Innehållsförteckning för July 01-08, 2022 från Newsweek

1991 “Will Americans still be applauding (and voting GOP) if the court keeps on moving to the right—if it severely restricts abortions, abandons the rights of minorities and women…?” Newsweek asked after Thurgood Marshall’s resignation made way for a new justice to be appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. “It is the people Bush will leave behind on the Supreme Court who will be his most enduring legacy,” the magazine wrote. Three decades later, Bush’s appointee Clarence Thomas is still on a court that has moved ever-further right and is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. 1979 “The best short-term advice for Americans seems to be to save as much energy as possible—and even that might not be enough,” Newsweek said about rising prices of imported oil. The…

June 23, 1972 Title IX, an update to civil rights law that extends an existing ban on sex discrimination to education, is signed into law by President Richard Nixon. September 1973 Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in an exhibition match dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes.” Plus: The U.S. Open becomes the first major tournament to award equal prize money for men and women champions after King threatens to boycott over pay disparity. November 1973 A New Jersey court rules girls must be allowed to play Little League baseball. 538,000 girls play in youth leagues in 2021. 1974 Ann Meyers Drysdale becomes the first female recipient of a full fouryear athletics scholarship in any sport, signing onto UCLA’s basketball team. There, she is the first player in Division I…

60% Percentage of girls who participate in high school sports SOURCE: NATIONAL FEDERATION OF STATE HIGH SCHOOL ASSOCIATIONS 263.62 MILLION Number of viewers who watched the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team defeat the Netherlands 2-0 in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, the most watched soccer match on English-language television in the U.S. SOURCE: FIFA 44% Percentage of NCAA athletes who are women, vs. 15% before Title IX SOURCE: NCAA $ 100,000 Amount Billie Jean King earned in 1973 for winning the “Battle of the Sexes” SOURCE: ESPN 14% Percentage of college athletes who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) women. Only 4% of collegiate athletic directors are BIPOC women. SOURCE: WOMEN’S SPORTS FOUNDATION 60,000 Number of additional collegiate sport opportunities for men vs. women (a gap…

I LOOKED BACK AT WHERE my whole journey started and the words Title IX kept popping into my head. It’s the movement that helped progress women’s sport. And it’s one that opened the door for me to pursue my dream. As a young girl, I wrote a report about sports and had to interview my one living grandmother, on my mom’s side. I learned that she couldn’t participate in some sports, which were considered too grueling for girls. In some instances, they didn’t even offer girls sports. Now, as an athlete, it’s hard to fathom the idea of not being introduced to sports, let alone allowed to play, or that sports weren’t offered because of your sex. My grandmother eventually picked up tennis and, along with my grandfather, had three…

ONE OF THE FIRST YOUTUBE VIRAL VIDEOS WAS MARCEL THE SHELL WITH Shoes On. Released in 2010 and created and voiced by Jenny Slate with Dean Fleischer-Camp, the video about a talking shell has since raked in millions of views, been turned into a children’s book and now is a new film from the studio A24. Behind the voice it started with, Slate says, were “confusing, dissonant feelings about my own worth as a performer, as a person.” In the film, Marcel teams up with a new friend Dean to find his family, along the way being interviewed by his hero, Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes. “Marcel says she’s got class—and she does.” What makes the film version of Marcel different is how unexpectedly deep and therapeutic it is. “Marcel, in…

TITLE IX HAS IMPACTED SO many women, but it was a movement in life as well as in sports at the time. Because of laws like Title IX, more opportunities and more openings were created for women in all aspects of life. In sports generally, in colleges and in professional sports, Title IX opened doors. Early on in my career there were definitely moments that opened my eyes to inequality between men and women, like disproportionate court times. I saw how many women’s matches were on center courts at combined events for women and men. When you’re relegated to a side court, you notice that. Experiencing prize money that wasn’t equal was incredibly significant. No man had to experience that, but every woman did. That was pretty glaring until I…

IF TITLE IX DIDN’T EXIST, women simply wouldn’t have equal opportunities to play the sports that we love. And I personally wouldn’t have had the experiences of being recruited to a top college basketball team and winning a national championship. Or had the prospect of being drafted into the WNBA—perhaps, God willing, even to be a professional team’s No. 1 pick. Winning the NCAA national championship in April was special. Last year, we came really close and then we lost in the Final Four. Our attitude afterwards was: This is it, we can do it this year. We had a special team, and we worked so hard. So for that buzzer to sound and know we had just won a national championship was amazing. A lot of young kids, especially…

LISA FERNANDEZ, 51, HAS OFTEN BEEN CALLED women’s softball’s greatest-of-all-time. An overpowering pitcher and a great hitter, in the 1990s she led the UCLA Bruins to two national titles and the U.S. Olympic team to three gold medals, helping to spark the sport’s tremendous growth in popularity since then. She is now an assistant coach at UCLA. The following conversation has been edited for space and clarity. Would your playing career have been possible before Title IX? I definitely don’t think my career would have been the same. I was born in 1971. It truly came at a time when I was able to reap the benefits of those who sacrificed before me. How about your coaching career? Any opportunity in women’s athletics has been greatly influenced by Title IX.…

IN 2016, NFL QUARTERBACK Colin Kaepernick stunned the American public by kneeling during the national anthem. He took that knee to protest police brutality and systemic racism and, in an instant, changed the conversation about athletes, activism and fighting for social justice—at great personal cost; since that season, no pro team in the U.S. has hired him. That same year, the professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe also took a knee in solidarity. It was a simple but powerful gesture that reverberated across the country, too. It was allyship in the truest sense of the word. In an instant, Rapinoe became a symbol of what progress could look like. It also made her a target—for disagreement and disappointment, anger and vitriol, even death threats. She refused to be silenced and today,…

I WAS 10 MONTHS OLD WHEN Congress passed Title IX, and it was that summer of 1972 when I first got in the pool. My mom never learned to swim so she took me to our local YMCA before my first birthday and enrolled me in water safety lessons. What started as an assurance plan for my parents turned into a lifelong passion for me. I loved the pool and found an outlet for my energy, competitive spirit and enthusiasm for life. At 3 years old, I joined the swim team. By the age of 10, I broke my first national record in my age group for the 200-meter free. At 15, I broke world records in the 400, 800 and 1,500. And at 17, I won three golds at…

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, HAS always been home for me, it laid the foundation. Even though my family didn’t have all the things that we probably wanted as far as materialistic items, there was a lot of love in our home, a lot of motivation and a lot of push to be the best that we could be. When I first started running at the age of 9, I wasn’t one of the best girls. In my first competition, I finished last. But what I loved about it was that it was fun. So I just said to myself: If I can improve a tenth of a second when running, or half of an inch if I was jumping, that meant the work that I was doing was paying off. Eventually,…

IT’S CRAZY TO THINK THAT we are celebrating 50 years of Title IX, and I am happy to say that I am a product of Title IX. I was born in 1971, a year before Title IX was signed into law but I still consider myself a Title IX baby. There are moments when I look back on my life and career and couldn’t imagine life as a female athlete without this law. As a young girl from Brownfield, Texas, who started playing hoops at the age of 7, basketball was life! I knew at a very early age how much I loved the game and that there was something special about me and that orange ball. I remember every time my brothers would leave to go play basketball, I…