Maya (bottom left) and her friends are having a really successful middle school track season. Good for them! So many benefits, both physical and mental, for girls participating in team sports.
It wasn't always that way. Nova and Maya look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them this:
Title 9, the 1972 federal civil rights law, prohibited sex-based discrimination in school sponsored sports. Now taken totally for granted by this young generation, that requirement for equal treatment in high school sports was an earth shattering change at the time.
At our small Colorado high school, the boys played intramural basketball and the girls had segregated gym class and joined "pep club." That was our only participation in sports.
Few families had money to spare, and the dorky, old fashioned pep club uniform (remember this was the mini skirt 60's) was quite an investment: stitched down, below the knee wool pleated skirt in ugly kelly green, formal blazer, and, yes, white gloves and Keds. Wool fabric was cheap then and the clever girls tried to sew those complicated skirts in Home Ec class, with varying success.
It wasn't like we were entirely excluded-- the pep club trouped along with the basketball team to away games, hours on the road late at night in a dark bus. Trust me, we had fun as teenagers do, but the sexist roles were sharply defined: the boys played, and the girls cheered them on from the sidelines. As Nova and Maya say, "Nana, that's CRAZY."
I have a tendency to bemoan change, but who would ever want to go back to those days?
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