Title IX: Women Athletes Speak Out

Athletic directors and coaches at the symposium commented on how a major disparity remains in the salary of female coaches, and called for positions to be opened to women to compensate them based on their market value. More incentives are needed for young women who want to become professional coaches and athletic administrators; the option seems to be an afterthought, and available only to extremely talented athletes, not just interested women with business sense.

Commemorators of the thirty fifth anniversary stressed the importance of being vigilant about Title IX while improving programs for both male and female athletes. The goal is not to reduce the number of men’s programs, but to maintain equity, they explained. Creating co-ed teams are another possibility for reducing money and increasing attention. More attention to marketing women’s programs is needed for increasing turnout at games, speakers on one panel agreed. I think that the chance to regularly see action shots of women in sports uniforms gives girls a better idea of who they can look up to, and it helps maintain a dialogue too often limited to two weeks of Olympic play every few years. King complained that girls receive a quarter of a million commercial messages about how they should look by the time they are seventeen.

Other memorable speakers included: 

• Jane Booth, a forty seven-year-old British expatriate compelled to train for a triathlon, for reasons unknown to her five years ago. She said that during the run portion (“perpetually difficult as I have a hate/hate relationship with running”) of her first event, the San Jose International Triathlon, she realized she needed to see if she had the guts to train and race after twenty-one years of relative physical inactivity. Olympic gold medalist and former US national soccer team member Brandi Chastain wrote the foreword to Transformation by Triathlon: The Making of an Iimprobable Athlete, the book Booth recently wrote and self-published.

• June Soloman, a Trinidadian woman pursuing a Master’s degree in athletic management to find ways to market roller soccer, a new sport combining inline skating and European football. The closing of many roller skating franchises around the country means she’s trying to draw up a new formula for recruiting talented athletes for the sport she developed with husband Zach Phillips.

• Tara VanDerveer, the current coach of the Stanford women’s basketball team, who led the U.S. women’s team to Olympic gold in Atlanta. Even though she couldn’t join a team, she diagramed plays as a child. She regularly reminds her players how important it is that they have both the opportunity to play, and to receive scholarships. “I’m worried that they’ll have a sense of entitlement about their chances to play sports,” VanDerveer said. “Many girls have no idea what their mothers fought for.”

• Lisa Izze, the creator of Athletic Girls Productions, a new media company striving to raise awareness through positive role models. Izze was a college gymnast who coached at Stanford for eleven years, while raising three children by herself. She wants to create a platform for young girls that highlights the health benefits of being active. I really like her idea for creating more intergenerational conversation between experienced athletes and children.

While waiting at a stop light toward the end of my bike ride the next day, during training for a 545-mile ride for AIDS research, from San Francisco to Los Angeles (potentially the biggest athletic feat of my life so far, and one that gets me excited and frightened), a man who’d been riding the same course looked at me. “You’re a tough little cookie,” he said. A surprising comment given the fact that he said this to me and none of the men who’d been riding with us. What would King have replied?

Probably the same thing she told the Stanford crowd. “Men and women need to walk side by side and respect each other. It’s important to understand where we’ve been so we know where we’re going with it.”

But shoppers this side of the Atlantic need not worry—the totes are are rumored to be sold in the US this summer for $15 at Whole Foods stores.