Lecture: Don Sabo
When: Noon, Feb. 3
Where: 2239 Lane Hall
Although gender equity law Title IX has resulted in more girls participating in high school sports, the slowing progress in recent years has robbed some teens of athletic opportunities, an expert says.
Some boys teams nationwide — especially in urban high schools compared with rural ones — received a larger proportion of athletic resources than girls, says Don Sabo, director of Center for Research on Physical Activity, Sport & Health.
“Failure to create gender equity in youth sports is a huge missed opportunity to capitalize on the power of sports to enhance the development and health of both girls and boys,” he says.
Sports promote physical activity, academic achievement, teen pregnancy prevention, and lowering juvenile delinquency, says Sabo, who will lecture on “The Social Costs of Falling Short of Gender Equity in High School Sports” at noon Feb. 3 at 2239 Lane Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
The lecture is part of the Title IX series by Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy, a U-M center for research on girls’ and women’s participation in sports and physical activity.
Sabo is a professor of health policy at D’Youville College in Buffalo, N.Y., and a senior health policy advisor of the Women’s Sports Foundation. He has directed many nationwide studies in the USA that identify developmental, educational and health correlates of youth sports participation.
Youth sports have been impacted for four decades by Title IX, which Congress passed in 1972 to ban sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding. It required universities that receive federal funding to provide equitable athletic opportunities for men and women.
Sabo says that while many high schools have increased the allocations of athletic opportunity to girls, opposition to gender equity persists.
Some Title IX opponents inaccurately assume that “when girls win, boys lose.” This outlook, he argues, has eroded this country’s ability to reform sport in ways that fully tap its educational, social and public health impacts for all participants regardless of gender.
“The often-touted claim that Title IX has somehow ‘harmed’ male athletics is not only empirically baseless,” Sabo contends, “but it can encourage shortsighted educational and health policy.”
