Yesterday was National Girls and Women in Sports Day. The Women’s Sports Foundation, which sponsors, partners with and advocates for equity and inclusion in girls’ and women’s sports, had a lovely spread on their website here. And they have a fabulous logo for it, too.
Yesterday was also the day that President Donald Trump signed an executive order “prohibiting transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports”, according to an NBC news report.
The Trump administration’s main leverage to try to force school compliance is loss of federal funding. NPR reported that “Overwhelmingly, schools get funding from state and local sources. Federal funding usually makes up less than 10% of public school revenue, according to government statistics.” This suggests that schools may be able to refuse to submit to the administration’s anti-transgender demands without much damage to their budget.
However, one athletic governing body that seems anxious to comply with transphobic and misogynistic executive orders as soon as possible is the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association).
NCAA’s President Charlie Baker issued this statement on Trump’s executive order after a lack of response from the NCAA on demand to change its policies from advocates.
the NCAA is an organization made up of 1,100 colleges and universities in all 50 states that collectively enroll more than 530,000 student-athletes. We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions. To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.
A clearly transphobic and misogynistic standard, you mean.
The NCAA Board of Governors is reviewing the executive order and will take necessary steps to align NCAA policy in the coming days, subject to further guidance from the administration. The Association will continue to help foster welcoming environments on campuses for all student-athletes. We stand ready to assist schools as they look for ways to support any student-athletes affected by changes in the policy.
Why should Baker jump to align NCAA policy with the Trump administration’s bigoted pronouncements about who gets to participate in sports? Has he forgotten that in 2016, while governor of Massachusetts, he signed into law legislation that “prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity in public accommodations. It allows individuals to utilize gender-segregated restrooms or locker rooms based on their gender identity.”
I guess he has.
Maybe we shouldn’t be super-surprised at this act of contempt for women and girls in sports. After all, this is the same NCAA that has ignored, underfunded and downplayed the importance and excellence of women and girls’ sports for years. Who can forget the teeny-tiny set of weights set aside for the use of women’s college basketball teams during their tournament play? If you have forgotten, check out my blog post (complete with pictures), showing how little the NCAA cared about women’s collegiate sports until their mistreatment went viral on social media? A small victory in a large battle: NCAA women’s basketball tiny weight room gets bigger
If you’d like to make your displeasure known and perhaps offer some advice for Charlie Baker to take back to the NCAA, you can reach him at cbaker@ncaa.org
And if you’d like to support women and girls in sports, you can learn more about and support the Equity Project, run by the Women’s Sports Foundation. I’ll leave you (for now) with this information and graphic.
But we’ll be back. None of us needs to accept inequity, exclusion, endangerment, or abandonment for wanting to express ourselves through physical activity. We won’t accept it. We’ll be writing about ways some of us are working to respond, and we look forward to hearing from you as well.
