More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Women in sports are discriminated against in forms of sexual harassment and assault, unequal pay, and constant disrespect and objectification. But they are fighting back by speaking out about their experiences, filing lawsuits and breaking records.
Clemson University settled a historic Title IX case, promising to ensure equality between men and women’s athletic teams.
“Both the men and women sued on different Title IX grounds—and they both won. That’s never happened before. In the past, you had men suing against Title IX. Here you have the men and the women on the same side of the battleground against the university.”
State legislators’ efforts to exclude transgender athletes AND the NCAA’s recent blunders regarding women’s workout facilities both indicate a failure to understand the insidiousness of our reductive and stereotypical beliefs about women and gender.
The threat to women in sports is not transgender athletes. It is misogyny, and an attendant unwillingness to cede that women not only deserve equal opportunities to compete, but that their athletic efforts are worthy of our collective attention.
Gina Lucrezi, founder of Trail Sisters, is taking sexism in the trail running world head on and empowering women in sports.
“When I started Trail Sisters it was because I was frustrated women weren’t represented in this area I am passionate about.”
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in in this biweekly round-up.
This week in Keeping Score: Amanda Gorman, Sarah Thomas and Buccaneers coaches make Super Bowl history; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opens up about sexual assault; Stacey Abrams nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize; Gov. Cuomo repeals “walking while trans” ban; secretary Pete Buttigieg is first openly gay man confirmed by the Senate; Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul released from prison; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is first African and first woman director general of the WTO; and more!
Super Bowl cheerleaders are frequently forced to work long hours for no benefits and illegally low wages, while experiencing sexist discrimination.
It’s an all-too-familiar story for working women—low pay, long hours, zero benefits and near-impossible standards of sexiness and appearance not applied to male-dominated jobs. To top it all off, this particular tale also includes not just “the usual” discrimination, but outright wage theft.
In 2009, Kathryn Bertine pressed send on an email that would in many ways dictate the course of her life for years to come. In it she asked a simple question: “Why is there no women’s race in the Tour de France?”
Ms. sat down with Bertine on Zoom to talk about vulnerability, picking yourself up, and when we might finally see a women’s Tour de France.
With knowledge of the facts and the law, students are now stepping up to fight for equality by filing Title lawsuits.
“People talk about ‘Title IX compliance.’ We have got to move away from that language because it doesn’t represent the harm that is being done to girls and women. Instead, call it what it is; athletic departments are engaged in institutionalized, intentional sex discrimination.”
“I understand that our teams don’t make as much money as football and basketball,” says Sage Ohlensehlen, captain of the women’s swim team at University of Iowa and lead plaintiff in a class-action Title IX lawsuit against the school. “But we trained just as hard and we have just as much love for our sport. We deserve to play just as much as any other athlete.”
To address staggering levels of teen pregnancy in Tanzania, two global nonprofits are using the tool of sports to address taboo women’s sexual and reproductive health issues.