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Women’s sports have always been political and politicized.
Throughout history, women in sports have had no other option but to struggle from the bottom up for legitimacy. To be seen on par with men as athletes and to receive the same level of support in terms of resources, media coverage and protection remains an on-going battle. There was a time when women playing sports was considered an oddity: Women athletes were made to be ridiculed at best, or pathologized at worst. In the face of blatant sexism, women have been able to carve out their own place in sports and their fight for status mirrored the broader fight for gender equality.
That struggle has culminated in major breakthroughs for women and girls to participate in sports. One of the most obvious achievements was Title IX, the landmark law passed in 1972 that required schools and universities that receive federal funds to provide equal educational opportunities on the basis of gender.
The result has been a revolution in women’s participation in sports at all levels. It’s also a revolution that increasingly has been televised, as women’s sports, especially women’s basketball, has reached extraordinary heights of interest and popularity. Players and coaches are becoming household names in bunches, with plenty of lucrative endorsement deals to go around and games reaching viewers in the millions.
It’s a revolution that could be halted by the powers that be.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE), the latest casualty in an ever growing litany of federal programs being gutted. It is a move that needs congressional approval. The DOE, created in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter, oversees the implementation of education laws, facilitates federal aid programs and ensures equal access to education. The latter pertains to Title IX.
If the DOE goes down, it takes Title IX with it.
The end result would be that educational institutions would not be required to provide equal funding to women’s sports programs, thus resulting in the cutting of those programs. Scholarship money could dry up. It could open the door for more discrimination against women athletes, without any real legal recourse.
States will have the ability to interpret Title IX on their own. The problem with that is some states will have stronger protections, while others could have less. In turn, recruiting for women athletes in those states with fewer protections from discrimination could drastically decline. Not to mention the likely erasure of protections for victims and survivors of sexual assault and harassment.
Altogether, this is a drastic move that will upend the progress of the last 50 plus years.
In this current moment where women’s basketball is flourishing, where the women’s NCAA Tournament is garnering as much, if not more, fever as the men’s, where the most popular basketball player in the United States is not Anthony Edwards but Caitlin Clark and where the women’s game is expected to generate $1.3 billion in revenue in 2025, salvaging federal oversight to ensure that the next generation of women hoopers have all the resources and support they need is a must.
Not doing so would be cataclysmic beyond reproach. A flagrant foul if you will.
