Page 4 - Gender Inequality in Sports: From Title IX to World Titles

C H A P TE R 1
Why Not

Equality?

it down on the bench of a ten-year-old girls’ soccer team.
Ask them if teams like theirs have always been part of soccer
Sleagues. DUH. Their faces will show you how dumb that
question is. Of course girls’ soccer teams have always existed! Move
from the bench to the sidelines to ask the girls’ grandmothers and
great-grandmothers. They’ll probably give you a different answer.
Why should we care that girls play sports? Why should people
play sports at all? Sports are fun, they can keep us healthy, they
teach us how to work together, and they provide transferable
skills to careers. According to a 2016 survey of four hundred
women executives on four continents, 96 percent of them played
a sport. These same executives said their time in sports developed
these three leadership qualities: the ability to finish projects,
motivational skills, and team-building skills.
However, women’s sports history is very different from men’s.
It may be difficult to imagine that female athletes struggled to
be allowed on the field—but they did. That fight shifted when
Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, created a
federal law barring discrimination based on sex in all federally

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