Successful But Not Equal

to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long. Many in America were not happy to see such divisions end. The House passed the bill, then several Southern Senators began a record setting attempt to frustrate its passage. They succeeded

to laying a vote for almost three months. Their epic filibuster came to an end just before ten a m. On the morning of June tenth, nineteen sixty four, an exhausted Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former KKK member, It is nearly fourteen hours of speaking on the Senate floor. His lengthy address was in vain nine days later, the Senator approved the Act and President Johnson signed the bill

in a nationally televised ceremony. Tonight, I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife. I urge every America to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people. The Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four was truly a landmark moment for African Americans, but it was also a game changing moment for women, including every housewife in America,

as the President referred to them. Nestled into Title seven of the Act was a single word, sex, and that word kick started a revolution that is still unfolding today, from core rooms to World Cup soccer fields. It's ready to call transcends. The passion cannot begins me poten root. Now we found our way. Let us play. Let us

from Ozzie. This is the threat. I'm Sean braswell. This season on the Thread, we've celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the ninety Niners and their unforgettable Women's Soccer World Cup victory with a journey back through time to see everything that led up to that moment at the Rose Bowl in In this final episode, we conclude the journey that began with Brandy Chastain's winning penalty kick by revisiting a historic anti discrimination law, Title seven of the Civil Rights

Act of nineteen sixty four, and we'll find out how that legislation still governs the fate of the current US women national team, even after their triumphant victory at this year's World Cup in France. Before the U. S Senate considered it, the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four underwent a contentious debate in the House of Representatives. Like their Senate colleagues, the Southern congressman in the House opposed to the law tried everything in their power to sabotage it.

Historian Rosalind Rosenberg it looked as though the Act would pass, at which point a Southern Congressman by the name of Howard Smith from Virginia rose to ask for an amendment to Title seven, and that amendment was the word sex. That employers should be barred from discriminating not only on the basis of race and national origin and religion, but

also on the basis of sex. This was an addition that looked as though it might well scuttle the Civil Rights Act, which Howard Smith hoped would be the case. Smith figured that many Northern congressmen and labor leaders might change their minds on the bill if they thought it women had to be hired on an equal footing with men. He proposed the change almost jokingly. He said he was going to do it to help quote the minority sex. Karen Blumenthal is the author of let Me Play the

Story of Title nine. Now, some of the men in Congress thought that was hilarious, because women, of course, were housewives, and they were mothers. They were not people who went into the workplace. But there was at least one woman in Congress listening to Smith who did not think it was funny at all. So Martha Griffith's is one of the unsung heroes of the women's movement. She was the granddaughter of a suffragette. She had grown up as a

very good student, a debater in high school. She wanted to go to college, but the family funds were tight, and her father said, no, we're gonna have to spend money sending your brother to college. Martha's mother would not deny her daughter that chance. She took in borders and work spare jobs so Martha could go to college and then law school. So she went to the University of Michigan Law School, was very successful there and decided later

to run for Congress. She was one of the first women elected to Congress in the nineteen fifties who was not following a husband. Griffiths served ten terms in Congress and was the first woman ever to serve on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. This interview clip from nineteen seventy four will give you a sense of what

Martha Griffiths was like. At the time, it looked like the Equal Rights Amendment, in shrining gender equality in the U. S Constitution, might actually get ratified and tell the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Was there no protection for women under the law in our constitution? Not really. They never applied the fourteenth Amendment to women. They didn't apply the fifteenth when the fifteenth Amendment had been written, which had every citizen could vote, in the name of heavens,

Why couldn't women vote. Why did you have to have the nineteenth Amendment? Well, of course, the answer was they didn't consider women people. Griffiths was a force in Congress. She was not afraid to speak her mind. It's an airline chief executive involved in an employment dispute told Griffiths that his company wanted stewardesses that were quote young, attractive, and single. Griffiths wrote him back a stinging letter that asked,

what are you running an airline or a whorehouse? Martha Griffiths also did not have the patients to stand by. While Howard Smith joked about employment discrimination on the floor of Congress, author Karen Blumenthal. When the laughter stops, Martha Griffith stands up and says, you know, I guess if there's any question that women are a second class, you know,

your response would prove that the men quieted down. So she proposes that women should indeed be included in the Civil Rights Act, that this is not a joke, that women need to work just like men do, and that they shouldn't be discriminated against. Griffith's appealed to the white men in the chamber by pointing out that without the word sex, the bill would favor black women over white women. She argued, quote, a vote against this bill today by a white man is a vote against his wife, or

his widow, or his daughter or his sister. So when the time came, Congress, to the surprise of many, actually approved adding sex to the Civil Rights Act that affected employment. And when this happened, somebody in the visitors gallery yelled, we made it. We are human. A couple of days later, the House passed the entire Civil Rights Bill, sex included.

We've now completed this season's journey back through history, from the fight over a single word in the Civil Rights Act in nineteen sixty four to the penalty kick heard around the world. Let's recap. Thanks to Congresswoman Martha Griffith's the word sex appears in Title seven of the Civil

Rights Act of ninety four. Then, because of a trailblazing legal scholar named Polly Murray, sex not only stays in that law, but a new legal foundation is laid for sex discrimination that culminates with the passage of Title nine, another landmark law that banns sex discrimination in education. But Title nine would never have been passed without the efforts of women like Bunny Sandler and Edith Green, and it never would have been enforced without the women of the

nineteen seventy six Yale Crew team. Thanks to these figures, Title nine would usher in a new era of women's sports in America. Among those early beneficiaries of Title nine were the members of the first U. S women's national

soccer team in the mid nineteen eighties. These women had hand me down uniforms and virtually no compensation, but they had a love of the game that transcended their circumstances, and that paved the way for the ninety Niners, whose triumph on that summer day in Pasadena put an exclamation point on almost four decades of history. But it's a journey that is not over. Women's sports in America may be successful, but they are far from equal. Title nine

to me is opportunity. Tracy Noonan was a goaltender for the ninety Niners. It was opportunity for girls that we hadn't had before. When I look at when my mom grew up, she would have loved to have played soccer. She you know, I know that the high school that she went to, they weren't allowed to They didn't have female sports. Noonan was born in nineteen seventy three and into a generation of women who had significantly more opportunities

to compete and to play. Someone once called Title nine the biggest thing to happen to sports since the invention of the whistle. Nina Chaudrey is general counsel at the National Women's Law Center, a nonprofit founded in the same year as Title nine. Title nine has been a game changer, and it has allowed women to really emerge from their second class status, which is where they were relegated. The participation numbers for women in sports before and after Title

nine are stunning. Karen Blumenthal. Before Title nine is passed, there's only seven undered girls in the entire United States playing soccer. In five years, there's eleven thousand girls playing and it didn't stop there. Before Title nine. One in twenty seven girls played sports in America. Today that number is closer to two and five. The number of young women playing high school sports is ten times as high as it was in the nineteen seventies. And these numbers

continue to grow and grow. And the supporters are of course parents, and not just moms, but dads who love to play sports and wanted the same thing for their daughters. Emily Pickering, one of the members of the first US women's national team, is one of those parents, you know, And I tried to teach that to my daughter, and and instill in her the fact that you know, we've come a long way, and and Title nine really changed the landscape of everything for women, and it's a landscape

that is here to stay. Marrily Dean Baker, Princeton's first female athletic director, summed it up. I was called a tomboy. My daughters are called athletes. And during the nineteen nineties, many Americans became aware of just what amazing female athletes they had. That's next on the thread. At the Olympic Games in Atlanta, US women won thirty nine gold medals, including team victories in softball, basketball, and soccer. Americans started to pay attention Karen Blumenthal, and so the women all

started winning gold. And then a couple of years later, the soccer team comes around, and these women are fierce, they're good, they're muscular, they're talented, and they're winning. This was the payoff for giving women the simple opportunity to play. And then, of course comes that fateful summer day in Pasadena. Whether this one was that it continues from the roast ball and Pasadena, the one, the one that's world historians Susan Ware, ninety thousand people coming to watch a women's

sporting event. This is just enough to make any older woman's heart flutter, you know, the thought that that many people cared so much about women's sports and is barely twenty five years after the passage of Title nine, where women's sports were basically at zero. But the ninety nine did not just inspire a new audience for women's sports. Tracy noon in again. So the legacy to me is, you know, really about inspiring that next generation that this

is what women's soccer can look like. You know, it was a big moment I think for not only the young girls in this country, but also for boys and for men to understand that this is a marketable sport and it's just not something to keep the girls busy with. That impact upon men and boys has been particularly special. Tim Nash is the author of It's Not the Glory

and has covered the women's national team for decades. One of the cool things about is they actually gave fathers an opportunity to go to a sporting event with their daughters, and it was their daughters picking the event, and the level of acceptance from boys about girl soccer players just went through the roof. Kristen Press was eleven years old in the summer of I think for everyone who saw the game, it was the first time that you had

seen women in such a magnitude. Now she is a striker for the current national team, it was like, Wow, this is what we could do, this is what we're chasing after. That's so much bigger than we imagined. National team defender Crystal Dunton turned seven during the World Cup. It was hard for women to even be taken seriously already at that time, and I think them winning it and the success they've had really allowed the world to see we can play the sport. You know, it's not

just a man's game, it's it's every one's game. It is now everyone's game. And for the assistant coach, Lauren greg that is one of the beautiful things about what the nine accomplished. They had created generation. They wouldn't know any differently, and that's I think one of the things I'm most proud about. Like I have a seventeen and a twelve year old daughter. They don't know any different. But that doesn't mean that women today are treated equally.

If I just look back over my lifetime historian Susan Ware again and think about the amazing changes that have happened for women just in the past forty going on fifty years. It is a truly phenomenal amount of social change for women more broadly, and also in women's sports. And yet if you go, oh, if you go to any high school and you start asking the girls about

how are they treated, how are they teams treated? Well, when the boys team comes in third, they get announced on the p A and there's a it's a big deal. But when our volleyball team, you know, when state, nobody really pays attention. They're just all these small things that remind us that women's sports are still struggling for equality.

Karen Blumenthal. It's not as bad as in the seventies, where literally women's teams had to go home, launder their own uniforms and hand them off to another team for their next game, but it's still not equitable. Women easily make up the majority of students on American college campuses today, yet they are still often underrepresented on sports teams. Their teams still receive lower budgets and have worse facilities than their male counterparts. Nina Chaudry again, the General Council of

the National Women's Law Center. Many schools across the country are out of compliance. I sometimes say that I could throw a dart at a map, and wherever atlanted, that school would be out of compliance. There's no shortage of examples. Often we see disparities between bloys baseball fields and girls softball fields. That's a big one, because I think it's very visible when boys have press boxes and dugouts and lighting and girls have none of the above. And Nina

Chaudrey says not all women are treated equally either. While we've certainly come a long way since Title nine for women and girls of color in particular, and other groups of women who are marginalized, I think there's still even more work to do. And even at the pinnacle of women's sports, the national soccer team, things are not much better. The United States has dominated women's soccer for almost three decades thanks to Title nine and the women of the

early U S national teams. The national team has won four World Cups and four Olympic gold medals. It is successful by almost any measure you can imagine. But here in twenty nineteen, the US women are not treated the same as their male peers, not even close. Title nine has created opportunities for millions of female athletes and contributed

to the phenomenal success of the women's national team in soccer. Unfortunately, what hasn't changed is the great wage disparities and discrimination based on gender that plague our society, including in sports, and we are conducting a legal fight to try to remedy that for these great women champions. Jeffrey Kessler is an attorney at the Winston Strong Law firm who is representing the women's national team in their current legal fight

for equal pay. This morning, the US women's soccer team is making moves off the field with a gender discrimination lawsuit against their employer, the US Soccer Federation, the goal changing working conditions and what players get paid. Carly Lloyd, Alex Morgan, and Megan Repeto are the team's star athletes and among the twenty eight players named in the class action lawsuit. They actually filed it on International Women's Day

in March, alleging institutionalized gender discrimination. Caitlin Murray is a journalist and author of the National Team, The Inside Story of the Women Who Change Soccer. For a lot of the American public, something like this takes them by surprise because we see these players with these big endorsement deals and their stars and their popular and you just kind of assume that things have always been pretty good for them. But in actuality, this team has been waging similar battles

the entire time it has existed. She's right. The current national team comes from a long line of fighters. It's in their DNA were no strangers to confrontation. Just before the Olympics, the team learned that the US Soccer Federation was still unwilling to pay them anything remotely close to what the men's team received. The men were to be given bonuses if they received gold, silver, or bronze medals at the Olympics. The women would only get theirs if

they won gold. They decided they were going to boycott playing for the national team unless US Soccer offered the same bonuses that they were offering to the men's team. So nine of the team's veterans, including Mia Hamm and Michelle Acres, refused to attend training camp. Tracy Noonan, they held out they risked not going to the very first Olympics um but that was kind of a starting point of all right, we have some leverage here and we need to start to use it. Months later, the players

in US Soccer reached a compromise. In the end, US Soccer agreed to give the women a bonus if they won gold or silver, so it was still not equal to the men's bonus. The still had to fight for their rights. Even after they won the World Cup in Pasadena, the players organized their own nationwide victory tour following the World Cup because US Soccer had nothing planned. Then US Soccer threatened to sue the team to stop the tour. That's when Mia Ham, the team's best known player, dropped

a bombshell in defense of her teammates. She responded, quote, if you sue US, I'm prepared to never play for US Soccer again. The US Soccer Federation caved. Two decades later, the unfair treatment persists. For the past three years, US women's soccer games have generated more revenue than US men's games, but the women still do not enjoy a level playing field.

Team lawyer Jeffrey Kessler again, they are the more prominent television and media attraction and sponsorship attraction right now, Yet by all calculations, even putting aside the World Cup for all, there are other matches, they are making no better than sevent in terms of what the men could make. There is one important difference between the men's and women's teams,

according to Kessler, and it's not gender. The imployant difference between those teams is that the women are consistently the double one ranked team in the world and the repeated world champion, and the men have not been as successful. In May twenty nineteen, US Soccer filed its response to the team's complaint. It did not dispute that the men's and women's players are not paid equally, but it claims that those inequities are a result of quote different pay

structures for performing different work. US Soccer claims that's because the two teams negotiated separate collective bargaining agreements. Essentially that the women are comparing apples to oranges, and if the women got apples, it's because they negotiated for them. That is true, but irrelevant. Every type of wage discrimination is

agreed to by the employee. That's how you work. So just like you could not agree to a collective boggy agreement received less than the of a wage, you can't use a collective boggy agree with as a defense to say it's okay, we could justify a jedda base wage discrimination because you agreed to it. Perhaps the biggest grievance

is about bonuses for World Cup performance. Each member of the women's team, for example, or ninety dollars for reaching the quarterfinals of the World Cup this year, The men's players would receive six times that if they performed as well. The US Soccer Federation did not respond to our request to comment. One thing is certain, the current national teams drive to fight for equality is as strong as their

drive to win the World Cup. We caught up with a few of the current players in New York City just before they left to compete in the World Cup. We asked them about the challenge of trying to win on the field and in the courtroom at the same time. It's a little bit different. You know, on the field where we're focused, who are prepared to win this is midfield or Carly Lloyd, one of the team's captains. Off the field, you know, it's it's a there's a lot more that we, I think is women have to do.

We kind of have to be a lot more active than some of the male figures. On social media and you know, doing all interviews and you know, fighting for equality and the equal pay and all of these things.

The upside of the fight is huge, though, Midfield or Morgan Bryan, I do think, you know, we're pioneering women's sports and and pushing for more, and so I think that's something that we've always had in our d NA and wants to be a part of us, is that we not only are great on the field and and push along the women's game, but we're also pushing along women and the team now has a bigger platform than ever.

Striker Alex Morgan, I think this team has the capability to really create shockwaves throughout the world, and I think we have the platform to be able to do so. And now it's just following through and making sure that we're playing at our best every single day, because this is going to be the most challenging World Cup that we've ever played in. Many worried before the World Cup that the lawsuit would be a distraction and hinder the

team's performance. The team's attorney, James Kessler, well, is that a distraction to be? I don't have to trade the play of the World Cup. So we have a very good division of labor will take care of the legal side. They can take care of the plague side, and hopefully we'll achieve victories on both sides. The U S women did take care of the playing side this summer and did what they do best, win World Cups. That's it us. When's up pot World Cup, the World Cup party can

officially start. Now US defeats Netherlands by the score, do nothing, and now it's time to see if they can win on the legal side, and if the team does manage, as Kessler puts it, to achieve victory on both sides, I think it would be huge. It would send a message to girls and women everywhere, empower them to speak

up uh and ask for what they're entitled to. Nina Chaudhry of the Women's National Law Center again, for them to stand up and say that they should get better and that they're demanding better, I think it's really powerful and will inspire others to do that as well. But when it comes to the legal side of things, says Kessler, there's something even more important than inspiration precedent. This is an incredibly important issue, not just for the women's national team,

not just for women in sports, but for women. This is really the first case I'm aware of and gender based discrimination of professional sports. We're going to be that pedcess the case I hope for others. But it is merely the latest battle in a long running struggle for equality. What would Bunny Sandler, the godmother of Title nine we covered in episode four, think about the national team's current

legal battle her daughter Deborrah Sandler. She would be absolutely insistent that the women have the same status, the same pay, the same awards, the same facility at these the same opportunities that the men have. That would be what she would really want, and that's what she was fighting for all along. It's what the nine were fighting for two and it's a fight that still inspires current national team

captain Alex Morgan. Again, this is all of us, you know, looking at these ninety niners and the fact that they paved the way so much, and you know, we are so grateful for what they did in the sport for us, and now it's up to us to continue to pay that way. I love Himer. Whatever she hands me, I'm

handing her back with the hope of championship quality. This is poly Murray again, the civil rights pioneer from episode five, whose legal scholarship was behind everything from Brown Versus Board of Education to Title nine, and so so many of my heroes have been the champions, the Jackie Robinson's, the people who climbed over and said, I'll show you, I'll show you. If only Polly Murray could have seen the ninety niners and the current national team show the world

what a champion looks like. If only she could have seen them fighting for victory both on and off the field. That's the only reason why the team is where it is today, because they have been waging these sort of fights and battles all along. Journalist Caitlin Murray again. They have had setbacks over and over again on the field, and then you know, off the field, they've had legal battles and boycotts and other problems. But the team always

recovers from these things. They always find a way to progress forward and a way to inspire a new generation. During the final, I was in my living room and I was on the floor with my my hands, you know, like my head perched in my hands, just watching with my dad. Becky sower Brunn is a leading defender on the current team and a lead plaintiff in the team teams lossuit. She's telling her own version of a story

that thousands of Americans can tell. And what I felt when they won basically was the reason that I wanted to be a soccer player. I wanted to experience with those women were experiencing on the field because they just looked so happy, and I wanted to know what that felt like. But that was then and this is now. As they say, forget about the nine for a moment and where you might have been when Brandy Chastain's penalty kick hit the gold net. That's probably not the question

your friends will ask you in twenty years. That's not what your daughters and sons will remember. No, the question will be where were you that glorious summer of when the U S women's national soccer team dazzled millions with their play, when they attracted a whole new generation of soccer fans, when they can in you the fight of those like Bunny Sandler and Paully Murray, when they stood up for women everywhere and change the course of history forever.

Where were you then? Made its shame wasn't built in a day Curious. The Thread is written and hosted by me Sean Braswell. It was produced by Robert Coulos and Shannon Williamson. Evan Roberts edited our show, and it was mixed and mastered by Matt Tamarillo. Special thanks to Face Lessenger, Tracy Moran and Carly Stern, and a big thanks as well to the folks at Fox Sports for allowing us

to use some of their World Cup interview footage. This season features the song let Us Play, written and performed by Tea cut Gin. You can hear more of their songs at teacup gin dot com. To learn more about The Thread, visit Aussie dot com, Slash the Threat all one Word, and make sure to subscribe to The Thread on Apple Podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you get your podcasts