The sounds of change on Title IX playlist

I asked the people who appear in my book 37 Words to share some of the songs they listened to during their struggles against sex discrimination in education, and put them in a Title IX playlist. These are some of the sounds of change during Title IX’s first fifty years. You’ll find the 37 Words playlist on Apple Music. If you’ve been a Title IX activist, post a comment telling us some of the background music during your part of history, and maybe we’ll make another playlist! From a U.S. Senate staffer who worked with Sen. Birch Bayh, the father […]

37 Words for 47 weeks

February 2, 2022
Author events Book news sexual harassment Sports Title IX
1 Comment
37 words, athletics, Title IX, university of michigan

Tuesday, National Girls and Women in Sports Day, also was World Read Aloud Day and the second day of National Library Lovers Month. That’s a hodgepodge, I admit. But it’s perhaps a fitting way to introduce the first of a series of weekly blog posts honoring this 50th year of Title IX, the revolutionary law that prohibits sex discrimination in education and is the subject of my book 37 Words. If you haven’t already, subscribe to my blog “37 Words” and you’ll get a weekly note in your email inbox with a hodgepodge of my takes on a variety of […]

Now you can preorder 37 Words!

September 26, 2021
Title IX
2 Comments
37 words, Title IX

I’m thrilled to announce that now you can preorder 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination (The New Press, 2022). Order now and you’ll be one of the first to receive the book when it ships on March 8, 2022. On the publisher’s site you’ll find several options for purchasing. I encourage you to support an independent bookstore by preordering through Bookshop.org. This book is my seven-year labor of love to give the full history of Title IX, published in time for the law’s 50th anniversary in June 2022. The federal legislation more formally known as […]

Women got Ford to fund Title IX

July 13, 2016
Cindy Brown Dunkle Greenberger Knox People Sandler
1 Comment
37 words, Bernice Sandler, Cynthia Brown, Ford Foundation, Holly Knox, Marcia Greenberger, Margaret Dunkle, Mariam Chamberlain, Terry Saario, Title IX

A good idea doesn’t go very far, very fast without financing. In the early years of Title IX, key funds came through a new cohort of women hired or promoted by the Ford Foundation. Uppity women on the Foundation’s staff pressured senior management in the early 1970s to diversify its white-male bastion of decision-makers and to direct more of its funding to issues pertinent to women and people of color. The same process was happening in all parts of society thanks to civil rights movements and the second-wave women’s movement. Ford’s response included giving Terry Saario and Mariam Chamberlain the power in 1972 to […]

Too [fill in the blank] for a woman

April 13, 2015
Sandler video
37 words, Bernice Sandler, Title IX, uppity women

Whatever you think of the outcome of the lawsuit by Ellen Pao claiming sex discrimination at the famed Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, a tactic used by the company’s defense team could make one cringe — character assassination. (Video: Bernice Sandler, who was “too strong for a woman.”) Telling a woman that she is too exacting, too condescending, too abrasive, too strong, too weak, too whatever to be hired, promoted, etc. is an age-old excuse used countless times to deny women opportunities that might be offered to a man who has the same qualities. (Speaking generally now, not specifically about […]

Video history from women behind Title IX

February 21, 2015
Gleaves McKindra Greenberger People Sandler video
37 words, Alexandra Bueck, athletics, Bernice Sandler, Cheryl Fields, Cynthia Brown, Deborah Ashford, Francelia Gleaves McKindra, Holly Knox, Kay Meckes, Marcia Greenberger, Margaret Dunkle, Margot Polivy, Mary Ann Millsap, Mink, Title IX, uppity women

Eleven of the women most closely involved in the struggle to implement Title IX gathered on January 26, 2015 to give a living history of this most important legislation for U.S. women since the right to vote. Focusing mainly on the early years after its passage in 1972, they also shared their fears that Title IX’s hard-won gains could be lost if people don’t remain vigilant in supporting it. I’m thankful to Margaret Dunkle for organizing the luncheon at the Woman’s National Democratic Club and for including me as I research my book on the people behind Title IX.

Title IX foremothers gather in D.C.

January 31, 2015
Gleaves McKindra Greenberger People Sandler
37 words, Bernice Sandler, Carter, Deborah Ashford, Hillary Rodham, Title IX

I’m heading home from an intensive two weeks in Washington, D.C. doing interviews and research for my book on the people behind Title IX, and I’m especially grateful to Margaret Dunkle for inviting me to a historic gathering of 11 of the remaining foremothers of Title IX for me to witness, listen, and interview. Some brought momentos for show-and-tell. Here’s Deborah Ashford holding a poster that the Carter Administration issued to show that he’d kept his promise to appoint more women to government positions. Look who’s right next to each other — a young Hillary Rodham (center, left) and Title […]

37 words that inspired thousands

January 13, 2015
Mink Newman People Sandler
37 words, athletics, Mink, Newman, rape, Sandler, sexual assault, sports, Sulkowicz, Title IX

Bernice Sandler wanted to be a professor. Patsy Takemoto Mink hoped to be a doctor. Meg Newman wanted to play baseball in high school. Emma Sulkowicz just wanted to feel safe on a college campus. Thirty-seven words make those dreams possible today — too late for some of these women, but possible for millions of others, and only because women fought back when the people in charge told them to go away. These battles are not over. They’re in the news every day. Those 37 words make up Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the most important legislation for U.S. […]