June 23 marked the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, the landmark piece of legislation that prohibits schools receiving federal money from discriminating against students on the basis of sex. Its passage paved the way for millions of American girls to participate in sports at school.
Angel City investor and former US Women's National Team member Julie Foudy, who was born a year before Title IX's passage, was an early beneficiary. We talked with her about its impacts and where progress still needs to be made.
In your own words, what is the importance of Title IX today?
Well, I think there still exists a huge gap. Obviously, there's a lot more girls playing, but we still know that gap is at its largest when you get into communities of color. You see that gap with athletes with disabilities. You still see that gap in underserved communities. So there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made. There's gaps in terms of funding and scholarships and all of that. I wish we were at a point where we can say we don't really need Title IX anymore, but we're clearly not there. We're also seeing that in a broader sense as it relates to trans athletes, sexual harassment, and all these areas that I don't think people quite understood it would impact.
What was it like growing up, as a girl playing sports, at a time when this legislation was still quite new?
I grew up in Southern California, which I think was super progressive and ahead of the curve when it came to women and girls playing sports. Still, I was one of the first to play in our little local AYSO program. Later, we had a club program and it was for girls. But still, of my era, there's a lot of women who maybe are just a year or two older than me, depending on where they lived, for whom there were absolutely no sports teams available to play on, or if there was a sports team, they had to play with the boys. Mia Hamm grew up playing with the boys. Kristine Lilly grew up playing with boys. There are a lot of players of my era for whom that was their only option, which wasn't the case for me. So I feel really lucky in that.
A big reason the US Women's National Team has been so successful is that we have Title IX, which most countries have no equivalent to. Can you talk about the impact this law has had on the US's dominance in high-level soccer?
I think it's why so many of our women's teams, not just soccer, have been dominant. Starting from the '96 Olympics, [we were] finally kind of reaping that reward. Our first showcase of women's soccer at the Olympics was in 1996. We won that. Basketball won, softball won, gymnastics won [the team event], synchronized swimming. I mean, you go down the list, it was the year of the woman first for US athletes. And that's that is absolutely a direct result of Title IX.
I would even say that it has benefited other countries in the sense that all of their athletes come here to play collegiate sports. There are quite a few Olympians from other countries who had the opportunity to play collegiately here in the States.
There's a philosophy when it comes to making any kind of progress—whether it's about gender, race, whatever—that the best way to get things done isn't to change people's minds, but to change public policy and let society catch up. Do you have any thoughts on that as it relates to Title IX?
I had never heard it like that, but I agree. Had we waited to change people's minds first, [Title IX] would have never happened. The people in a position of power would not have allowed it had they understood its impact.
I think the brilliance of the women behind Title IX is that—and I don't think a lot of people know this—when they were trying to get it passed legislatively, there was a faction who said, 'We should go hard on this and lobby it and promote it so that we make sure it gets passed.' And these women who were really the masterminds of it, like Bernice Sandler, for example, and Patsy Mink, they said, 'No, let's not even say anything about sports. Let's not bring any attention to it. Let's kind of just quietly attach it to this bill and hope it gets passed. We won't have to change their minds. We'll just put the policy in place.'
And that's how they got it through, I think, largely because they didn't want any spotlight on it. Then when these senators and Congress members discovered what had happened, they tried to roll it back. They said it would be the end of college sports, it would be the end of men's collegiate football. But by then, it was already policy, so rolling it back was really tough. That shows there's no way it would have passed had they really promoted it.
I think it's easy to focus on just what the impact is like for Angel City's players, or for players at the elite level of their sport. But Title IX's real importance is that it allows millions of kids to participate in sports. What are your thoughts on the importance of access to sports?
Yeah, exactly. That's why this trans issue is so disturbing. Just having access to play sports is life changing for so many. It's this gift that keeps on giving. And you don't have to play at the highest level—you don't have to have an Olympic gold medal around your neck. Sports give you the skill set to navigate life in a much stronger, more confident way. Study after study, they've shown that. That's why I have been such an advocate of Title IX for so long. And it kills me to see, you know, what is lost in the trans athlete argument is the fact that we're now banning sports for kids in elementary school, for kids in junior high. What are we doing?
The gift of Title IX is it gives a young girl the opportunity to dream and be whatever she wants to be, not just on the sports field. It's created leaders and decision makers. One day it will be entirely responsible for the first female president of the United States. I think she'll be an athlete.
Definitely. To bring it back to Angel City, you can see that in our front office and our ownership group.
I mean, that's why it's such a joy to see something like Angel City come alive, because it shows the promise of all the things we've been talking about for so long. It's finally coming full circle. Now you're seeing the ripple effect of what this law 50 years ago created.
