Spitz's Sister
Making a case for the end of sex-segregated sports.
Playing with the Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal in Sports, by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano (Oxford University Press; New York; 2008; 368 pages; $28)
By Magdalena Hernandez
In her landmark essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf invented an aspiring writer named Judith Shakespeare, sister to William, to make a point: In Elizabethan England, no woman, not even one born with William Shakespeare’s gifts, could have become a fully developed artist given the era’s constricting gender boundaries.
Happily, the “sweet ladies” have made much progress. Full gender equity hasn’t been realized. But today’s women have many more opportunities than ever before.
Yet there remains in America one true male stronghold: sports. Imagine a preternaturally gifted woman swimmer—say, if Olympics phenom Mark Spitz had had a sister named Margaret. The facilities she used would have been inferior to his.
Her prowess might have labeled her a freak (Margaret the Mermaid!) or a lesbian. Her laurels would have come for swimming upstream against expectations. At worst, her talent would have been overlooked, or she’d have been discouraged from pursuing the sport her brother excelled in.
In 2008, despite the swarms of young girls you see playing on soccer fields, gender discrimination in sports persists. And Title IX might be partially to blame. Or so claim Northeastern political science professor Eileen McDonagh and journalist Laura Pappano in Playing with the Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal in Sports.
Title IX sparked astonishing changes in the world of sport. The 1972 federal law—intended to end exclusion “on the basis of sex” from activities at institutions that receive federal funding—has added thousands of young women to school sports programs. According to a May 11, 2008, New York Times Magazine article, about 30,000 women played college sports the year before Title IX was enacted. Now the number stands at approximately 205,000.
However, the playing field between men and women has not been leveled. McDonagh and Pappano argue that Title IX ushered in a sex-segregated sports system where women athletes are seen as second-class. “And why,” the authors wonder, “do people barely notice, much less fail to complain?”
The problem, the authors point out, is that the law’s been used to maintain the status quo, essentially preserving men’s teams and creating “junior sports programs for females.”
Women, for instance, have less access to facilities. Women coaches earn lower wages. Cheaper admissions are charged for women’s events. Seasons for women’s sports, such as basketball, are shorter.
Also, because most sports are segregated by gender, individual strengths are routinely overlooked. Never mind that some women play as well as some men. Regardless of the considerable overlap of athletic ability between men and women, the segregationist mindset assumes that all women are inferior athletes to all men.
It’s apparent how much the “weaker sex” stereotypes have been taken as truth. Men tennis players play five sets, while women play three. In kids’ golf, boys play eighteen holes, and girls play nine.
Even in sports where physical differences favor women, such as ultramarathons—women have long been shown to have more endurance than men—the rules reinforce the notion that men are the stronger athletes.
Playing with the Boys argues for an end to this segregation, predicting that sports are “the next battleground in the fight for gender equality.”
Tracing the history of women athletes, the authors conclude that, in American sports, “females have been accommodated and tolerated, not treated as equals and promoted. There have been small adjustments and concessions to ‘let the girls play,’ but organized sport has resisted deep change. The solution is not to ‘let’ females play, but to open our eyes to inequalities that have become routine business in organized sport that are barriers to women athletes.”
Countering the inequalities, the authors suggest, will require “a new gender-neutral view of sports.” Among McDonagh and Pappano’s suggestions is the idea that coed sports be offered at every skill level, and governed by gender-blind rules of play.
The book thoughtfully challenges many gender assumptions that are so deeply rooted in our culture we barely realize they’re there. Yet the argument is presented in a straightforward, logical manner, sidestepping any inclination to play the blame game.
Examples pulled from sports history help the authors make their claims. Powerhouses such as Billie Jean King, who ran Bobby Riggs around the tennis court in front of a huge television audience, and Jackie Mitchell, a seventeen-year-old pitcher who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, give the lie to women’s inferiority.
Elsewhere, McDonagh and Pappano offer a fascinating analysis of cultural history to trace the idea of female weakness through the ages.
When gender parity lags in so many facets of American culture, why will sports be the next big battleground? Well, for good or ill, athletics occupies a space like no other in the United States. Playing sports is a celebrated means of character building. And the bonds it cements extend beyond the arena. Deals closed after the eighteenth hole or friendships made at the softball field are nothing to scoff at if you’re trying to rise through the ranks.
What’s more, the authors suggest, a movement to end sex-segregated sports may serve as a shot in the arm to contemporary feminism. Just think of all the unaddressed gender inequality that colors the business world. How many women CEOs, media tycoons, and technology professionals have to be added before their numbers are in the same ballpark as their male counterparts?
By questioning the status quo, McDonagh and Pappano are nudging women to move forward. What would a brave new sports world look like? The authors don’t completely answer that question. Instead, they raise the alarm, outline the problem, and close with several suggestions.
Is simply calling attention to the issue enough? When a problem is so ingrained in a society, it’s often the necessary first step. Remember what Betty Friedan said about feminism: “We couldn’t possibly know where it would lead, but we knew it had to be done.”
Magdalena Hernandez, MBA’02, is a senior editor.
Bookmarks
The Dark Side of the Diamond: Gambling, Violence, Drugs, and Alcoholism in the National Pastime, by Roger I. Abrams; Rounder Books; 2008
If you think the recent steroid scandals have permanently tarnished major league baseball, think again. The game wasn’t that clean to start with.
In this volume, Roger I. Abrams, the Richardson Professor of Law, adeptly dishes up a history of vice in hardball, from gambling and game fixing, to alcohol, drugs, and nineteenth-century performance enhancers.
Even in the so-called good ol’ days, it seems, baseball saw more than its share of sin and sinners. The eye-opening stories Abrams tells offer an implicit caution against uncritical hero worship.
Dice-K: The First Season of the Red Sox $100 Million Man, by Ian Browne; Lyons Press; 2008
Our national pastime has gone global—not only is it played internationally, but players from abroad regularly morph into bona fide American phenomenons.
Twenty-seven-year-old Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is a prime example. In this chronicle of Dice-K’s inaugural U.S. season last year, Ian Browne, AS’95, recounts the steps that brought the right-hander from the Seibu Lions to the Boston Red Sox and a 2007 World Series title, including the Sox’s record-breaking bid to gain negotiation rights.
Browne, a reporter for MLB.com, has penned a breezy, comprehensive read about Dice-K’s transition to the U.S. game, from all the initial ups and downs to the ultimate glory.