Book Review: Deborah Brake Brings Her A Game

Deborah Brake’s book Getting in the Game: Title IX and the Women’s Sports Revolution immediately captures the attention of the reader and does not let go until the end.

Although grounded in the study of law, Getting in the Game is interdisciplinary in nature, pulling from history, psychology, and feminist theory. Brake, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and member of the WLP’s Honorary Committee for the 2010 Rights to Realities party, artfully blends theory, legal analysis and case law with stories that demonstrate how individuals have been affected by Title IX. By page six the reader has learned how instrumental athletic programs are in promoting equality and empowering young women.

Early in the book, Brake presents a detailed discussion of the three-part test for equal participation opportunities for women, which she describes as one of the most “radical of Title IX’s equality measures.” She finds the test to be successful based on the test’s emphasis on actual participation of women in sports, as opposed to “merely espousing the ideal of a gender-neutral process.”

Cheerleading has become a stronger presence in the media, both because of pop culture (movies like Bring it On) and because of Quinnipiac University’s recent lawsuit in which a federal judge ruled that cheerleading cannot be considered a competitive sport. Brake examines these changing perceptions of cheerleading and implications extending Title IX to cheerleading.  The author describes the tensions between different feminist views on the value of cheerleading, but ultimately allows for the potentially empowering nature of cheerleading for young women despite associations of cheerleaders with sexuality and subordination.

Brake also does not hesitate to discuss the possibility that a school could avoid adding additional sports for women if cheerleading were considered a sport under Title IX. However, Brake shows how Title IX parallels the feminist discussion of how cheerleading does, or does not, empower young women when she directs the reader to recent guidance from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that allows for the possibility that cheerleading may be recognized as an official sport on a case-by-case basis.

There is a bittersweet discussion of the Women’s Law Project’s Choike v. Slippery Rock University litigation and subsequent attempts by schools to engage in “roster management” in order to comply with Title IX. Although Brake concludes that the Slippery Rock case was a “qualified” victory, she notes that following the Slippery Rock decision the court allowed Slippery Rock to engage in roster management, capping rosters on male sports and expanding rosters for female sports, instead of requiring new athletic opportunities for women.

In other sections of Getting in the Game, Brake meets controversial subjects, such as claims of Title IX weakening men’s sports, head on. She also discusses mostly-ignored issues, including female athletes and pregnancy, the dwindling number of female coaches, and Title IX’s failure to protect young female athletes from sexual harassment.

However, the most impressive aspect of this book is not any one section. What makes this book a must-read for anyone interested in feminist legal theory, Title IX, or athletic programs is Brake’s ability to write in a fashion that is likely to be as compelling to younger participants in school athletic programs as it is to academics seeking a thorough and balanced examination of Title IX and women’s sports.

Women Deserve Equality in Sports

Earlier this month, the Washington Post published an op-ed blaming Title IX for targeting male teams for elimination at universities. Due to many schools’ struggles with finances during the economic downturn, they have cut athletic teams. H. Clay McEldowney, the author of the piece, states that more men’s teams are getting cut than women’s teams and blames Title IX:

A big part of the answer is that the federal law governing collegiate athletic opportunity, known as Title IX, is indifferent to economics. Rich schools and poor, large and small, those with high-profile programs or without — all must abide by the law’s strict enforcement regime or face federal investigation, the wrath of trial lawyers or both.

What McEldowney fails to provide in his column is any statistical evidence that these schools are spending more on female athletics than men, or the number of male and female athletes previous to the cuts.

He also makes some gross overstatements: Title IX is not subject to a “strict enforcement regime.” Actually, schools are able to comply with Title IX in three different ways, including demonstrating a commitment to expanding sports for the underrepresented sex and surveying the interests and abilities of their students to show that they are offering exactly the sports the students want.

It’s simple, really: women and men deserve equal treatment and opportunity in athletics. No matter if the pie is big or small, women should receive their fair share of it. In Pennsylvania alone, there are 8,000 missing athletic opportunities for college women (PDF). The situation for female athletes is dismal at the high school level.

Title IX is about equality, not maintaining the status quo of privileging men’s sports over women’s sports. Unfortunately, despite what McEldowney says, equality is still a long way away.

Women’s College Basketball: Undervalued and Underappreciated

“History and tradition” are usually given as reasons for the lower ticket prices assigned to women’s college basketball teams. Recently, the Christian Science Monitor took issue with this in an op-ed lamenting the current condition of stereotypes pervading women’s college basketball.

A study completed as part of the Women’s Sports Leadership Project at the Wellesley Centers for Women showed astonishing differences in ticket prices for men and women’s basketball at the college level. Analysis showed that single tickets to men’s games sell for double that for women’s games. These differences even exist in the nationally-ranked top 25 women’s teams.

As the Monitor points out, these across the board lower ticket prices are doing nothing except reinforcing the undervaluation of women’s sports, female athletes, and their abilities. We need to break away from the stereotype that women’s athletic abilities and competition are at a lower level than men’s in order for women to flourish in sports at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels.

Title IX and Men’s sports

Title IX continues to be in the spotlight when it comes to college sports. Recently, NCAA president Myles Brand said that he anticipated that colleges will have to cut athletic teams in the near future due to the state of the economy, and he urged schools not to scapegoat Title IX as the reason for the cuts.

“My expectation is that over the next year or two we are going to see more” cuts of men’s teams, Brand said Wednesday in a telephone interview, “and so I am trying, frankly, to pre-empt the argument against Title IX, an unfair argument, I believe, and dissuade universities from going public with this approach.”

It’s encouraging that Mr. Brand is preemptively striking any blame on Title IX for reductions in college sports programs.

And in other Title IX news, this New York Times article reports that, at many schools, players whose teams were cut by their institution are re-forming at the club level and finding that they enjoy it. One interesting remark came from Jim Giunta, executive director of the National Collegiate Wrestling Association. In discussing the teams’ direction after being cut by colleges and universities, he said, “[S]ome of us have come to realize that institutions have been using Title IX as a cop-out. The real reason they are cutting sports is to save money.”

As we said in an earlier post on this subject, Mr. Giunta’s statement simply reinforces what feminists and supporters of women’s sports have been saying for years: usually, it’s the cost of running athletics programs, particularly for larger and more expensive sports, that hurts the chances of other, smaller sports programs succeeding, not offering women equal opportunity to participate in athletics.

Both articles found via the Title IX blog, an excellent resource for anyone interested in Title IX issues.

Competition in College Athletics

The New York Times did an interesting story on the role of football at Rutgers and the mixed reactions to the university’s expanding investment in athletics.

In the article, there is a link to The Quad, a New York Times blog about “the fierce competition and engrossing culture of college sports.” It’s great that the Times is looking critically at the role of athletics at American colleges and universities, but why not also take a look at some female sports?