Title IX has made many strides in creating equal opportunities and scholarships for women, but more progress is needed as schools seek to comply with the law, says Vivian Stringer, women’s head basketball coach at Rutgers University.
Title IX is the landmark legislation passed in 1972 that enabled women and girls to become high school and college athletes, and to succeed professionally in all fields.
Progress has not come without obstacles or animosity, especially among opponents who blame Title IX if any sports are eliminated at a school during its compliance efforts, she says.
Stringer will discuss Title IX and share her history as a child growing up in Edenborn, Pa., as a basketball/field hockey player at Slippery Rock University and as head women’s basketball coach at three different Division I universities (Cheyney State, University of Iowa and Rutgers University).
The event, which is free and open to the public, is at 3 p.m. April 18 in the Annenberg Auditorium at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
With more than 40 years of coaching experience, Stringer says she didn’t have an opportunity to play basketball after her college career. She was able to coach volleyball, soccer and basketball at Cheyney State, a small historically black school near Philadelphia. (The school now is called Cheyney University of Pennsylvania).
“I thought it was most boring thing and only people who didn’t have anything else to do would coach,” she says. “In no way did I imagine myself as a coach.”
The lecture is part of SHARP Insights: How Title IX Changed the Game. The SHARP Center for Women and Girls, collaboration between U-M and the Women’s Sports Foundation, supports research and policymaking to enhance the lives of women and girls through sport, play and movement.
