Let Me Play - The Story of Title IX- The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America Description:

Let Me Play : The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America review:
5 stars (Richie's Picks: LET ME PLAY) - "Female admissions to colleges and graduate programs picked up speed, driven by female ambition, the law, and a growing acceptance that it was simply wrong to reject someone just for being a girl. Between 1971 and 1976 the number of women attending college jumped 40 percent. By the fall of 1976 one in every four law students was a woman, up from fewer than one in ten in 1971; likewise, a quarter of first-year medical students were female, up from about one in seven just five years before."



Recently at this year's Book Expo in New York City, I had the pleasure of meeting and conversing with Patricia Macias. At publishing conventions, Patricia is known as the wife of author Ben Saenz. But back home in El Paso, she is more frequently referred to as "Your Honor."



As I wandered the exhibition halls at Book Expo, I frequently got the chance to catch up with old friends in the publishing industry. Many of the women I've known for years who are employed by the large publishing houses now have titles like "President & Publisher" or "Vice President and Associate Publisher." They not only have the positions; they have the power that accompanies those titles.



I also had the opportunity at Book Expo to chat briefly with my favorite member of the United States Senate. I feel so fortunate to be represented by Barbara Boxer who, like me, grew up in New York and moved westward. When we first elected Barbara to the US Senate in 1992, having her join Diane Feinstein there in representing California, it was the first time in US history that two women Senators were representing the same state at the same time.



Myra Bradwell would have though that it was long past time.



"In 1869, Mrs. Bradwell passed the Illinois bar exam with high honors and turned in her application to practice law. Though she easily qualified, she was turned down because she was a married woman. She filed a lawsuit, but the Illinois Supreme Court turned her down too, saying that her sex was 'a sufficient reason for not granting this license.'

"In one of the nation's first sex discrimination cases she appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But America's top court had a different view than she did. 'Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender,' the Court wrote in 1873. 'The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.' It concluded: 'The paramount destiny and mission of woman [is] to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.' "



It does not require looking back a hundred and something years to the life of Myra Bradwell (who, we learn, persevered to become America's first female lawyer) in order to recall when things were really unfair for women in America. I grew up a youngster not all THAT long ago, in a world where women didn't have the same opportunities as men to go to college, didn't have the same opportunities as men to work in many fields, to attain the highest positions in business, government, or education, to get paid the same money for the same work, and sure as heck didn't have the same athletic opportunities as their male counterparts.



As recalled in LET ME PLAY by Karen Blumenthal, it was in 1964 (when I turned nine, the same year the Beatles first came to America), that a Southern segregationist in Congress unintentionally played an important role in promoting women's rights when he "proposed adding the word 'sex' to the section [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964], so that it would forbid job discrimination against women as well as blacks." Congressman Howard W. Smith of Virginia was figuring that adding such an amendment would cause the male-dominated Congress to quickly sink the entire Act including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the historic Civil Rights legislation would create. That Smith's plan backfired and the legislation passed meant for the first time in our history that it was illegal to pay a woman differently than a man employed in the same position as she.



"State universities in Virginia had turned away 21,000 women in the early 1960s; during the same time not a single man was turned away."



While the author takes us back to the 1800s and forward to the 1960s in setting the stage, the overwhelming focus of her fascinating and important book about women in America is on the fight for passage of and subsequent fights over enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as well as the far-reaching changes in our country that resulted from that landmark legislation.



Blumenthal's well-documented story of Title IX is interspersed with illuminating profiles and photos of notable twentieth century female athletes who got badly cheated by being born in the backward days of the earlier 1900s, along with great profiles of the federal legislative heroes responsible for Title IX passage, and a terrific assortment of strips from Doonsbury, Tank McNamara, Peanuts and other daily comics and political cartoons that shed light on the legislation and the issues behind it.



"At the University of Georgia the budget for women's sports grew to $120,000 in 1978 from $1,000 in 1973, but the men received $2.5 million. Among the differences: The men on the golf team got all the golf balls they needed. Women golfers got one for each competitive round they played."



If the words of the "stupid white men" on the Supreme Court in the 1870s seem like something from the Dark Ages, readers will discover that the ignorance of those words is easily matched by what Ronald Reagan and his minions did to try and destroy Title IX in the 1980s. I can't imagine any woman who's aware of what Reagan and Bush One carried out in those years not gagging over the current President's recent words that "We are blessed to live in a Nation, and a world, that have been shaped by the will, the leadership, and the vision of Ronald Reagan." I'd say there's a serious lack of vision when you've got your head in the place that Reagan obviously had his when it came to women's rights.



But now the question is, is the battle finally won?



When we consider what portion of Congress and Senate seats are currently filled by the majority gender in America, when we look at what portion of the CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations are female, or when we look at the gender of the Presidents of the nation's most distinguished universities, we must conclude that there is a long way to go.



A report released by the AAUW back when this week's high school graduates were in kindergarten found that "boys' expectations were built up while girls' were whittled back." That's THIS generation, not mine or a previous generation.



And lest anyone suggest the glass half-filled attitude, I'd hasten to suggest that they consider trading places and then claim that things are moving along quickly enough.



Edith Green, a major figure in the story, was fond of the saying: "The trouble with every generation is that they haven't read the minutes of the last meeting." Thanks to Karen Blumenthal, we now have an accurate set of minutes available from a pivotal episode in recent American history.


5 stars (A great overview of a law that changed womens' lives) - Karen Blumenthal'a latest young-readers' book, LET ME PLAY is a behind-the-scenes look at how Title IX changed the cultural landscape for American women.



Just because this book is intended for a younger audience does not make it simplistic reading. I consider myself pretty informed about political and social topics, yet I had little idea that Title IX does not just cover equality in sporting opportunities. Title IX, the brainchild of late Congresswoman Edith Green, actually mandates that schools may not limit the educational opportunities of students based on gender--and that includes admissions policies and access to classes. Title IX is the reason that half of all law students and medical students today are women.



What a huge change from the early 1960s, the era in which Blumenthal opens the book with a description of swimmer Donna De Verona. The 13-year-old swimmer, long denied opportunities to participate in other sports she loved, finally decided to become a swimmer. Not only did she excel, but she became the most decorated high school swimmer in the United States. She won two Olympic gold medals and the adoration of the press. Then she graduated, and...nothing. No scholarships, no endorsements, no interest. Here was an 18-year-old brimming with talent and she hit a dead end because there simply were no rewards for women athletes.



At the time De Verona was facing her bleak future, women all over the country were confounded by colleges that had strict admissions quotas. Many schools refused to enroll women in science and math classes. And legislators could get away with citing the need for "delicate" females to leave educational spaces open for men, who would be the "breadwinners."



Things changed, and they changed quickly. A little too quickly for institutions such as Harvard University, which comes off poorly in this book. These stodgy and hidebound schools tried their hardest to keep women from upsetting their little alumni-donation applecart (women alumni were said not to give money to the colleges). Coaches went ballistic when they realized they'd have to share space and dollars with female athletes. And shrill voices predicted shared locker rooms and the end of the feminine mystique.



But then came Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs and the famous "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match. It captured the imagination of the nation and a generation was galvanized to not allow women second-class status any longer.



Now, here we are in 2007 and the world has changed for the better. Title IX is still controversial with football coaches and a few other macho types who'd like all the money and attention focused on men. But America has taken to female soccer players (Mia Hamm), tennis favorites (the Williams sisters), basketball players (too many to mention) and also with female doctors and lawyers. It's all part of the current cultural landscape and there's no going back.



Blumenthal does a great job bringing the law to life by providing mamny break-out boxes with stories of female athletes and legislators that made a difference. Would you believe Caspar Weinberger, Richard Nixon's conservative head of the old department of Health, Education and Welfare, was instrumental in getting Title IX signed and implemented? Can you believe that Nixon signed it? All these stories are true and come to vivid life in Blumenthal's straightforward style of storytelling.



She doesn't pull any punches and she shouldn't have to. What was unfair needed to be rectified. Today's kids who are growing up in a nearly egalitarian society need to know that they are standing on the shoulders of some pretty courageous and forward-thinking human beings.



I recommend that if you have a daughter, niece, grandchild, little sister, or just that cute neighbor girl down the street, this book would make an excellent addition to her library.