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Chapter 9 (the counterpart to Chapter 3) examines major shifts in the debate over female exercise and reproductive health during the second half of the twentieth century. Following a period of relative calm, biomedical experts became alarmed in the 1970s and 1980s about various clinical and asymptomatic reproductive disorders and other problems among active girls and women. During the 1990s and early 2000s, this concern coalesced around the newly-named “Female Athlete Triad”—a “collective syndrome” of amenorrhea, disordered eating, and premature osteroporosis. Chapter 9 summarizes key changes in the science of exercise and reproductive health as well as the efforts of diverse professions to control if, when, how much, and in what way girls and women would exercise. Biomedical researchers and specialists gradually dominated the interpretation, diagnosis, and treatment of female reproductive “dysfunction.” As the clinic and laboratory gained authority over active female bodies, physical educators and coaches had to redefine their roles.

Female Christian athletes employ different self-display choices in different contexts, revealingfemininity as a social construct requiring ongoing performance. They also work very hard to maintain a sense of essential gender difference, and this contradiction has opened a space for evangelical female athletes to reflect on their religious tradition’s expectations regarding women’s bodies. From the college cafeteria to church to campus ministry meetings, female Christian athletes can feel a heightened obligation to project femininity because they are painfully aware that their identity as athletes stands in tension with their identity as evangelical women. Given these sometimes uncomfortable negotiations of self-display, sports ministry serves an important role for these women. It can allow them to temporarily suspend their sense of obligatory feminine self-display because it is an environment where evangelical assumptions like inherent gender differences and heterosexuality go without saying. Participating in sports ministry can provide an environment where the assumption of shared values creates a haven from the work of constructing a feminine appearance.

This chapter examines integration rights as an important qualification to sex-separate opportunities and how such rights help mitigate, if not eliminate, the downsides of sex separation in sports. Title IX allows schools to provide separate-sex teams where team selection is made on a competitive basis or if the athletes are engaged in contact sports. The same regulation that broadly permits separation also creates a set of limited integration rights. It provides for the right to try out for a sport offered to members of the other sex, but only under certain conditions. This chapter points out some of the shortcomings in the liberal feminist integration rights recognized by Title IX. It argues that gender equality is best served by expanding integration rights to exceptional female athletes who have their own team. It also discusses the approach taken by Title IX and by the equal protection clause to boys' rights to participate on girls' teams.

This chapter examines Title IX's progress in changing the cultural norms surrounding women's participation in sports by focusing on how it deals with issues facing athletes who become pregnant. It first considers Title IX regulation that addresses pregnancy and provides the basis for the law's approach to pregnant athletes. It then explains Title IX's approach that skirts the debate pitting equal-treatment proponents against advocates of special pregnancy accommodations, and why there has been a long-time reluctance to focus on pregnancy as a gender-equality issue in sports. It also discusses the gains Title IX has made toward the cultural acceptance and embrace of female athletes; the law's failure to make serious inroads into the dominant model of college sports that values winning at all costs and treats athletes as commodities who add value to college sports rather than as students who benefit from playing college sports; and Title IX's progress in tackling issues involving male athletes who become fathers and high school athletes who become pregnant.

This chapter examines Title IX's progress in changing the cultural norms surrounding women's participation in sports by focusing on how it deals with issues facing athletes who become pregnant. It first considers Title IX regulation that addresses pregnancy and provides the basis for the law's approach to pregnant athletes. It then explains Title IX's approach that skirts the debate pitting equal-treatment proponents against advocates of special pregnancy accommodations, and why there has been a long-time reluctance to focus on pregnancy as a gender-equality issue in sports. It also discusses the gains Title IX has made toward the cultural acceptance and embrace of female athletes; the law's failure to make serious inroads into the dominant model of college sports that values winning at all costs and treats athletes as commodities who add value to college sports rather than as students who benefit from playing college sports; and Title IX's progress in tackling issues involving male athletes who become fathers and high school athletes who become pregnant.

This chapter explores how leaders of several international athletic federations worked to quell anxieties about “manly” women competitors by instituting “sex-testing” policies to verify the femaleness of female athletes. Purporting to safeguard women's sport and its participants, the tests have too often disadvantaged women and served as a powerful form of social control that encouraged normative femininity in the context of sport. Although most organizations have since declared an end to sex-testing in their official policies, new forms of surveillance and detection continue to define who counts as a woman in the context of sport. For better or worse, the introduction of the sex-test signified that women's sports were on the rise, and in the 1970s American women went through what many felt was an athletic revolution.

This chapter examines integration rights as an important qualification to sex-separate opportunities and how such rights help mitigate, if not eliminate, the downsides of sex separation in sports. Title IX allows schools to provide separate-sex teams where team selection is made on a competitive basis or if the athletes are engaged in contact sports. The same regulation that broadly permits separation also creates a set of limited integration rights. It provides for the right to try out for a sport offered to members of the other sex, but only under certain conditions. This chapter points out some of the shortcomings in the liberal feminist integration rights recognized by Title IX. It argues that gender equality is best served by expanding integration rights to exceptional female athletes who have their own team. It also discusses the approach taken by Title IX and by the equal protection clause to boys' rights to participate on girls' teams.

This chapter explains why Sheryl Swoopes’ revelation of being a lesbian did not negatively affect her reputation. It points out that Swoopes was not the first female athlete to admit homosexuality. Her race as an African American may have been a factor and perceptions regarding female sexuality may have downplayed her announcement. It adds that had Swoopes been white and male, the world would have probably paid more attention to her announcement of homosexuality.

Far from the founders of sports ministry’s original intentions, the encounter between evangelicalism and sports has resulted in a flexible evangelicalism that has allowed for a far wider range of beliefs and practices than the founders of sports ministry imagined. Engagement with sport provided another toolbox for evangelical female athletes, and when they actively sought to combine their athletic and evangelical identities, sport allowed them to develop a religious self-reflexivity that opened up a wide range of sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory understandings of what it means to be an evangelical woman in contemporary America. Sports ministry’s focus on witnessing, individual religious experience, and the discourses of spiritual warfare and Christlikeness can produce an intimate knowledge of what it means to be a Christian athlete. This intimate embodied knowledge has allowed female Christian athletes to engage and modify orthodoxy by redefining godly femininity, increasingly accepting lesbianism, and renegotiating marriage expectations. These unintended consequences show that religious engagement with popular culture can produce new religious tools that do the very real work of maintaining religious belief, but not always in ways that are predictable ahead of time.

This chapter examines three issues that are central to Title IX's gender equality goals beyond getting women into sports and providing equal support and benefits: protection of individuals who are bold enough to speak out about discrimination, representation of women in coaching and athletic administration jobs, and the sexual harassment of female athletes by their coaches. After discussing Title IX's response to retaliation against athletes and coaches who complain about gender inequality, the chapter considers the reasonable belief doctrine and its pitfalls. It then explores what kinds of punishments count as unlawful retaliation under Title IX and the significance of the Supreme Court ruling in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education that retaliation is a form of sex discrimination. It also looks at gender disparities in sports leadership, including women's lack of representation in college coaching, and concludes with an assessment of Title IX's response to the problem of sexual harassment involving the coach and the athlete.

This chapter examines three issues that are central to Title IX's gender equality goals beyond getting women into sports and providing equal support and benefits: protection of individuals who are bold enough to speak out about discrimination, representation of women in coaching and athletic administration jobs, and the sexual harassment of female athletes by their coaches. After discussing Title IX's response to retaliation against athletes and coaches who complain about gender inequality, the chapter considers the reasonable belief doctrine and its pitfalls. It then explores what kinds of punishments count as unlawful retaliation under Title IX and the significance of the Supreme Court ruling in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education that retaliation is a form of sex discrimination. It also looks at gender disparities in sports leadership, including women's lack of representation in college coaching, and concludes with an assessment of Title IX's response to the problem of sexual harassment involving the coach and the athlete.

This chapter examines Title IX's equal treatment framework and its progress toward equalizing the treatment and benefits given to male and female athletes, along with its limitations. The biggest success story of Title IX has been the use of its three-part test to add women's sports, which have also made great strides in gaining increased support and resources. As with other aspects of gender equality in sports, however, Title IX's baseline of sex separation affects how the equal treatment standards apply. This chapter discusses the development of Title IX's equal treatment standards, the strong side of its liberal feminism, the requirement for proving intentional discrimination, and Title IX's coverage of privately financed inequality. It also considers Title IX's sensitivity to the harms of discrimination and its coverage of athletic scholarships.

The history of gender challenges faced by women in elite sports is fraught with controversy and injustice. These athletes’ unique physical beauty creates what appears to be a paradox, yet is scientifically predictable. Intense training for high-level competition leads to unique strength and beauty associated with specific anatomic changes, leading top athletes to be singled out as exceptions from their gender and excluded from competing. Authorities like the IOC and IAAF, along with coaches and fellow athletes, use traditional and sometimes racialized aesthetic norms as the basis for ungrounded judgments of gender misidentity. Misjudging the gender identity of elite athletes exemplifies a biased cognitive framework, a form of erroneous and damaging categorical perception that we call perceptual sexism. This chapter argues that perceptual sexism has a long history within aesthetic and competitive realms and is still perpetuated by popular culture. Correcting this will reduce injustices created by gender identity controversies.

The introduction considers the increased visibility of female athletes in MMA--a phenomenon enabled by a 21st century media context that increasingly seeks out representations of difference, including gendered, racial, and sexual difference, on a variety of media platforms. Sports media brands are now beginning to align with other media entities to promote diverse representations as a method of increasing viewership, which makes branded difference a lucrative branding and marketing strategy. This chapter cautions, however, that the increased visibility of difference in the UFC ignores a labor model that allows the brand to profit on its diverse athletes who fight for low pay and few benefits as independent contractors in a gig economy.

This chapter examines Title IX's equal treatment framework and its progress toward equalizing the treatment and benefits given to male and female athletes, along with its limitations. The biggest success story of Title IX has been the use of its three-part test to add women's sports, which have also made great strides in gaining increased support and resources. As with other aspects of gender equality in sports, however, Title IX's baseline of sex separation affects how the equal treatment standards apply. This chapter discusses the development of Title IX's equal treatment standards, the strong side of its liberal feminism, the requirement for proving intentional discrimination, and Title IX's coverage of privately financed inequality. It also considers Title IX's sensitivity to the harms of discrimination and its coverage of athletic scholarships.

Although the International Olympic Committee (IOC) sought to differentiate women from men, the methods employed repeatedly illustrated the difficulty in determining the exact composition of womanhood. This chapter argues that rather than showing a clear-cut biological divide, the policy highlighted a range of chromosomal varieties and DNA diversity. The IOC disregarded these well-documented variations and continued testing. Officials never discovered a man posing as a woman; however, several female athletes with biological differences were barred from competition. Eventually, protests by medical authorities and athletes in the 1980s encouraged the IOC to abandon all gender verification practices. For the 1992 Albertville Winter and Barcelona Summer Olympics, the IOC replaced the chromatin exam with PCR testing. Because many people believed that substituting one scientific method with another did not solve the practical nor ethical problems of verification, those who were opposed to laboratory testing continued to fight for the IOC to terminate the practice.

This chapter illustrates the sex-segregated framework of sport and highlights the historical threats to the sex/gender status quo. In the early twentieth century, track and field was the most popular and prestigious Olympic pastime. It was also an activity explicitly reserved for men. Thus, when female activists successfully fought for women's inclusion in international competition, many people balked. When the International Olympic Committee reluctantly added women's track and field to the Olympic program, suspicions of male imposters immediately ensued. The supposed threat of masqueraders encouraged officials to require physical examinations of some participants. It was in track and field, then, where questions of sex/gender first surfaced and continued throughout the twentieth century.

This chapter discusses Title IX, the Civil Rights Restoration Act, and gender equity on college sports. The Education Amendments passed by Congress in 1972 included a provision in its Title IX that “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 education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” However, many colleges and universities, whose athletic policies were dominated by male coaches and administrators, dithered on making significant commitments to expand female participation in intercollegiate athletics. In 1987, Congress proposed an act “to restore the broad scope of coverage and to clarify the application of Title IX.” The law, named the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which applied to Title IX and three other civil-rights statutes, would require that any organization or entity that receives federal funds, or indirectly benefits from federal assistance, must abide by laws outlawing discriminatory practices based upon race, religion, color, national origin, age, disability, or gender.