When it was discovered that the women’s presence inflamed the enemy to feats of valor, many Israelis argued, ‘Aren’t the Arab soldiers silly? To fight to the death rather than surrender to our troops?’ The Arabs were silly. They shouldn’t have had those stupid attitudes about fighting women soldiers. But they had them, and no amount of ratiocination would change that.
The half-miler who quit when his teammates made fun of him for being beaten by a woman ought to have been bigger in spirit than that. He ought to have had, as a sophomore, the ability to accept defeat by a woman that I have in my late sixties. It really means nothing to me, and at my age, with my psyche formed and even ossified, I would not hesitate to surrender to women soldiers if my position were helpless. But it meant a great deal to the sophomore runner, and it meant even more to the Arab legions.
Nevertheless, the argument is still advanced: ‘Men oughtn’t to be that way.’
Unfortunately, they are. But I am perplexed as to why, and I am especially interested in whether there is any likely chance of changing them. Are the behavioral characteristics which differentiate men from women part of an immutable genetic inheritance which has operated through all the periods of history, or are they merely social acculturations invented by men to keep women in a subsidiary position? If the former is true, then our present separation of boys from girls at age twelve is desirable, for it conforms to a psychological verity; but if the latter is true, then such separation is merely a social convention with no base in man’s inherent nature and should be abandoned.
Before I disclose my thinking on this difficult matter, let me confess my intellectual bias. For many years I have been reassessing all available material on the time-honored debate: ‘Which determines the characteristics of a human being, nature or nurture?’ In other words, heredity or environment?
Because of my undetermined background, and because I feel that I was saved as a human being by education, I have always believed environment to be the crucial factor. I trusted the Jesuit doctrine ‘If I can have a child till the age of seven, you can have him the rest of his life,’ which implied that strict education in those years established character. I was gratified when Trofim Denisovich Lysenko proved, at least to the satisfaction of Stalin and the Politburo, that environment was more determinative than heredity, a comforting doctrine to men who wanted to believe that education along communist lines could alter the inherited characteristics of a people.
The consequences of such theories in sport are obvious. If boys have always played together from ages twelve through twenty-two, this was not because of any profound psychological need, but only because custom, influenced by churchly doctrine, had decreed the separation of sexes. Now, if society wished to reverse the ancient custom, it was free to do so, and men and women might be better off.
But in recent years I have been struck by the reports of geneticists and biologists who have been conducting new studies in this field, and I have been forced to conclude that gene inheritance is more determinative than I once thought. Lysenko was a fool and I a greater one for believing him. Heredity establishes the perimeters of what we can accomplish; environment determines whether we acquire the character to reach those perimeters.
I therefore disagree with those who argue, ‘In a dozen years everything will be different. We will have produced a new type of man and woman.’ I doubt that environment and altered social custom can achieve such a modification. Therefore, I must conclude that the traditional athletic separation of boys and girls during the ages of twelve through twenty-two conforms to some permanent psychological need of the human race and that to reverse the custom might produce more harm than good. Specifically, the women’s liberation movement can attain all its goals without insisting that boys’ teams in high school and college, especially those in contact sports, admit girl members.
I have been dealing with psychological factors. Where physiological ones are involved, Dr. Nicholas has blunt advice. When asked whether females should compete in strength sports with males, he said, ‘That’s a farce. It’s not fair for women to be measured against the same standard as men. Women are smaller, have less muscle bulk, less density. In some ways women are more susceptible to trauma.’ I am opposed to girls playing on boys’ basketball teams in high school and college, but I do confess that when I have stated this before groups of contemporary students they have laughed at me and told me I was old-fashioned.
When mixed teams become commonplace, the public is going to be in for some surprises. At my staid college the girls organized a female-male hockey team which became the sensation of the district. Everyone wanted to play them, partly because of their skill, partly because of the name the players had given themselves: The Motherpuckers.
From the wealth of law and administrative decisions beginning to accumulate on the subject of equal rights for women in the field of sports, two are of unusual significance, for they illustrate what is going to happen.
In the spring of 1972 in Hoboken, New Jersey, a twelve-year-old girl named Maria Pepe proved, by the excellence of her tryout, that she was qualified to play Little League baseball for the local team, the Young Democrats. Upon hearing of her enrollment, the national headquarters of the league in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, revoked the charter of the Young Democrats because it had violated the boys-only policy which had been confirmed by action of the United States Congress when it granted Little League a national charter.
In the good old days that would have taken care of Miss Pepe, but those days are gone. Now New Jersey has a Civil Rights Division, and on August 9, 1973, Miss Pepe’s case was brought before a hearing officer, Mrs. Sylvia Pressler. Extended argument was held over five days, with much learned discussion of the presumed differences between girls and boys regarding muscle strength and reaction time. No definite proof was forthcoming that boys excelled girls in these characteristics, at least between the ages of eight and twelve.
Mrs. Pressler’s decision was that Little League was practicing discrimination on the basis of sex, but she left it to her superior, the Director of the Civil Rights Division, to state what the consequences would be. One sentence of Mrs. Pressler’s decision indicates the tenor of her thought:
The sooner little boys begin to realize that there are many areas of life in which girls are their equal and that it is no great shame, no great burden to be bested by a girl, then perhaps we come that much closer to the legislative ideal of sexual equality as well as to relieving a source of emotional difficulty for men.
On January 30, 1974, Gilbert H. Francis handed down the findings of his division. In effect he confirmed the findings of Mrs. Pressler that the Little League fell under the provisions of New Jersey law because it offered itself as a public accommodation, which must by law be open to all. Terms of the order were severe: Little League must admit girls to full membership; if they are capable, they must be allowed to compete for a place on a team and play any games which that team plays; league headquarters must inform all local leagues that it intends to comply with the order; and it must submit a yearly report proving that it is complying.
In February 1974 Little League appealed to the State Superior Court to stay the order, and was denied. In March 1974 Little League entered a new plea, which was denied by a three-judge panel. And on April 11, 1974, the State of New Jersey published the order as an extension of state law, whereupon various leagues in New Jersey announced that they would suspend play rather than admit girls.
However, national headquarters counseled prudence and advised its New Jersey subsidiaries to comply with the state ruling, and in December 1974 the United States Congress revised the Little League charter to permit girls to play and deleted the passage which said the purpose of the league was to instill manhood. Citizenship and sportsmanship became the goals.
On December 10, 1974, the State of New Jersey announced that in its desire to terminate numerous lawsuits, all public schools within the state would henceforth permit girls to play on any
school team such as football, baseball, basketball and wrestling, while boys would be permitted to play on girls’ teams such as softball, field hockey and lacrosse. An official of the State Athletic Department gave it as his opinion that this would mean that boys who were not quite good enough for the boys’ teams would vie for places on the girls’ teams, and that this would cause the destruction of girls’ programs.
The New Jersey Little League case is one specific within a large body of litigation. The generic case is of a much greater magnitude, for it involves not a private corporation sponsoring baseball during vacations, but the entire structure of American education. Anyone who blithely feels that after a few storms the women who want fair treatment in sport will go away had better study the facts I am about to offer.
In the summer of 1972 Congress enacted an Education Amendments Act which contained a Title IX that went unnoticed at the time and caused no comment either in the press or the athletic establishment:
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
Since almost all American colleges and universities receive some degree of federal assistance, the effect of this law, when its meaning was unraveled, was that sex discrimination in college athletics was henceforth barred. When this was appreciated, women students at Michigan and Wisconsin filed complaints against their athletic departments, and women in almost every other college or university could do the same.
The full impact of Title IX is not yet clear. In early 1975 the Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued provisional guidelines favorable to women, whereupon the male athletic establishment dispatched Barry Switzer of Oklahoma and Bear Bryant of Alabama to the White House to inform President Ford that if the proposed rules went into effect, men’s athletics would be decimated. Educational institutions are now guessing as to what the rules will ultimately require and how best to comply with them.
In the meantime the Project on the Status and Education of Women of the Association of American Colleges, Washington, D.C., has issued the excellent pamphlet “What Constitutes Equality for Women in Sport?” and anyone wishing to pursue the matter in depth should use this work as a source. Written by Margaret Dunkle, experienced in the field, it is a model of restraint, persuasion and good sense. But it also has a sharp bite:
As a Connecticut judge stated in a 1971 decision that denied women the right to participate on a cross-country team: ‘The present generation of our younger male population has not become so decadent that boys will experience a thrill in defeating girls in running contests, whether the girls be members of their own team or an adversary team … Athletic competition builds character in our girls, the women of tomorrow.’
Throughout the pamphlet, horror stories of discrimination are bulleted, without comment. All are worth attention, but a few are pathetic:
• At a southern state university female students could not take coaching courses for credit, with the result that they were not ‘qualified’ to coach teams.
• At one Ohio institution a woman could not use the handball courts unless a male signed up for her.
• Men, but not women, may receive academic credit for participating in intercollegiate athletics.
• Equipment such as tennis rackets may be provided for male, but not female, teams.
• Women’s teams had to pay for their own transportation and meals, while the university footed the bill for first-class air fare for the men’s football team.
• In some stadiums women are not allowed in the press box, with the result that they cannot adequately cover games.
• One large university spent over $2,600,000 for its men’s intercollegiate athletic program, and no money at all for a women’s program.
After a broad view of the predominant situations in American colleges and universities, the report gets down to the nitty-gritty of how in the future programs ought to be organized, and I shall give the briefest summary of the three fields covered in this challenging discussion.
Single-sex teams or mixed teams. The virtues and weaknesses of various alternatives are proposed: all teams completely co-educational; two teams for each sport, one male, one female; three teams, male, female, mixed; teams based on height and weight. Other alternatives are summarized from an article written by a woman lawyer for Ms. magazine; she inspects various exotic proposals such as first-string teams based on merit, second-string teams that must be fifty-fifty female-male, and concludes that all suggestions so far are inequitable in one respect or another. The pamphlet concludes that as of now there is no central tendency as to how to handle this problem, but hopes that one will emerge as experiments are made.
Funding of athletic programs. This is the best part of the pamphlet and the most sophisticated study I have so far seen of what might happen under Title IX to college and university programs. Margaret Dunkle and other women authorities do not demand a strict fifty-fifty division of budget and take into consideration the fact that men’s teams may account for some of the income and therefore may believe that they have a proprietary interest in it. They are no longer prepared, however, to sit by while, as they say, ‘In one major state university over thirteen hundred times as much was spent for men’s intercollegiate athletics as for women’s.’ Everything the women advocate involves more money for their programs, less for men’s. They conclude, ‘However, it is unlikely that women’s competitive sports will require, in the near future, the identical funds that men’s competitive sports now require.’ And they make the good point that in an age of anxiety, when men’s university athletics are already running at a yearly deficit of almost $50,000,000, which has to be made up by taxpayers, ‘the issue of equal opportunity for women can provide an opportunity to assess the total athletic program, for both women and men, in light of the goals and objectives of the institution.’
Structuring of programs and equal pay for coaches. Established procedures allow male coaches to dominate the athletic departments and therefore the salary scales. Women coaches, fortified by Title IX, are going to insist on more nearly equal leverage and pay.
When I finished digesting this compact study, every section of which deserved a book-length elaboration, I laid it before me, open to the section on equal rights for women coaches, and tried to imagine what impact those tense, sharp words would have on some of the athletic departments I had visited in recent years. Wow! I could visualize male coaches exploding vertically through the ceiling, the air purple with expletives not deleted. Well, Title IX is now law, and it warns them that henceforth they must consider giving their female coaches an even break.
A representative case developed at my college, Swarthmore. A group of co-eds, fed up with the high moralistic tone of the college’s pronouncements of equal opportunities for women, initiated a lawsuit which said, ‘You’ve been talking about equal athletic facilities for years. Now do something about it.’ With good grace the college authorities surrendered: ‘High time women should have a fair share,’ and the male student body applauded. In the years ahead there will be many such suits.
I found confirmation of my various attitudes toward women in sports in a curious way. I was invited to Rotonda, Florida, where I would watch the semi-finals of the men’s Superstar competition. This was an ingenious tournament, devised by television, in which thirteen men who had achieved superstar status in their specialties would be faced by ten events, from which each man would have to nominate seven in which he would compete, but he would not be allowed to compete in the sport in which he specialized. Thus, a Johnny Bench could go against the others in tennis but not in hitting a thrown baseball; while a Rod Laver could try his luck at hitting a baseball but not in playing tennis.
Some excellent professional athletes were competing. O. J. Simpson, the Buffalo halfback; Franco Harris, the fullback who had just helped the Pittsburg
h Steelers to a Super Bowl championship; Marty Riessen, the tennis player; and Johnny Rutherford, the winner of both the Indianapolis and Pocono 500s. One young man, not yet a professional, occasioned special interest: Anthony Davis, the Southern California back who had destroyed Notre Dame twice with sensational performances that were witnessed on television.
During the first two years of its existence the Superstar competition had been taken as a joke. Bob Seagren, the pole-vaulter, had won the first time and Kyle Rote, Jr., the soccer player, had copped the second, but when the competitors and the public began to realize how much honor and money went with winning, interest sharpened. This year $246,500 was up for grabs, with prizes for each event along the way plus $25,000 bonus for the final winner. A good athlete could walk away with $16,000 in his preliminary and up to $50,000 if he won the championship.
It was great fun to see these famous athletes grunting and groaning in sports with which they were not familiar. O. J. Simpson won the tennis, but neither he nor any of the others had ever played much. Marty Riessen won the rowing In a dipsy-doodle scull, but his time was not impressive. And then, toward dusk, came an event in which I really had no interest, weight-lifting, but as the contest developed among five outstanding football players, I found myself caught up in the excitement that sports can sometimes generate. The large crowd of Florida vacationers, let in free, was hushed as Franco Harris, O. J. Simpson, Phil Villapiano. Lawrence McCutcheon and Anthony Davis strained at the heavy bar holding the weights.
Prior to coming to Florida, I had known nothing of Villapiano, but he was proving one of the most delightful men in the competition, a fiery-tempered Italian giant with a wry sense of humor. Surprisingly, he had won quite a few points, but it looked as if the others would beat him at the weights. Then as the sun set, he made a mighty effort and hefted 250 pounds. Franco Harris tried next, the favorite of the crowd because of his charming manner. He grinned, tightened his belt about a powerful middle, and pushed the weights aloft. Then O. J. tried, and he seemed so small beside the others that none of the audience thought he could manage it. With a heroic effort he hefted the weights.