Azzi: The patriarchy's worst fear – women who think and compete

Robert Azzi,
Portsmouth Herald
Sun, June 5, 2022, 

“In the nineteenth century," Adrienne Rich wrote in The Theft of Childbirth, "the educated woman was seen as a threat to the survival of the species…. Patriarchal society would seem to require not only that women shall assume the major burden of pain and self-denial for the continuation of the species, but that a majority of that species—women—shall remain essentially uninformed and unquestioning.”

Today, in the twenty-first century, 50 years after the passage of both Title IX and Roe v. Wade, it appears that patriarchal interests continue to assault - from the womb to the football pitch - women's bodies and interests.

Much has been written recently, after the leak of Justice Alito's hateful attack, about Roe v. Wade and what overturning it would mean to women.

Less has been reported about attacks on Title IX, which was passed to prohibit sex discrimination - including on issues of pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity - in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Over time it created new opportunities for women - opportunities denied them for generations by the misogynistic manipulations of cisgendered, patriarchal white men.

Before 1972 there were fewer than 300,000 girls playing sports in only about 15,000 American high schools, compared with over 3,600,000 million boys in virtually every school.

Today, because of Title IX, there are over 3,400,000 girls (in over 312,000 schools) competing across a sports spectrum - including at what Americans call soccer - with many hopeful for college scholarships unavailable before 1972.

Last month, 50 years after Title IX was passed; 50 years after women were given sports platforms upon which to compete and showcase their athletic abilities, an historic agreement was struck that guarantees that all national team soccer players - regardless of gender - will receive equal pay when representing America.

Finally, the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) agreed to pay athletes equally for doing exactly the same job: A job, I might add, where men, since 1934, have never finished above 8th place while America's women have won four World Cups since 1991!

“When my coach said I ran like a girl," Mia Hamm recounted, "I said that if he could run a little faster he could too.”

A job where previously women soccer players couldn't earn more than $260,000 while male losers could earn more than $1,000,000.

According to the NY Times, “U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements that will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year ...”

This isn't about equity - it's about equal pay for equal work!

Right-wing activists have for some time been attempting to conflate "equality" and "equity," in the minds of suggestible followers, intimating that somehow Democrats and progressives are trying to assure equal societal outcomes.

Nothing's further from the truth: Equity and Equality may sound similar but they're not.

Equality means all individuals or groups should be given the same resources or opportunities while equity recognizes that because some individuals or groups have different (often limited) circumstances they may need different resources and opportunities in order to equally compete.

For example, students with broadband at home are advantaged over students who have to sit on the curb in front of McDonalds to access the internet.

Teams with fully-equipped weight rooms are advantaged over teams that don't.

To suggest that women athletes should not be equally compensated with men because they've been competing for fewer years is to suggest, perhaps, that Black American votes should count less since they've been voting for fewer years than privileged whites.

Perhaps, as women have only been voting for 102 years, their votes should be devalued by 50%; perhaps Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinions should've mattered less because she occupied a seat believed reserved for white men.

Some critics whine that sports “equity” means that some male sports programs may have been eliminated by making room for women, reasoning that ignores that for generations only men decided who got to play what.

Today, an overwhelming number of high-ranking women executives at Fortune 500 companies say their opportunity to compete in sports contributed to their success in fields previously dominated by white men.

Perhaps that is really patriarchy's fear.

"When I was a little boy," Will Smith recounts in King Richard, "my mom used to say, 'Son, the most powerful, the most dangerous creature on this whole earth is a woman who knows how to think.'"

Women who think: May their presence persist.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: The patriarchy's worst fear – women who think and compete