50 Years After Title IX There's Still Work to Be Done

2022 marked 50 years of Title IX, the landmark legislation that set the stage for gender equality in sports. SI staffers Kristen Nelson, Jamie Lisanti, Emma Baccellieri, and Julie Kliegman reflect on how far we've come, and what barriers are still preventing women in sports from achieving true equality.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we begin, a reminder to please rate and review
our show. It helps new listeners discover us and grow
the program. On this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly, this
year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Title nine, a landmark
and crucial federal civil rights law that's had a huge

(00:21):
impact on women's sports. But despite all the progress that's
been made over the last half century, there's still work
to be done. Our producer, Jessica your Mooski, spoke with
four SI staffers about five very real hurdles that women
in sports are still facing. You'll hear Kristen Nelson, Emma Bachelory,
Julie Kleigman, and Jamie Losanti talk about how to close

(00:44):
pay gaps, improve media coverage, fixed disparities and merchandise, ensure
that trans women have a place in athletics, and how
women's sports can become accepted by the mainstream. I'm your host,
John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I heart video. This
is Sports Illustrated Weekly. I'm Kristen Nelson. I am an

(01:12):
associate editor at S. I work primarily on the special
Projects team, and I'm also are Women's Sports editor. Right now,
the paid disparities between men and women's sports can be
anywhere froment to The average female athlete is making anywhere
from a hundred percent less than her average male counterpart,

(01:36):
and that's according to a study from last year from
Adelphi University. That's not an entirely encouraging thing to hear,
but the last couple of years have been really encouraging,
especially when you look at the US women's soccer team,
who had their big settlement back in February to have
equal pay as the men's team. It's still a lot

(01:59):
of to be done. M Title nine kind of creates
this pipeline of female athletes where at the youth level
and at the college level they are given the same opportunities,
which then sets the groundwork for the professional level, and
therefore there's now so many more women athletes who can

(02:19):
then go on and do it professionally rather than just
playing when they were younger and then having to change
their career or become a mother or whatever it is.
The gap exists because on a bigger scale, women's sports
is kind of in its infancy compared to men's sports.
In terms of being recognized by the modern society, there's
really only been fifty years of women's sports. All of

(02:41):
these professional leagues did not exist fifty years ago. I
think a lot of the progress that we've seen at
chipping away at the pay gap in women's sports is
from the athletes themselves and not necessarily the executives or
the leagues. It requires the athletes to either take these
teams or these governing bodies to court or their players

(03:04):
unions to really battle in the boardroom at the table
to really bargain for what they deserve. Thankfully, it seems
like a lot of the commissioners and the leagues are
listening right now, and I think that's turning into the
fact that we're seeing these minimum salaries go up and
we're seeing these settlements. And it also turns then to

(03:27):
investors and finding people on Madison Avenue willing to put
in money to these leagues, into these teams and see
these athletes to give them the investment that they deserve.
The n c AS Name, Image and Likeness Rule has
been a massive success for women. About two thirds of

(03:48):
the n I L deals have gone to men, but
through March, the non football deals have gone to women.
So when you look at the breakdown of college athletes
who have n i L deals. Women's basketball is second
behind football, and then women's volleyball, women swimming and diving,
and softball or within the top six, and that's of

(04:09):
all sports. The n i L deals are giving them
a resource that they never had before. You think about
it a lot with some of the Olympic sports as well.
College gymnastics had a huge boom this season because of
the n i L deals that they were allowed to make.
If she's sick this dismount it could be another ten
for studies a lead conto. So I think in a

(04:36):
way it keeps some of the really star athletes in
college because they can start making that money that they
deserve a little sooner. But it's also just recognizing the
women who only for so long have college as the
final stopping point to make at least some money from
the sports that they're playing. I think we are not

(05:00):
close to seeing women athletes being paid the same as men.
I think I saw a graphic this week that Lebron
james Is salary this season was three times as much
as the entire w NBA salary for the whole season,
which is absurd. I do think these last couple of
years have been really encouraging though that things are moving

(05:22):
in the right direction. When it comes to closing the
pay gap, it's still an upward battle, but it seems
it feels a little less deep because people are finally
starting to look at it a bit differently. And what
it's going to take is just more exposure, more promotion.
It just needs to be a bit more of the

(05:42):
every day and not a special event. These are athletes
who are putting their entire careers and bodies and souls
into the sports that they play, but a lot of
times we don't see that full commitment like we do
with men's sports, and you can't just expect things to
change overnight, especially when we do live in a patriarchal society.

(06:05):
We need to find these certain subjects and chip away
at the issues. It is burdensome and it's frustrating to
think that it does have to be done, but you
have to start somewhere. You can't see true equality without
doing these smaller battles. First, my name is Jamie Losanti

(06:33):
and I am the assistant managing editor of Special Projects.
As Sports Illustrated fifty years post o nine. I really
feel like for women's sports media coverage. This is a
huge turning point moment in Now that we've passed the

(06:53):
anniversary and we've got six seven months of women's sports
under our belt, it's more evident than ever that this
is a big point in time for leagues, for women,
for the media outlets, for everyone across the board. The
anniversary is definitely a celebration worthy, but there's also so

(07:16):
much more progress to be made right now. The sports
industry realizes that there's an appetite for women's sports and
people are hungry for it, and they're getting really frustrated
by the fact that they can't find things. But on
the flip side, when they do put women's sports front
and center, the proof is there. If you give them

(07:38):
the opportunity to watch it, women will match or even
beat what men's sports are doing ratings wise and viewership wise,
and even the tenants wise. I think the Euros are
sort of the best example because it was sold out,
everyone was watching, and now all of a sudden, the

(07:59):
USA England Friendly that's going to happen in October immediately
sold out and people are like, Okay, when can I watch? Right,
there's this renewed interest which is really well timed ahead
of Women's World Cup in the summer. In the next

(08:21):
few years, both the NWSL and the w n b
A are going to have the opportunity to renegotiate their
broadcast contracts. So right now both leagues are locked into
these seals, and whether it's with ESPN or other big partners,
the games are on TV, you can watch them. But

(08:42):
I think there's a lot of frustration by fans, players, owners, teams,
et cetera. That the games are there, but they're sometimes
on at strange times, and they're sometimes hard to find,
and maybe they're also overlapping with other big sporting events,
particularly men's sporting events. The renegotiation of these broadcast deals

(09:07):
is going to be a huge factor increasing visibility and
accessibility for fans. Again, the appetite is their fans have
proven that they want to watch women's sports. So I
think we're going to see these major leagues start to
have super lucrative deals, but deals that also allow fans

(09:27):
to watch on many different channels, or on channels that
are just easier to find, part of packages, more streaming
options things like that. I think fans have proven that
when there's something big on TV, whether it's a women's match,

(09:49):
men's match, whatever it is, if you give them that
prime time, you'll capture that prime time audience. So I
think that will be a huge factor in visibility. In
accessibility for me are the two most important ones that
broadcasters and leagues need to figure out to get the
product out there. And on the flip side, places like

(10:11):
Sports Illustrated can start to tell the story of these
women and their personalities, and we can get to know
the women both in competition and we can see crazy
highlights and we can really get engaged in the competition,
but then also get to know them and their personalities
and what they stand for and all of the things
that we attached to with men's sports. In a lot

(10:34):
of ways, we talk about cultural acceptance or the idea
of the mainstream fan embracing a female athlete versus a
male athlete. I think when you see something, it's a
lot easier to kind of quote unquote accepted, and then

(10:57):
that personality angle really can bring people down to a
personable level where you can kind of feel connected to
an athlete in a lot of ways. I like to
think of myself as a positive person, so I'm hopeful

(11:19):
because doing all of this research and learning and hearing
from the women of fifty years ago who were coming
up at this time of Title nine, there has been
already so much progress, And because I feel like with
the anniversary of Title nine and everything that's been happening
in women's sports and just generally in our country, I

(11:41):
feel like this is a turning point. This is a
big moment, and I don't think the sports industry, the
money makers, the stakeholders of people who are involved here
that steer the ship in a way. I don't think
they will let this fall through. I think this is

(12:01):
the moment where things start to climb. Is it going
to happen a straight shot? Not at all. I don't
think so. I think we'll have some issues where there's
a game at the same time of a really big
men's event, or something gets bumped onto ESPN to These
things are going to happen, but hopefully less so as

(12:21):
we continue to go along. My name is Emma Bachelory.
I'm a staff writer a Sports Illustrated where I primarily
cover baseball, but also women's sports, including women's college basketball
and college football. If you'd like to buy an NBA
jersey and you log onto NBA dot com and navigate

(12:44):
to the store, you'll see that you can buy pretty
much any jersey you want. There are two thousands, seven
and seven currently available for sale, which includes every single
player in the league, any size you want, youth, adult, men's, women's, home, away,

(13:06):
alternate jerseys, plenty of options two thousand, seven and seven.
If you'd like a w NBA jersey, on the other hand,
you navigate to w NBA dot com to the store
section and you'll see forty five jerseys, not forty five
players whose jersey are is available for sale. Forty five jerseys,

(13:27):
which includes multiple options for a handful of the biggest
stars like super and Diana Trassi, and none at all
for many others. If fans want a jersey for a
favorite player, they might have to do a more expensive
customized option because the jerseys simply aren't made. In reporting this,
I talked to Tyrone Palmer. It's the Chicago Sky fan

(13:49):
was followed the team for years. He was very excited
when the team won the w NBA Finals last year
and decided it was finally time for him to pick
up a Colleia Copper jersey. She was named Finals MVP.
This is her fifth season, but the Sky her sixth
season in the w n b A. He assumed it
would be easy to get a jersey. You know, she's
been on this team for a while, she's been in
the league even longer. Why wouldn't you be able to

(14:10):
get a jersey of the Finals m v P. And
yet he found out that it was impossible. It just
wasn't available. He was looking looking five surely after winning
Finals MVP, something is going to change here, and it didn't.
The fact that that wasn't available was just frustrating. He

(14:33):
knew he wasn't alone. That he wanted to give his
money to the league. He wanted to support his favorite team,
a player that he loved, and it just wasn't there.
The league has said it would be working on this
for a while. This last year has kind of made
it into a tipping point, and so finally, eventually Cleo
Copper jerseys were made available, putting stock on the league's website,

(14:54):
and Tyrone Palmer was finally able to get his hands
on a jersey. This is a complicated, multilayered issue. The
league has said that they're interested in making a change
here and we have seen more investment in the last
couple of years, but they only got their first major
merch partner in exporting goods two years ago. The last

(15:15):
two years have obviously been kind of a fraud time
for supply chains for trying to build out new products.
There are complicated moving pieces there that it takes a
while to get something up and running. But I do
think part of it is not realizing what the demand
is there. The reason it took so long to get
this off the ground, even as you had fans clamoring
please let me give you money. I want to buy

(15:36):
a jersey, I want options. I will do what it
takes to be able to wrap my team, my favorite player.
Just let me pay you for that. Those voices were
being heard on social media. You here it out arenas,
and it took a really long time for them to
recognize that, Okay, this is an actual demand. There's a
constituency in w n B, a fan base that wants this,

(15:57):
and it's worth going out and trying to meet it.
I think this is a situation where yes and raw
numbers the fan bases here are much smaller than what
you might see in older and more established leagues that
have that kind of big mainstream popularity in many men's sports.
But even though the fan bases can be smaller, they're
so passionate because they've had to really fight to get

(16:19):
access to the sport they want to see. You can't
accidentally walk into becoming a fan of women's sports. It's
usually you have to make a conscious choice, like this
isn't in prime time, this isn't on basic cable. I
have to go seek this out. I have to put
in the effort to to follow this, to establish this fandom.
It's not the sort of thing that you can just

(16:40):
pick up by osmosis. There's real dedication here for a
lot of these fans. I'm Julie Kligman and I'm the
copy chief Sports Illustrated. I also report on mental health
and trans athletes. This might make me sound really cynical,

(17:02):
but I think the landscape for trains athletes right now
it's kind of bleak. It's very daunting. There are so
many states more than fifteen that currently banded trains athletes
from participating on it might be the middle school level,
at high school level, the college level. Most of those
laws are targeted at girls and women but there are

(17:24):
laws targeted at boys and men too, And so the
question is who has the right to be a woman
under Title nine? And that's at the center of all
of this, and I think we have a long way
to go if we want to prioritize inclusion in those spaces.
Title nine is a little murky with regard to trans athletes.

(17:46):
There's been a similar ruling on Title seven that does
apply to gender based discrimination in a separate area, not
about sports. Title seven prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex,
and now sational origin. Is that a one to one
where you can kind of like port that over to
Title nine? Not necessarily Obviously, advocates think yes, and people

(18:09):
who oppose trans rights think no. And upon taking office,
President Biden said that Title nine does prohibit gender based discrimination,
but that doesn't really go far enough to answer the question.
So the question is kind of unresolved as to how
Title nine addresses this issue. Anti trans proponents have said

(18:38):
that protecting Title nine is what they're doing when they
ban trains athletes from participation. When they talk about protecting women,
they're really talking about cis gender women and girls, not
transgender women and girls. Regardless of how you want to
read Title nine or what your interpretation of it is,

(18:59):
this is clear lead discrimination based on gender identity. Celebrations
of Title nine honestly rang a little bit hollow to
me for this reason because I think it was the
very next day that some restrictions on trans athletes started
coming down. Yeah, we're talking about how conditions have improved

(19:24):
for certain categories of women and certain categories of people,
and Title nine has a long way to go with
regard to all female athletes. I don't think many people
would dispute that that there's still gains to be made.
The stakes in the Title nine debate are really high
for trans athletes. It's been shown scientifically that even when

(19:49):
these quote unquote debates happen around their identity, that's detrimental
to their mental health, let alone actually being banned and
p ended from, honestly just on most levels, recreational activities
with their friends. That's really serious. A lot of queer
youth don't participate in sports to begin with because they

(20:11):
don't feel welcome, and this is only exacerbating that issue.
I think the important thing to note here is that
transgender people are people. Trans athletes are athletes. We do
best in sports when we invite the full range of
competition and make everybody feel welcome. And that's the first

(20:33):
and foremost goal of sports on almost every level is
to have fun, and on the Olympic and pro levels,
it's about facing the best competition you could possibly face.
So I don't see why we want to encourage that.
Mainstream acceptance is a really amorphous concept, But I think

(20:59):
the big thing is just feeling like a woman's sports fan.
Anyone who wants to watch women's sports can just see
it as an accepted part of the sports landscape, not
its own little niche or silo. We've seen a lot
of steps towards that in the last couple of years,
I think with what's on TV social media, I think

(21:21):
has been really great for harnessing the energy of fans
who want to see that, who are excited to show
up when it's put out there for them, of bringing
in new fans who are recognizing there is something here
that I want to engage with. So we've seen a
lot of strides toward it, I think, but there's still
just a long way to go to having that feel
like the accepted norm. It's not just about women in sports.

(21:47):
It's about women in society and women in other forms
of media, whether it's movies or TV shows or music
or anything. This doesn't happen in a vacuum, right, But
I do think that part of the reason you have
seen change in the last couple of years is as
you've also seen change in other areas in terms of
women having a seat at the table, women getting more

(22:07):
representation in different areas of business, of media, all of
that um that all built on each other. So even
if it's not sports specific, I think you see kind
of a humulation effect. The Sports Bar is a bar
in Portland, organ that only shows women's sports. It was

(22:30):
really cool and exciting to have this conversation with the owner, Jenny,
who started this because it was something that she felt
she wanted and didn't have access to. She was tired
of going to a bar with friends, and the tipping
point for her was going on the name of the
Woman's Final Four a few years ago and having to

(22:50):
ask can this please be put on a TV? And
you get one TV in the corner with no sound,
and just feeling like there are enough fans out there
who would come to just to watch the Women's Final Four,
to watch women's college basketball, women's sports in general. There's
an audience there who would want to feel like there's
a place for them to feel like there's a kind

(23:12):
of environment that not just tolerates women's sports fans, but
welcomes them and caters to them and recognizes them as
their own group. She was someone who has a lot
of experience working in kitchens. She's primarily a chef, but
decided she was going to take a leap and open
her own place and have it be a sports bar
that only shows women's sports. There are lots of expected

(23:40):
challenges with opening up your own establishment and obviously not
an industry with lots of room for error, but one
of the things that surprised her was that the hardest
part was how do you feel a calendar with just
women's sports that even though there were lots of sports
out there, in terms of what's actually on TV, it's
not like there is a women's sports cable package the

(24:01):
same way you can do the NFL Sunday package. Like
these options are just presented out there for fans. You
really had to hunt down one sport at a time.
Some of these aren't on cauble. Some of these are
on Twitch on smaller platforms where you have to access
in a different way when you're going to show them
at a bar, So it was surprisingly complicated to have
to fill out how do we actually make sure we

(24:23):
have something on whenever someone walks into the bar we
have a women's sport on TV. I'm really hopeful by
what we've seen over the last few years, the viewership
numbers that we've seen for women's college basketball, for women's
college softball, women's soccer, the NWUSL, the US women's national team.

(24:47):
Those numbers do give me a lot of hope that
people have recognized when you put this out there, there
are a lot of people who want to tune in
and watch, but it's it's more complicated did than that
they think the last few years have been inspiring and heartening,

(25:08):
there's still a long way to go. Well, I don't
think we're there yet. Thanks for listening, and a reminder
to please rate and review the show. It helps people
find us. Sports Illustrated Weekly is a production of Sports

(25:30):
Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your favorite shows, and for more
Sports Illustrated It's best stories and podcasts, visit SI dot com.
This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by Jessica Armoski,
Jordan Rozsieri, and Isaac Lee, who was also our sound engineer.

(25:54):
Our senior producers are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out.
Our executive producers are Scott Brody and me John Gonzalez.
Our theme song is by Nolan Schneider and if you've
stuck around this song, we leave you with this. I
have been athletes since I was four years old because

(26:15):
my mom put me in everything she could when I
was younger because I had way too much energy and
she couldn't deal with me. So she found everything that
she could sign me up for and was basically like,
get this child out of my house