After Tina Sloan Green took over Temple University’s lacrosse program Passing Title IX, Revolutionary gender equality methodShe didn’t stop thinking of the girl who wasn’t playing.
Sloan Green, the first black woman to coach a college lacrosse team in 1970s practice, finds that children in the neighborhood are looking into her player’s fence while guards keep them out. I noticed. And when high school athletes were welcomed into the college field for training camps, they were mostly white, mostly from white suburban schools.
“It was very, very worrisome to see it,” she said. “And that was the reality I had to face … Title IX was a complete help for sports women, but there was still a gap in my mind.”
For girls of color, some women’s college sports such as lacrosse, horseback riding, boating, and even softball are less likely to be exposed in primary school. For a variety of reasons, availability and cost can be a major challenge for youth programs.
June 23 marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX, and a few years after the breakthrough law was passed, women and girls’ participation in sports has made great strides.Woman now make up According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, 44% of National Collegiate Athletic Association athletes were only 15% in 1971.Almost 3.5 million high school girls play Sports compared to less than 300,000 in 1972.
For black women and other colored women in sports, these benefits are not equally shared, reflecting the limitations of the policy of focusing solely on fairness based on gender and gender.
“Sports are often said to be the epitome of society,” said Karen Isoxon Silver, vice president of research and education at the Women’s Sports Foundation. “Whenever systematic racism occurs in a wider society in addition to sexism, it is reflected in the sporting ecosystem.”
The initial barriers to pursuing exercise opportunities in college and beyond are as easy as exposure to sports.
Natasha Watley, a black woman who is a two-time softball Olympic medalist, started playing at the age of five. She said she had very few colored girls who played with her because she had no black teammates until she was a teenager. She went to a college team that could count them on the one hand.
After UCLA graduates returned from the 2008 Olympics, Watley remembered telling a young girl about her experience.
“This one young girl I’ll never forget — an African-American young girl, she raises her hand and she looks like’san’. Natasha, your story sounds great, but what is a softball? “Watley said. “She didn’t know what softball was.”
According to the US Census, the average household income for white non-Hispanic families in 2020 was $ 74,912, compared to $ 55,321 for Hispanic families and $ 45,870 for black families. Courtney L. Flowers, an associate professor of sports management at Texas Southern University, said factors such as income are a racial cluster phenomenon in which colored women are overestimated in low-entry sports such as trucks and fields. It states that it is one of the causes.
“Even middle-class families do not send their children to schools that have access to the equestrian team,” she said. “We usually push African-American women into women’s basketball and athletics for these reasons.”
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inequality Take over the role of leadership.. 34% of women’s team head coaches are white women, but only 7% are colored women. Of the athletic directors, only 4% are colored women, compared to 20% of white women.
Candice Story Lee, The first black woman to be an athletic director at Vanderbilt UniversitySaid that a single policy like Title IX cannot be expected to bring fairness to the field without subsequent action.
“We know that law alone doesn’t change behavior,” she said. “You have to have people who are committed at every level to get the results you want, so I’m not going to blame Title IX, but to make it accessible to everyone. And I think we still have something to do in our own community. “
These disparities in leadership and college movement opportunities begin early in life, said Nina Chaudhry, Legal and Senior Advisor to the National Center for Women’s Law. A study The center has announced that 40% of public high schools in the country are highly isolated, with 90% serving colored students or 90% serving white students.
Schools that serve primarily colored students have far fewer opportunities to play sports and the gap between boys and girls is more pronounced. Forty percent of high schools that serve primarily colored students have a big opportunity gap for sports girls. 16% of pure white schools. The opportunity gap is the difference between the percentage of team spots assigned to girls and the percentage of students who are girls, and a difference of more than 10 points is considered a large opportunity gap.
Studies show that, in addition to physical health, girls who play sports are more likely to have a higher level of self-esteem, stronger collaboration skills, and better academic performance. However, because of different access to athletics, both through community centers and rising costs of youth sports, schools have become an important place for colored young girls to participate in athletics, Chaudhry said. I am saying.
“Every student needs to go to school, which is a place that offers opportunities not otherwise available,” she said. “Not everyone can afford to pay for sports outside of school … It’s really important to provide those opportunities equally through school. It’s important and it’s the law.”
Sloan Green, who co-founded the Black Women of the Sports Foundation in 1992, said it was important to increase access to young girls of color, especially between pre-kindergarten and second grade. At Temple, she expanded the camp and recruited into an overlooked community, including children in the neighborhood. According to Sloan Green, she has a role model that reflects the girl in color, and sharing her success widely is also important for taking the girl to the arena.
In Southern California, Watley launched the Natasha Watley Foundation to introduce softball to girls in the marginalized community. Softball serves about 1,000 girls each year. Other than her expense, the main concern she hears from her parents is that she is uncertain whether the sport will welcome her daughter. Watley said she wants young girls to know that sports can be a thriving place in college and beyond.
“First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that the girls were introduced to the game and understood that the game was for them and for them,” she said. rice field. “There is an opportunity far beyond their imagination that this game can take them.”
Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Ma writes about the education and impartiality of AP’s racial and ethnic teams. Brandt reported by Oklahoma City. AP Sports Writer Teresa M. Walker from Nashville, Tennessee contributed to this report.
For more information on the impact of Title IX, see the complete AP package. https://apnews.com/hub/title-ix
