Funding Alliance on the status of women and girls in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Whatcom counties, found that women in this four-county region earn 75 cents to every dollar earned by men, even when accounting for education level and experience. It also notes that Washington state ranks 42nd in the country in terms of pay equity.

That’s why we applaud President Obama for creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. Its mission is to make sure women and girls are treated fairly in public policy and that all Cabinet-level agencies consider the impact their policies will have on the lives of women and girls. It is also tasked with focusing on improving women’s economic security.

In these tough times with soaring unemployment and an uncertain economic future, it may seem foolhardy to create a new council to focus on women, but the reality is that when the government addresses poverty, failing schools or struggling communities, it needs to address the challenges women, particularly single mothers, face in earning a living wage and supporting their families.

I think LeAnne Moss, the executive director at the Women’s Funding Alliance, says it best: “It’s not about men versus women, but about what it takes to create healthy, vital and strong communities. If the reality is that more women are living below the poverty level and are heading up families but not making a livable wage, it makes economic sense to focus on women, and in doing so you help children, communities and neighborhoods.”

Marianne Scholl
Publisher and Cofounder

©April 2009 Caliope Publishing Company