Conference in the news

Below is a list of the press I have seen regarding this past weekend's Girls and Women Rock Conference in Cleveland. I have added comments about some of the coverage. Please add links/stories you have found and any thoughts you may have.

Many of the stories started with something to the effect of "There's a Title IX conference in Cleveland this weekend" and went on to discuss some women's sport issue. This one from USA Today took this approach mentioning the conference and then discussing the recently released results from the College Sports Council that say, when we consider the growth in the number of NCAA schools men's opportunities have decreased while women's have increased. There are good rebuttals of this "research" including this statement from Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women's Law Center: "Looking at the number of teams and how they have changed is legally irrelevant," Samuels says. "What Title IX demands is equality as measured by individual participation. And men continue to have more opportunities than women." The Washington Post article about the CSC study is not as balanced focusing on the numbers the CSC study came up with, statements from CSC members but only one person who rebutted the CSC claims.

Carrie Lukas of the National Review penned this annoying column last week. She called the conference a "femi-palooza." That was my first hint that this was not going to be a positive article.
Evidence of men’s greater interest in watching and playing sports abounds.[...] Such common sense will be heresy, however, at the Cleveland conference. Many members of the organizations sponsoring the conference recoil from any suggestion that innate differences between the sexes contribute to disparate outcomes, whether on a basketball court or in the workplace. “Discrimination” is the only acceptable explanation when men out-participate or out-perform women, while women’s triumphs ironically are ignored.
When did discrimination become a word that needs quotation marks? Lukas goes on to call us "gender-obsessed handwringers," bemoans the lack of equality we allegedly perpetuate, and then tells us Title IX needs reforming before more men's teams become extinct.
There is a link a the article site through which you can email Lukas. Use it as you see fit.

The Plain Dealer has this coverage of the Billie Jean King luncheon.

Also from The Plain Dealer, this article is about the lack of women coaching intercollegiate athletics but mentions work presented at the conference especially the study done by Cindra Kamphoff of UNC-Greensboro.