Gender policing in youth sports

In early June, the story of Mili Hernandez, an 8-year old soccer player from Nebraska, made national headlines. her team, playing in a youth tournament, was disqualified right as they were about to play in the finals because organizers thought Mili was a boy. Rather an anonymous person told officials that a boy was playing on a girls' team. And the team had to go home. {I have a breakdown of this situation below.}

There was outrage and support from current and former professional soccer players. It was not a Title IX issue because it was a youth sports league run independently from interscholastic sports governance. So, though outraged it did not make it onto the blog. But now another story of questioning gender in youth soccer has arisen, and it seems like a good time to bring Title IX into the discussion.

A girls' club soccer team in Madison, Wisconsin has several short-haired players (some of whom model their style on favorite players like Abby Wambach and Megan Rapinoe) who experience what Hernandez did but on a regular basis. They have not been disqualified from games or tourneys but other teams ask questions of their parents, coaches, officials, and of them. They try to "catch" the girls by asking them their names. The team is accused of cheating. This persists even though the club system in which the team plays requires birth certificates from each child before she can be rostered on a team. The certificates are used to check for age and for sex. Cheating, in other words, would require forging birth certificates.

In some ways it is very simple. Some people have short hair and some people have long hair. And some people style their hair after people they want to emulate (remember the Rachel?). And kids play soccer.

The thing about gender is that everyone knows what it "should" look like--even if one cannot or chooses not to conform to the norms or expectations. This means that if a girls' team was to engage in cheating by including boys on the roster, the boys would be feminized in some way so as to avoid getting caught.

I can't believe I had to write that sentence. I do not want to live in a world where people are convinced that short-haired female soccer players are not boys because boys trying to pretend they are girls would know how to look like girls. That is the logic of the deeply gendered culture in which we live.

But there must be something else going on if people cannot stop and use that logic. And that is why gender is complicated. Because it is imbued with power. It is about access. It is about boundaries. In sports, those boundaries remain very tightly monitored.

What was interesting about the Madison situation is that the coach was initially skeptical about what her players' parents were saying about how the team was treated. This is likely because the team is based in Madison--a liberal college town. But one, a town that is sports obsessed and two, is in a a conservative state. In other words, how a region or town interprets or polices gender norms differs. For example, a look at the map at TransAthlete shows state interscholastic associations' gender identity policies.

The policy in Nebraska, where Hernandez plays, is the same as the old IOC policy. It requires gender reassignment surgery (we are talking about children remember) and a waiting period after the start of hormone treatment. The policy in Wisconsin is that each case is assessed as it arises. These policies reflect the cultural beliefs and can be used to predict how, for example, people might respond to short-haired soccer players on girls' teams.

Again, the interscholastic associations make their own policies, club teams and leagues make their own policies and Title IX has nothing to do with them. But it can influence thinking. Unfortunately the current administration's application of the law makes policies like the one in Nebraska--which is now more regressive than the IOC's--look more reasonable. It tightens the boundaries and it impedes logic.

Title IX Is an Education Statute

In Menlo Park, California, an eight-year-old girl wants to play basketball in the city league with her friends, who are boys. But the city runs separate leagues for boys and girls, and refuses to make an exception for this "4-foot-6 tomboy." So her parents hired a lawyer, who threatened to sue the city under Title IX. The city's lawyer wrote back, arguing that Title IX does not require them to let her play in the boys league because of the law's limited application to contact sports.

I'm not sure how both lawyers missed the obvious here. Maybe the plaintiff's lawyer was bluffing, but both seem to desperately need a Title IX primer. Title IX is an education statute. It applies only to schools, not municipalities.

To the plaintiff's lawyer's credit, he also claimed that the city's segregated athletics program violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. OK, now you're talking -- under that clause, government entities cannot have policies that treat people differently because of their sex unless they have a good reason. In many cases, courts have ruled that excluding girls from boys' athletic programs (including contact sports like football) violates the Equal Protection Clause because stereotypes about girls' ability, fragility and interest are not good reasons to exclude them. However, those reasons may be less at play in cases like this one, where the city isn't excluding girls all together, but is running sex-segregated programs. Nonetheless, if the city finds itself in litigation, it had better be ready to articulate a good reason to keep kids who are friends, and have comparable size and talent from playing with each other just because they are of different sexes.

Women's Sports Foundation Studies Gender Gap in Youth Sports

The Women's Sports Foundation released a new report today about youth sports, examining participation rates and trends across class, race, and geographic regions. Nationally, boys participate in youth sports at higher rates than girls. However, this gap is widest in urban, immigrant, and nonwhite communities. Though Title IX does not directly govern youth sports opportunities outside the context of schools, the statute's affect on culture has created a wide range of opportunities for girls. But, the report's lead author, Professor Don Sabo told the New York Times, "Title IX has left a favorable footprint on the soil of suburban communities...[but] it has yet to produce any semblance of equity within urban communities throughout the United States.”

The report also documents the benefits of youth sports participation on children’s general health and body esteem, healthy weight, popularity, quality of life and educational achievement. It also finds a positive correlation between children's participation in youth sports and strong families because it encourages intrafamily communication and time spent together.

In light of the social significance and benefits of youth sport participation, the WSF argues that policymakers should address the gender gap, especially in urban and minority communities. Schools, community organizations, churches and other nonprofits should be encouraged and supported in their efforts to provide more "girl-centered sports and exercise programs that emphasize 'fun and friendships'" that are likely to attract girls of elementary school age. It is also important to lower the barriers to entry to middle school sports, as the increasingly competitive nature of sports deters girls who have not played before.

Movie Review: Kick Like a Girl

We received our copy of the new documentary, Kick Like a Girl, last week and popped in the DVD player right away. It was quite good. The star was definitely the daughter of filmmaker Jenny Mackenzie. She was quite precocious and very informed about issues of gender, as were many of the other girls on the team. Though she did admit she had to be convinced that her team, the Mighty Cheetahs, joining the boys' soccer league in Salt Lake City was actually a good idea.
The 24-minute film contains many interviews with members of the Cheetahs, their parents, boys they played against, and I believe one mother of a boy who lost to the Cheetahs. Many of the interviewees recounted stories of parents yelling at their sons "You're losing to girls!"but none of those parents seemed to want to be interviewed.
It was a very positive film. The girls knew exactly what was going on regarding the gender stereotypes they were breaking and most of the boys in the film got it too. There was no explicit message which actually became part of the problem I had with the film.
It did not seem to want to say outright that mixed gender competition is the direction we should be headed in. But by not making some statement about either (or both) the positives and negatives of mixed gender competition the message left open for viewers to take was that these girls are unique. That most girls do not desire the level of competition these girls sought and that most girls are not competitive and not as skilled. Though the movie did a good job debunking the stereotypes that have been placed on these girls--that they can't kick, for example--it fails to address how desire for competition and level of aggression or even the desire to play a sport like soccer are all affected by social norms placed on both girls and boys.
In the end it's a great story about a soccer team that changed some minds about the abilities of (some) girls. It's perfect for showing in classes because it's short, compelling and can inspire some good discussions about youth sports, mixed gender competition, and the ability of sport to alter gender stereotypes.