Title IX at 40 Conference Concludes

After three days of engaging discussions and lectures, the Title IX at 40 Conference concluded yesterday. Sponsored by the SHARP Center for Women and Girls at the University of Michigan and the Women’s Sports Foundation, the Conference fostered an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars, activists, athletes, lawyers, athletic administrators, teachers and students.

Despite the diversity of presenters’ and attendees’ backgrounds, a few themes reappeared during the conference. Perhaps the most prominent was that we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go in regards to gender equity. 

Another prominent theme was education. Valerie Bonnette, a TitleIX specialist, consistently with other speakers, emphasized the need to “educate, educate, and educate” about Title IX. The call for spreading knowledge about the law derives primarily from the misconceptions, most specifically the myth that Title IX caused/causes cuts in men’s sports. 

Numerous speakers, including Dr.Christine Grant, former women’s athletic director at the University of Iowa, displayed numbers that indicate: participation for men has actually grown. Men’s sports did not get cut because of Title IX, but because of “allocation of resources,” Grant explained. 

Judy Sweet, former NCAA Senior Vice President, confirmed stating that sports get cut “not because of Title IX, but because of institutional priorities.”

The conference addressed a variety of issues related to Title IX including youth sports, injury prevention, employment, men’s experiences, media coverage and diversity. 

Faculty from Penn State contributed to the conference with their research and expertise. Nancy Williams from the Department of Kinesiology gave a talk titled “Sport Involvement, Health Risks, and the Female Athlete Triad.” 

John Cheslock from the Center for the Study of Higher Education addressed financial challenges in athletics. Cheslock said that the “Title IX Blame Game” is based on the assumption that Title IX is the “primary cause of major reductions” in men’s sports. 

Cheslock pointed out the importance of considering other factors which play a role in institutional decisions such as high schools in the area, cost, risks, and international student presence. He also called for a disaggregation by institution type. Cheslock said that commercially successful institutions are “rare species” as most athletic programs are not sustainable. 

The John Curley Center for Sports Journalism was represented by Marie Hardin, Associate Dean of the College of Communications. Hardin shared research conducted by the Curley Center addressing the relationship between media producers, gender and Title IX coverage. 

Hardin explained that the “zero-sum” framing of Title IX is problematic because the legislation is understood as conflict. “When frames trump facts, ideology gains traction,” Hardin said. 

Currently, women make up approximately 10% of sports reporters, sports bloggers and sports information departments. While we need more women in sports departments, increasing the number of women who enter sports journalism is hardly sufficient. 

“Women will go into sports news departments, but they won't be valued until we value women's sports in our society,” Hardin said. 

You can find more information about the conference at the following sites: 

-        - For a list of all speakers, topics and photos click here and visit the conference website.

-        - For a play-by-play, go to the Curley Center’s Twitter feed @CurleyCenter #TitleIXConference

-         - For videos of keynote speakers Laila Ali, Amy Berman, James Delany and Bernice Sandler click here

To find Title IX related information, visit the SHARP Center, the Women’s Sports Foundation, the National Women’s Law Center, and Title IX Blog, among others. 

For updates from the Curley Center, check back to this blog and follow us on Twitter.

--Dunja Antunovic

A Conference for Title IX

As a part of a continuing commemoration of Title IX, the SHARP Center for Girls and Women at the University of Michigan is hosting a three day conference in Ann Arbor with a mission to “co-create an agenda for future research intended to fulfill the promise of this important legislation.”

The “Title IX at 40: Progress and Equity for All” conference begins today at 5pm (ET) with a keynote by Laila Ali, President of the Women’s Sports Foundation and will continue through Friday afternoon with panels, poster presentations, round table sessions and lectures. The conference will welcome athletes, coaches, administrators, policy makers and educators for a transdisciplinary discussion about the law and its impact on sports.

Among them is Marie Hardin, Associate Director of Penn State’s John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, who has been invited to participate on the Journalists, Media, and Title IX panel. Her talk titled “Women Covering Sports: Why it Matters” will be held on Friday, May 11, at 11:15am.

Earlier on Friday, another Penn State researcher, John Cheslock from the Center for the Study of Higher Education, will be addressing participation trends and financial challenges in intercollegiate athletics.

You can find the detailed program here.

The Curley Center will provide daily recaps from the conference on this blog. To follow the conference “live,” check out the Center’s Twitter account: @CurleyCenter #TitleIXConference

-- Dunja Antunovic

The media and UConn's winning streak: Another take

I've been reading -- with great interest -- the commentary around the UConn women's basketball team, which will very likely tonight break the longest winning streak in D-I basketball (set by the UCLA men's team under John Wooden).
Much of the commentary isn't on UConn's winning record, but is instead on what to make of coverage of UConn's phenomenal streak. If you've been paying attention to the story, you know that UConn coach Geno Auriemma himself weighed in on the coverage in a news conference after the team's game on Sunday.
He, along with others including sports columnist Christine Brennan and others who study women's sports coverage blame sports media for not giving the story more attention.
I certainly understand this argument. We have scores and scores of research that tells us two things: that institutions covering sports are dominated by men; and that women's sports don't get nearly the attention that men's sports get.
But behind the blame on sports journalists, editors and producers is this assumption: That somehow, those who cover sports are different from those who follow sports. They're "out of touch" with what we (sports fans, Americans, whatever) really want.
In short, it's the (cliched) "build it and they will come" assumption, mixed with imagery of an (evil) wizard behind the curtain pulling the strings contrary to the wishes of the hordes of consumers who would have it otherwise. It reminds me of the title of a book: Why TV Is Not Our Fault, which essentially argues that viewers have little influence over what they watch. It's someone else's fault.
No doubt, there are serious issues of political economy and masculine hegemony/power in the sports/media complex, to borrow the academic concepts that underpin these "media=bad" arguments.
But I'm convinced that at the end of the day, blaming the media for lack of coverage or for the wrong kind of coverage is failing to see the bigger problem.
It really is us. (Gulp.) It is our fault.
What I mean is this: The problem is embedded in the way we see women, men, and gender roles. It's in the way we define sports. It's in the small things we take for granted as "normal" in our everyday lives about the performance of gender. (Women wear skirts, men don't. Etc.) And in what all of these small things say about bodies and power.
These norms aren't without consequence.
They result in a culture that is less interested in women's sports as spectator activities because of the ways these performances challenge our everyday gendered lives.
Those who go to work for media are products of that culture. They aren't so different from the rest of us.
Not that things can't or won't change. But they happen slowly. Forty years out from Title IX is like 40 days in the big scheme of things. We're talking about a generation --maybe two, I think. Beyond our lifetimes to see real change.
In the meantime: I like what Megan Hueter,in her blog "Because I Played Sports," said about the UConn streak. She talked about the power of community and about the way progressive sports fans have found ways to connect, to create media, and to celebrate women's sports.
The real changes in our connection and celebration of women's sports won't start with big media -- they'll start with us.

-- Marie Hardin

Female television sports reporters: Be attractive, but not too attractive

As pundits and opinion-makers have continued to weigh in on the Clinton Portis saga, discussion has turned to what reporter Ines Sainz was wearing, and whether or not her attire was to blame for the humiliating sexual harassment she was forced to endure from members of the New York Jets. Focusing on Sainz’s clothing and appearance places the blame on Sainz instead of a problematic locker room culture, and is reflective of tired “she asked for it” patriarchal discourse.

Blaming Sainz’s attire is a curious argument, given that there is an obvious unspoken rule that in order to appear on camera and cultivate a career in televised sports, women must exude a kind of heterosexual attractiveness through their physical appearance and dress. Women are thus left in a double-bind: In order to join “the boys” they must be appealing to boys, but should they be too appealing in a certain context (see locker room, Jets) their attractiveness becomes their own fault. Until we begin to see female reporters as qualified sports reporters and not, as Hannah Storm had to remind her two male colleagues on a recent ESPN debate “there to check guys out,” women will continue to be reduced to their bodies in ways that are never on their own terms.

--Erin Whiteside

NFL wise to condemn Portis' locker-room comments

The NFL quickly distanced itself from comments by NFL player (Washington) Clinton Portis that female reporters in the locker room are "going to want somebody."
Portis' statement is so offensive and ridiculous as not to warrant much comment. The problem with these kind of statements, though, is that they perpetuate the "locker-room looker" mythology about female sports reporters, which undermines their ability to be taken seriously as journalists in the sports setting.
Portis' comment, related to the harassment of reporter Ines Sainz by New York Jets players over the weekend, is also a timely reminder that perhaps we haven't come as far as we would like to think when it comes to fair treatment of women who cover sports.
It was 20 years ago -- almost to the day -- when sports reporter Lisa Olson was accosted by New England football players in a case that would put national attention on the blatant harassment faced by female reporters simply trying to do their jobs.
How far have we really come since that case? Incidents like those of Olson -- and, two decades later, Sainz -- and the misunderstandings around them point to the importance of organizations such as AWSM and continuing advocacy for women in the sports workplace. --M. Hardin

The Chicago Tribune, Sexist Sporting Imagery and the Case for Increased Gender Diversity in Sports Newsrooms

The old “you play like a girl” insult made a comeback today, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune. As part of its regular poster series, the newspaper depicted the Chicago Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup Finals opponent Chris Pronger as wearing a figure skating dress with the accompanying text “Chrissy Pronger: Looks like Tarzan, skates like Jane.”

It’s hard to believe such a blatantly sexist image would be given the green light in today’s post-Title IX era, but as research has shown, such discourse is part of the accepted culture in sports newsrooms, where sexist and mysoginist jokes are often considered “normal” and “routine.”

The poster itself uses ideology about the inferiority of women’s sports to suggest that Pronger and the Flyers are also inferior. The trivialization of women’s athletics in mainstream sports media is a common trope in research, but studies have shown that increased gender diversity in sports staffs may affect content. As one recent study found, when sports staffs include more women in gatekeeping positions, coverage of women’s sports tends to more often reject stereotypical frames of female athletes. Although that study focused on the representation of women’s sports, the bigger idea is that more diverse staffs may lead to more thoughtful coverage.

Considering women still are vastly underrepresented in sports newsrooms, and that clearly sexist imagery and discourse continues to advance past myriad gatekeepers, this latest mistake by the Trib offers another compelling reason for the increased gender diversification of sports media staffs.

--Erin Whiteside

Women breaking barriers: A milestone

From the Association for Women in Sports Media: Today marks the 35th anniversary of Robin Herman and Marcel St. Cyr becoming the first female sports reporters to enter a locker room for post-game interviews.

Herman was a reporter at The New York Times and St. Cyr was working for CKLM Radio in Montreal when the two women broke the locker room barrier after the National Hockey League's All-Star game.

"This is a significant day in the history of women in sports media," AWSM president Jenni Carlson said. "All of us celebrate the courage that Robin and Marcel showed 35 years ago. Without them and other pioneers like them, we would not be where we are today."

Los Angeles Times columnist Jerome Crowe mentioned the anniversary in today's paper.

Herman also shared her memories in her blog.

Sports bloggers, journalists: Not so different

In a new piece posted on the Tucker Center Web site, I share research by the Curley Center that compares the attitudes of journalists and bloggers toward women's sports and Title IX.
It turns out that they're quite similar, which may explain why so much of what we see in new media looks like what we see in old media. Another dynamic driving the tone in the sports blogosphere is the fact that it's still dominated by men -- almost to the exact same degree as that found in newspaper sports departments. What we need to explore is why women, when the institutional barriers to employment are removed, generally shy away from writing and commentating about sports -- despite the fact that Title IX has turned sports into a way of life for millions.

Andrews episode: Setback for women in sports media? Not really

I received an email from a college student working as a sports writer for the Cape Cod Times this summer directing me to her blog post about the Erin Andrews incident. It was interesting to read the take of a young woman -- new to the profession -- about the episode and reaction to it.
Nicole writes that her reaction has been "complicated" -- and I would concur that she isn't alone. The incident is complex on many levels because it involves a high-profile woman, who has been marketed at least in part on sex appeal, covering sports. More importantly, the incident and the reaction to it clearly point to the difficulty we still have, culturally, with how to position and accept women in the sporting environment. Scholar Margaret Duncan has written extensively about the ways female athletes have been trivialized and sexualized, and I suggest her typology of female athletes can be used to understand the way female sideline reporters are also "put in their place." Unfortunately, the Andrews incident was an ugly, taken-to-the-extreme, extension of the way women in the sports arena have been treated for a long time. Look at the trivialized way Andrews and others have been presented over the years --are we really so surprised at what has happened?
In her blog post, Nicole writes about her own experience with harassment and discrimination and goes on to express her anger at "the way female sports journalists are perceived."
She adds about the Andrews incident: "It’s like a 30-year setback."
Unfortunately, Nicole, it's not really a setback. We weren't as far ahead as you might have hoped and believed.

Blaming women for their harassment: The same old story in 140 characters

Christine Brennan's tweet today, implying that Erin Andrews is somehow to blame for the violation of her privacy via a voyeuristic video, certainly lends support to the recent Big Lead blog about Twitter as a tripwire for journalists. Brennan's tweet implied that these things don't happen to women who are "smart" and "don't play to the frat house." She released a statement today attempting to do a take-back. But her original message -- as ugly as it was -- is actually just a variation on a common theme about female sports journalists: That they are sexually charged, locker-room "lookers" who aren't qualified to cover sports. Emphasizing their sexuality is a way to belittle them in the sports context. This myth has been used to justify discrimination and harassment since the first woman entered the profession, and it continues.
Brennan's tweet is evidence of what we've found: Interviews with women who work in sports journalism has found that many of them buy into this kind of rationalization when they see discrimination against their female colleagues. It's regrettable because it serves a power structure that marginalizes women in sports and sports media.
The problem when women in sports are marginalized and belittled is not the women. It's a definition and positioning of sports in our culture that claims them for men.
And that's much, much bigger -- and more difficult to address -- than anything that can fit in a tweet.

Some women 'seethe with resentment'

Paul Farhi's Washington Post story today about the role of women on the sidelines in coverage of major sports events (such as the Super Bowl) doesn't cover new ground. And neither do the comments in response to Farhi's piece-- which provide the usual range of sexist/misogynist tirades.
Farhi's article, does, however, reflect the frustration of some female sports broadcasters who believe (rightly) that decision-making about their marginal roles isn't fair.
Although the story speculates, based on a comment from the WSF's Marj Snyder, that perhaps more women in high-end decisions at networks could make a difference, it's doubtful that the solution is that simple. Women will gain more visibility in sports commentating roles as our ideas and expectations, as a culture, change in relationship to women, men and sports.

Women in sports: Be "20-percent better"

A Dec. 20 article in the Globe and Mail, "Women on TV: Looks First, Knowledge Later," puts a new spin on an old story about the premium on sexual attractiveness for women covering sports. The new angle: How Web sites such as Deadspin are at once raising the profile and diminishing the journalistic credentials of female sports journalists. Comments on sports blogs are degrading, insulting and sometimes threatening. To be considered credible, an NHL senior vice president of broadcasting recommends women be "20 percent better" than their male counterparts.

Why women don't stay in the profession

Michele Tafoya this week announced that she is dropping from her primary role as an NBA sideline reporter although she plans to continue some of her duties (including those with MNF) for ESPN.
Her reason: more time with family. It's not surprising -- our research shows that most of the time, that -- not glass ceiling or harassment-- is what prompts women in sports journalism to curb their careers.
The problem now, though, is that with the poor economy prompting buyouts and layoffs in TV and newspaper sports departments, we'll see even more women exiting to find more family-friendly careers. We could see diversity in sports operations continue to dwindle.

Narrow path for female SIDs

Next week, members of the College Sports Information Directors of America (COSIDA) will meet in Tampa for the organization's annual convention. On the agenda is research by the Center for Sports Journalism that shows the disparities between men and women in employment and promotion -- women are only about a tenth the industry, and far fewer women reach the top ranks.
Focus groups with female SIDs show that discrimination and sexism are still a problem and that old-school ideas about women and sports can keep women from opportunities they deserve ("Sometimes I just want to wear my resume on my shirt just to say I am qualified," said one SID). Challenges in reconciling work and family obligations are a big reason women decide to leave the profession.

Female writers in the sports blogosphere

Blogger Andrea Reiher was interviewed for AOL Fanhouse about sexism in the sports blogosphere -- an interesting choice, considering that Reiher's blogs, including Ladies..., strike me as less-than-progressive when it comes to women, men and sports. In a full version of the interview, Reiher argues that there should be more women writing for the most popular blog sites, such as Deadspin. She is right -- few female writers are featured on these sites. But as I mentioned, I'm not sure Reiher and others bring a particularly different view to sports. And many of them do not want to.
I'm not saying that women shouldn't be given equal opportunity to contribute to the blogosphere. It's too bad, though, that they might simply provide more of the same -- discourse that reinforces sexism in sports and sports talk.

'Where have all the women gone?'

NYT writer Karen Crouse, in an interview with The Big Lead posted today, was asked about the hurdles facing women in sports journalism. Although she speculated that "the pool of Superwomen is not that deep" (this is the comment that garnered attention from Romenesko), the more important comment is this one: "there are some papers -- including a few I've worked for -- where if they have one woman on the writing staff, they feel no need to hire another."
Another interesting comment comes in the back-and-forth of feedback on the The Big Lead blog (some of it cruel) about Crouse. Finally, one post speculates that a reason women might not be eager to pursue and retain careers in sports journalism "could have something to do with the way that we male fans treat women on things like...sports blogs?"

The Web, women and sports journalism

The Internet has put increasing pressure on sports columnists to write before they think -- in response to "fanatical" sports fans who demand knee-jerk responses to sports controversies. During a panel at the annual AWSM convention, columnists Jemele Hill, Christine Brennan, Jenni Carlson and Jill Painter talked about ways the Web has also enabled them to present themselves in "3-D" -- in text, audio and video, becoming more familiar to sports fans.
The panel was one of a number for women in sports journalism and information over the weekend in Miami. Attendance at the convention was among the highest in the organization's history, signaling AWSM's growth and visibility. But the employment of women in the industry remains low, especially in online media. A top editor with Yahoo!Sports told the group on Saturday that no women are in key roles with sports at Yahoo.

Roberts likely the exception at SI

In a recent Washington Post column, Leonard Shapiro writes about the moves of high-profile sports journalists among newspaper, magazine and television. Of Selena Robert's recent move from the NYT to SI, he chronicles the magazine's stay-the-course record of marginalizing women and women's sports. He writes that the addition of Roberts "and perhaps more talented women to come, there's some hope for a little more gender equity in the SI ranks."
Shapiro then comes back down to earth: "Maybe Roberts will just be an exception, albeit a very welcome one, and that would be a great shame." Unfortunately, his afterthought is likely right. When it comes to women in sports journalism, the door tends to be a revolving one.

Daring to call it what it is

The lawsuit filed by a woman who says she was fired after complaining about being groped and fondled by ESPN on-air personalities is a necessary step in addressing misogyny and sexual harassment in the media workplace. Unfortunately, research shows that many women tolerate harassment and don't want to call it out for fear of losing their jobs or opportunities for advancement -- especially in the locker-room environment associated with big-time sports.

And you thought this struggle was over

A female reporter who covers major league soccer posted about her experience in a team locker room where a player tried to chase her out. She stood her ground and got an interview but was understandably shaken. Her experience also points to the growing need for reporters who cover sports with Latino players to be able to speak Spanish.