美国国家公共电台 NPR--Title IX revolutionized female athletics but advocates say it's been a constant fight

Title IX revolutionized female athletics² but advocates say it's been a constant fight

Transcript³

Fifty years ago, Title IX banned discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs. Advocates say it's been a fight to make sure girls and women get the opportunities promised.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Title IX turns 50 today. Title IX is the name for the landmark⁴ law that banned discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs. There's no mention of athletics in Title IX, but it has been linked most closely to sports giving girls and young women competitive opportunities they rarely had before. NPR's Tom Goldman reports it's been a fight every step of the way.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE⁵: At its core, Title IX turned the female sporting experience from no to yes. And Mariah Burton Nelson lived both.

MARIAH BURTON NELSON: I was not allowed to play Little League. My brother did.

GOLDMAN: It was the early 1960s, long before Burton Nelson played professional basketball and wrote award-winning books about women in sports. Back then, she was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, playing every sport in her neighborhood with her older brother, until she heard that first no. But she was lucky. Her mom was athletic¹ but didn't have competitive opportunities herself. She challenged young Mariah to swimming races and never let her win.

NELSON: She showed me that competition is fun and female.

GOLDMAN: And at her brother's organized baseball games, a budding activism emerged.

NELSON: I wouldn't sit there and watch. I wandered off to the playground nearby. So I was playing, which was on the playground by myself instead of on the field. But I was refusing to be a spectator.

GOLDMAN: By June 23, 1972, Burton Nelson was a very good teenage basketball player who had no idea that on that day, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX. Burton Nelson's right to fully⁶ realize her athletic self now was law. But it was slow taking off. Regulations requiring Title IX compliance⁷ didn't come out until 1975. Burton Nelson didn't know about the law until 1974, when she started college at Stanford.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: A top 12 battle at Maples⁸ Pavilion won dominantly⁹ by No. 11 Stanford.

GOLDMAN: Back then, Maples Pavilion was home only to the Stanford men's basketball team. Burton Nelson says her team was relegated¹⁰ to the tiny women's gym and that they didn't have uniforms or scholarships. But the women now had Title IX, which led Burton Nelson and a couple of teammates to the athletic director's office for what she laughingly calls a series of sit-ins.

NELSON: Just three of us sitting there but refusing to go away when his secretary said, no, he's too busy, or you don't have an appointment, or he doesn't want to see you, or you were already here yesterday. We made it known that we wanted action, and we had the law on our side.

GOLDMAN: Theirs was one of many battles waged and won as Title IX took hold. Its impact now is evident in numbers. Pre-Title IX, fewer than 300,000 girls played high school sports. Now it's more than 10 times that - around 3.5 million. And it's evident in scenes around the country.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Dixie, let's go.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: You got it, Dixie.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Here we go, Dixie.

GOLDMAN: On a recent afternoon in Gaston, Ore., Dixie Swinford stood on a baseball field at home plate with her bat at the ready. Swinford is an 11-year-old girl who doesn't wander off to a playground while the boys play. She plays with them - tackle football, too. Before the game, I asked her about Title IX - she hadn't heard of it - and about the world before, when girls couldn't play because they were girls.

What do you think of that?

DIXIE SWINFORD: That's just dumb.

GOLDMAN: Swinford can't imagine a life without sports.

DIXIE: That would be really boring.

GOLDMAN: Mariah Burton Nelson doesn't know Dixie Swinford, but she recognizes that same attitude in so many of today's young female athletes.

NELSON: I love the fact that they're entitled. They feel entitled to play sport. It would not occur to them that they can't. They don't know about Title IX. I would like them to know their history, but the fact that they don't is kind of cool, too, because they're taking it for granted.

GOLDMAN: Which seems ironic¹¹ because getting to today, Title IX advocates like Neena Chaudhry took nothing for granted.

NEENA CHAUDHRY: I think it's taken work the entire way to get girls and women the opportunities that the law promises.

GOLDMAN: Chaudhry is general counsel at the National Women's Law Center. She's done a lot of that work over the years. She notes there have been many mileposts along an arduous¹² journey since 1972. In the 1980s, a Supreme¹³ Court ruling limited Title IX before Congress restored the law's full athletic protections. In the early '90s, a lawsuit¹⁴ by Brown University female athletes against the school set a precedent¹⁵ for how schools manage athletic opportunities. And in 1993, Howard University basketball coach Sanya Tyler sued her school, claiming discrimination against the women's program, including her lower pay than the men's coach. She won a jury award and talked about her Title IX case in a 2011 speech.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SANYA TYLER: But I did something most people never do when you sue an institution at large and win. I stayed. I stayed for one reason and one reason only. I had done nothing that I needed to leave for.

GOLDMAN: For all those who've reveled in how Title IX has righted wrongs, there have been others who've railed against it, too.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: The university cut the wrestling program over Title IX.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: JMU no longer has a swim team. It's one of 10 teams the school is cutting.

GOLDMAN: Critics note how Title IX forced schools to add women's programs and then cut men's sports to balance participation¹⁶ numbers. Tim McNeill is the former head coach of men's gymnastics at Cal Berkeley.

TIM MCNEILL: It tries to create equal opportunities for men and women. What it ends up doing is lessening¹⁷ the opportunities for men.

GOLDMAN: But Neena Chaudhry worries the criticism and ongoing¹⁸ challenges to Title IX are based, in part, on enduring stereotypes¹⁹.

CHAUDHRY: Arguments that we continually hear and see in court briefings that women and girls are not as interested in sports - I think it shows that those stereotypes run deep.

GOLDMAN: Title IX at 50 still divides and doesn't deliver wholly on its promises. Diversity specialist Ashland Johnson says despite the surge of sports opportunities, some groups lag behind.

ASHLAND JOHNSON: Girls of color receive fewer opportunities than both white girls and boys of color when it comes to playing athletics. And LGBTQ youth are participating in sports at alarmingly low rates.

GOLDMAN: While discrimination is a factor, Johnson, who contributed to a major report on Title IX this month, says school administrators²⁰ still don't often know what Title IX actually requires and what gender²¹ equity²² looks like and how school resources should be distributed. So there's work ahead.

But back at that baseball field in Oregon - a reminder²³ of the work that's been done. After an inning in which Dixie Swinford scores a run, a parent shouts encouragement.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Let's go, boy and girl.

GOLDMAN: Let's go, boys and girl. A quick catch, but a sign, too, that 50 years after Title IX was born, the sports landscape is not just about the boys, forever more.

Tom Goldman, NPR News, Portland.

1 athletic   

adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的

参考例句：

• This area has been marked off for athletic practice.这块地方被划出来供体育训练之用。
• He is an athletic star.他是一个运动明星。

2 athletics   

n.运动，体育，田径运动

参考例句：

• When I was at school I was always hopeless at athletics.我上学的时候体育十分糟糕。
• Our team tied with theirs in athletics.在田径比赛中，我们队与他们队旗鼓相当。

3 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

4 landmark   

n.陆标，划时代的事，地界标

参考例句：

• The Russian Revolution represents a landmark in world history.俄国革命是世界历史上的一个里程碑。
• The tower was once a landmark for ships.这座塔曾是船只的陆标。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

7 compliance   

n.顺从；服从；附和；屈从

参考例句：

• I was surprised by his compliance with these terms.我对他竟然依从了这些条件而感到吃惊。
• She gave up the idea in compliance with his desire.她顺从他的愿望而放弃自己的主意。

8 maples   

槭树，枫树( maple的名词复数 )； 槭木

参考例句：

• There are many maples in the park. 公园里有好多枫树。
• The wind of the autumn colour the maples carmine . 秋风给枫林涂抹胭红。

9 dominantly   

有统治权地，占优势地

参考例句：

• I think my impression-dominantly one of native shrewdness-was probably correct. 我想我第一次的印象——主要是天生精明这一点——大概是不错的。 来自辞典例句
• The financial crimes dominantly the themes of the novels then. 小说中充满了各类金融犯罪的情节。 来自互联网

10 relegated   

v.使降级( relegate的过去式和过去分词 )；使降职；转移；把…归类

参考例句：

• She was then relegated to the role of assistant. 随后她被降级做助手了。
• I think that should be relegated to the garbage can of history. 我认为应该把它扔进历史的垃圾箱。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

11 ironic   

adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的

参考例句：

• That is a summary and ironic end.那是一个具有概括性和讽刺意味的结局。
• People used to call me Mr Popularity at high school,but they were being ironic.人们中学时常把我称作“万人迷先生”，但他们是在挖苦我。

12 arduous   

adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的

参考例句：

• We must have patience in doing arduous work.我们做艰苦的工作要有耐性。
• The task was more arduous than he had calculated.这项任务比他所估计的要艰巨得多。

13 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

14 lawsuit   

n.诉讼，控诉

参考例句：

• They threatened him with a lawsuit.他们以诉讼威逼他。
• He was perpetually involving himself in this long lawsuit.他使自己无休止地卷入这场长时间的诉讼。

15 precedent   

n.先例，前例；惯例；adj.在前的，在先的

参考例句：

• Is there a precedent for what you want me to do?你要我做的事有前例可援吗？
• This is a wonderful achievement without precedent in Chinese history.这是中国历史上亘古未有的奇绩。

16 participation   

n.参与，参加，分享

参考例句：

• Some of the magic tricks called for audience participation.有些魔术要求有观众的参与。
• The scheme aims to encourage increased participation in sporting activities.这个方案旨在鼓励大众更多地参与体育活动。

17 lessening   

减轻，减少，变小

参考例句：

• So however much he earned, she spent it, her demands growing and lessening with his income. 祥子挣多少，她花多少，她的要求随着他的钱涨落。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• The talks have resulted in a lessening of suspicion. 谈话消减了彼此的怀疑。

18 ongoing   

adj.进行中的，前进的

参考例句：

• The problem is ongoing.这个问题尚未解决。
• The issues raised in the report relate directly to Age Concern's ongoing work in this area.报告中提出的问题与“关心老人”组织在这方面正在做的工作有直接的关系。

19 stereotypes   

n.老套，模式化的见解，有老一套固定想法的人( stereotype的名词复数 )v.把…模式化，使成陈规( stereotype的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Such jokes tend to reinforce racial stereotypes. 这样的笑话容易渲染种族偏见。
• It makes me sick to read over such stereotypes devoid of content. 这种空洞无物的八股调，我看了就讨厌。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

20 administrators   

n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师

参考例句：

• He had administrators under him but took the crucial decisions himself. 他手下有管理人员，但重要的决策仍由他自己来做。 来自辞典例句
• Administrators have their own methods of social intercourse. 办行政的人有他们的社交方式。 来自汉英文学 - 围城

21 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

22 equity   

n.公正，公平，（无固定利息的）股票

参考例句：

• They shared the work of the house with equity.他们公平地分担家务。
• To capture his equity,Murphy must either sell or refinance.要获得资产净值，墨菲必须出售或者重新融资。

23 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。