Kirstin Cronn-Mills - Gender Inequality in Sports: From Title IX to World Titles

During her tenure on the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Hirshland oversaw reforms focused on athlete wellness, including safety measures and increased access to medical and mental health treatment.

However, womens sports history is very different from mens. It may be difficult to imagine that female athletes struggled to be allowed on the fieldbut they did. That fight shifted when Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972, created a federal law barring discrimination based on sex in all federally funded education programs. Even though sports isnt mentioned in the law, Title IX was a primary driver for creating sports opportunities for women, in both K12 and college. In 1971, before the law, women athletes were 7.4 percent of varsity athletes in high schools. Thirty-five years later, in 2007, they were 41 percent of high school varsity athletes.

Womens amateur and professional sports have also grown, due to Title IX, because of the increase in female athletes and sports teams for women and girls. Womens sports outside of schools isnt governed by Title IX, but Title IX legislation caused many more women to make their sport their career. Because tennis legend Billie Jean King understood the impact the law would have on professional womens sports, she testified before Congress in 1972, promoting its passage.

Even with Title IX and all the growth in womens sports, we still dont have many women sports decision makers at the highest levels. The International Olympic Committee (founded in 1894) hasnt had a woman leader. Neither has FIFA (the International Federation of Association Football, founded in 1904). The latter is the international governing body for football (called soccer in the US). Sarah Hirshland became the first female CEO of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee in 2018, forty-six years after Title IX.

Despite the fights for equity and equality over the last fifty years, mens sports and male athletes still have considerable advantages over womens sports and female athletes. This book will help you see why those disparities exist and why theyre perpetuated. Title IX has helped us get closer to equity and equality. But we still have a long way to go before sports equality applies to children in elementary school sports and world champion athletes alike.

Sarah Fuller, Soccer and Football Player, and Her Predecessors

In the fall of 2020, Sarah Fuller was the goalkeeper for the womens Southeast Conference championship soccer team at Vanderbilt University. When Vanderbilts football team had its kickers sidelined due to COVID-19, then football coach Derek Mason turned to Fuller to replace them. Though soccer players have been called on to handle kicking duties for football teams in both high school and college, Vanderbilt doesnt have a mens soccer team to call on. Fuller knew her presence on the football field would be historic: I just think its incredible that I am able to do this, and all I want to do is be a good influence to the young girls out there.

Fuller then became the first woman to kick in a Power Five conferencethe elite conferences in college footballin Vanderbilts game on November 28, 2020. For that kick, she was named the Southeastern Conference Co-Special Teams Player of the Week. She then became the first woman to score in a Power Five football game on December 12, 2020, when she kicked two different extra points after touchdowns.

Fuller is the third woman to play in the Football Bowl Subdivision of the Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). In 2003 Katie Hnida kicked two extra points for the University of New Mexico. In 2015 April Goss kicked an extra point for Kent State University.

Fuller kicked off the second half of the Vanderbilt-Missouri game on November 28, 2020, and became the first woman to play in a Southeastern Conference football game.