This week marked 48 years since Title IX became law, opening the door for women and girls to have equal opportunities to compete in sports. In the time since then there has been a remarkable increase in female involvement in athletics. Now, two in every five girls plays sports, ten times the number that did when Title IX went into effect. In less than 50 years, Title IX has created opportunities for women and girls offering advantages that go far beyond the accolades of the playing field.
Lisa Hoffer is one of those young women. Lisa began playing softball when she was five and basketball when she was seven. An accomplished athlete, she received multiple awards throughout high school, including All Conference Honors in both sports, the ExCEL Award during her junior year, and becoming her high school’s All Time Women’s Leading Scorer in basketball during her senior year. She has gone on to play both sports at Bethel University where her basketball team qualified for the NCAA tournament this year.
For Lisa, excelling in sports has offered her the opportunity to mentor young girls. “It teaches you many things when working with beginners,” she observes. “I remembered what it was like when I was just starting out and that’s what makes me want to give back to the game. I have made so many amazing friendships and learned many things from many coaches from a variety of backgrounds. They each brought something new to the table and helped me get ready for the college level.”
The girls that Lisa mentors deserve continued opportunities, but those opportunities are currently being threatened. Earlier this year, Idaho took action to preserve these opportunities for women and girls by passing the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which will go into effect next week. Idaho’s new law protects the integrity of women’s sports by preventing male athletes who identify as women from competing in women’s events. Women and girls deserve a fair playing field, and allowing biological males in women’s sports takes that away from them. It’s encouraging to see Idaho take this important step to protect opportunities for women and girls, and hopefully other states, including Minnesota, will follow.
The ACLU immediately challenged Idaho’s new law, denouncing it as discriminatory, and the NCAA is currently receiving pressure from pro-LGBT groups and athletes to boycott Idaho. However, as Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Christina Holcomb noted, separate men’s and women’s sports teams exist for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with how one identifies. Title IX protections of girls’ sports have always been about maintaining fair competition and opportunities for girls. Holcomb points out,
Having separate boys’ and girls’ sports has always been based on biological differences, not what people believe about their gender, because those differences matter for fair competition. And forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics.
The benefits of these opportunities are undeniable. Competition in sports provides friendship and camaraderie, builds confidence, and often correlates with higher grades and graduation rates. For women like Lisa, sports have offered leadership opportunities on and off of the playing field. For some women the athletic opportunities opened up by Title IX provided a pathway to college.
Allowing male athletes into female sports functionally removes women’s sports as a category. Hormone therapy does not remove the physical differences between men and women, nor does it do away with the natural advantages that male athletes have. A recent study points out, “hormone therapy will not alter bone structure, lung volume or heart size … so natural advantages including joint articulation, stroke volume and maximal oxygen uptake will be maintained.” In their words of the study’s authors, this amounts to an “intolerable unfairness.” The fact of the matter is, men are physically stronger and faster than women. Because of this, telling women and girls that they must compete against male athletes seriously compromises the integrity of female sports.
Title IX is not even 50 years old, but has already shaped the lives of countless women and girls in our nation. But this year, there are questions over whether or not Title IX will remain for future generations. The transgender agenda, if it is not stopped, will end women’s sports. If male athletes are allowed to compete in women’s and girls’ sports, girls will grow up robbed of opportunities and it is likely that many of them will walk away from sports, frustrated and discouraged. They will be driven out of their own sports as they lose titles, opportunities, and the confidence that comes with hard-earned success. We need to make sure that this does not happen. We need to save girls’ sports!
(Photo courtesy of Lisa Hoffer)
