Too Strong for a Woman

every moment and every opportunity in a match. It was definitely harder than anyone could have ever anticipated. The first members of the women's national team played for little pay and even less recognition. They were just happy to have the chance to play the game they loved, something that the female athletes who came before them had not enjoyed

in America. Back in my day in high school, which I know is a difficult concept for younger women to understand right now, but there were no teams for girls. There are no sports teams for girls in my high school. Then in nineteen seventy two, thanks to a law called Title nine that banned sex discrimination and education, everything started to change. The doors gradually begin to open as people begin to talk about equal opportunity for girls and women,

and including women in sports. Once these doors open, women just charged through. But just charging through was not enough. Many institutions in America were reluctant to put women on a level playing field with their male peers, especially when it came to sports. Then an unforgettable protest from the members of the Yale Women's crew team caught the attention of the country. They had Title nine and blue marker on breasts and backs, and they dropped trout Title nine.

The law that the Yale women wanted enforced was far from inevitable. It came into being because of the efforts of several key players off the field. To get a bill that banded sex discrimination passed. Was an incredible feat, one that required not just political muscle and persistence, but a whole lot of strategy, subtlety, and smarts. Pagney pirates to the stage, Way Haney, We're making ways. The generation

comes of page The Sandler points the way. Let us play, let us play, let us play, let us play let us play. I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to the Threat of podcast from Ozzie When Bernice Sandler died in January nine, at the age of ninety, she was fondly remembered as the godmother of Title nine, and she deserved that title. Without Sandler's efforts, the landmark law would never have gotten off the ground. My mother was unbelievably bright. This is

Deborah Sandler, one of Bernice Sandler's daughters. She actually went by Bunny. That was her nickname, so I'll probably refer to her as Bunny when I talked about her in this Bunny Sandler was born in nineteen twenty eight in New York, the daughter of Jewish immigrants. They were, you know, fairly traditional in a lot of ways, so you know, my mother kind of grew up thinking that she would, you know, get married as one does and have children as one does. And Bunny Sandler did as one does.

She got married, and she had two children, and then once her daughters were teenagers, she did something a bit more unconventional for a woman of her time. She went to school and decided she was going to be a psychologist or a therapist. So she got a doctor in counseling and did extremely well in school. At the age of forty one, Dr Bunny Sandler started to apply for

teaching positions. She had an impeccable resume, a master's degree from City College in New York, a doctorate from the University of Maryland, and it just so happened that there were seven open positions at Maryland, a place she had already been teaching as a graduate student. Sandler was turned down for all seven of the positions. She was told, you don't really need this job because you have a

husband supporting you. And she was told, you know, you've been out of work too long because you were home raising children, so you're not really right for this job. The frustrated Sandler went looking for more answers. This is the late Bunny Sandler in a interview talking about what happened next. So I went and asked one of my friends on the faculty without missing a beat, h he said, well, let's face it, you come on too strong for a woman. And I went home and I cried, and my then

husband was really very good. He said, are there strong men in the department? And I said yes, And he said, then it's not you with sex discrimination. And it took me a while to realize that's what it was, and then I got mad. The University of Maryland picked the wrong woman to piss off Deborah Sandler again. My mother was a badass. She had, I think, a sense of righteous outrage whenever something was just not just, when something wasn't fair. Bunny Sandler's sense of justice began in school

when she was a young girl. The boys got to do things like clap the erasers to get the chalk dusk out. The girls were not allowed to do that, and she complained about that. Sandler's outrage didn't stop when she got older. After she was rejected for the teaching positions in Maryland, Sandler started to do what she did best research. She assumed that since sex discrimination was wrong, it would also be illegal. She was mistaken at the time. In nineteen sixty nine, there were no laws banning sex

discrimination and education. But Sandler found something almost as good as a law. She was looking at an executive order and saw that the word sex was in there, and just literally, you know, cried out loud with discovery and delight. It was Executive Order one one two four six to be precise, signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in ninety eight. The order banned federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, and sex. An actual

ban on sex discrimination. Sandler couldn't believe it, and because colleges received federal funds, the president's executive order also applied to them. It was just that American colleges weren't obeying it. But in order to bring a legal action to hold the school's accountable, Bunny Sandler needed examples of sex discrimination to prove her case. Lots of examples, so she put her research skills to work, and she began to talk to other women at the University of Maryland, where she

had gone about their experiences. Karen Blumenthal is a journalist and author of Let Me Play, The Story of Title nine, the law that changed the future of girls in America. She began to expand her research and talked to women all around the country who had earned advanced degrees and then found themselves shut out in the workplace. Sandler compiled a lengthy report documenting sex discrimination and college hiring, pay, financial aid, and more. Then she started filing complaints against

colleges with the U S Department of Justice. Sandler charged the colleges with violating Executive Order one, one, two, four six. She filed complaints against every college and university in the country, more than two hundred and fifty in total. She didn't stop there. She sent copies of the eight page complaint to newspapers and other media outlets. Then she has several hundred copies printed and she sends them to every congressional office.

One of the members of Congress who received a copy of Bunny Sandler's complaint was Edith Green, a congresswoman from Oregon. It was a kind of fortuitous meeting of the two and she begins to work for Edith Green and helped provide information for her. Bunny Sandler's exhaustive research had put every college in the country on the hot seat. Now, with the help of Edith Green, her efforts were about to change the law itself. Then helped level the playing

field for millions of American women. Edith Green was a Democratic congressperson from Oregon, and she was first elected in nineteen fifty five. Susan Ware is a historian an author of Game Set Match, Billy Jane King and the Revolution in Women's Sports. To be a woman and to get elected to Congress in the midst of an era we think of as just the height of domesticity. Uh, that's quite an accomplishment. Green, a former teacher, helped create the

first community colleges. She helped fund new libraries in rural areas. People in Washington started to call her Mrs Education. Then Green started to realize there was something more she could do for American education and for women. Author Karen Blumenthal, So, in the nineteen sixties, Edith Green is holding hearings and listening to some uh superintendent's talk about programs they had

to keep boys from dropping out of high school. And she's listening to them, and she's says, wait a minute, did I hear you say you had programs only for boys to keep them from dropping out of high school? And they said, oh yes, And she said, well, what about girls? And they said, oh, well, you know, they don't really need high school degrees. They're just going to become housewives and mothers. And this was shocking to her.

She couldn't imagine that this was legal. Green started to focus her attention on how women and girls were treated differently in education. Susan Ware Again, back in nineteen seventy there were a lot of people who literally did not believe that there was such a thing as sex discrimination in higher education, and they needed to be shown that this was in fact a problem. But to show her fellow members of Congress the problem, Green needed evidence. Enter

Bunny Sandler. Sandler provided Green with the data she had gathered on sex discrimination. She supplied the names of dozens of witnesses who could testify to that discrimination. In the summer of nineteen seventy, Edith Green called the first Congressional subcommit De hearings to address the issue. The congressional hearings were such a good place to do this, to gather all this information so it couldn't be dismissed as oh,

that's just one anecdote or that's just one incident. To build the pattern, to really show people that this was in fact a serious issue. For seven days, Green solicited testimony about how women were being denied opportunities on campuses across the country, from admissions to employment. For example, at the time, most American law schools and medical schools limited women to less than ten percent of their student bodies, and even those women who did earn graduate degrees found

it nearly impossible to get jobs. Green found such facts astonishing, and of course her point behind it is saying to them, look at all the wasted woman power, all these women who have these graduate degrees or who want to have professional careers, who aren't being hired. Why aren't we given them a cha ants. Green invited college administrators to testify on the issue of sex discrimination. No one accepted her invitation, no newspapers covered the hearings, and no one really paid attention.

But Green had her evidence. Now came the hard part, getting a bill banning sex discrimination through a nearly all male Congress that did not think sex discrimination was a problem. Edan Green was up for the challenge. She knew that a larger higher education bill was about to come before the House Education Committee that dealt with issues like financial aid and school bussing. Green sees the opportunity Karen Blumenthal.

Edith Green was a strategist. She knew that you had to work the system well, and she saw an opportunity to get into this Higher Education Act and amendment that would outlaw discrimination against women, and so Green went to work. She waits until the whole full House Committee on Education is together to propose this amendment to outlaw sex discrimination

and education. And she does it because she has some great allies in this committee, including Shirley Chisholm, the first African American women in Congress, Patsy Mink, the first woman of color and Congress, and some other supporters. Not everyone in the House Committee was receptive to the need to address sex discrimination. The men in the committee, who are most of the members of the committee, think this is hilarious. Um.

It just seems absurd to them. I mean, of course women should go to school, but they shouldn't go, you know, to Harvard Um. And one of them gets very tickled at the idea that you might have male stewardess is. After the laughter died down, a majority of the committee's thirty five members approved the bill, including Title nine. The

next battleground was the Full House of Representatives. Supporters of the women's rights movement and Green's allies in Congress asked her what they could do to help get the bill passed. She advised them to do nothing. Green told them, nobody knows what's in this bill. If you start asking questions lobbying for it, they're going to ask questions. Susan Ware they didn't want to draw too much attention to it.

In some ways, it was a better tactic to just include some of these writers or pieces of legislation and then have people vote on them and really not engaged too much about what they might actually do. The House started to consider the education bill for days. Members of Congress debated. The hot button issues like school bussing, and the question of sex discrimination flew under the radar. Then a powerful constituency took notice of Title nine, Karen Blumenthal.

And it turns out that there are some people in the US who were opposed to it, and those are namely the Ivy League universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale. All of them are a guest at this idea that now, if this law passes, they may have to accept women. The Ivy League schools weren't the only ones opposed to Title nine. In the New York Times when it was being debated in the House, actually ran an editorial where they opposed this amendment, saying, you know, men and women have different

needs and ambitions. Green eventually gave in. She agreed to support an amendment to address the Ivy League's concerns with the bill, and their compromise is that they will outlaw sex discrimination at public schools, including in the admissions of undergraduates, but not at private schools like Harvard and Yale and Notre Dame, and even today, in the fine print on the application to any of those schools there is a little disclaimer that says undergraduate admissions are not covered under

Title nine of the Higher Education Act of nineteen seventy two. Under the law, they still can make decisions based on gender. You heard that correctly. Ivy League colleges lobbied Congress to let them discriminate against women, and they succeeded. Green lost that battle, but she knew that she could still win

the war. The slim down Title nine passed the House, it was time now for a second showdown in the US Senate, and it was in the in it that the subject of women's sports came up for the first time. Once the House approved Title nine, it was time for the U. S. Senate to consider it. Thus far, the subject of sports had not come out in the discussions of the bill. This was partly by design Edith Green knew what she was doing. Green had been very careful not to make sports part of the debate over Title

nine in the House. Committee hearings. She knew the subject might end up overshadowing the broader intent of the bill. Historian Susan Ware. One thing that's important to remember about Title nine is that it wasn't originally about women's athletics. It was about the general discrimination that women faced in higher education, author Karen Blumenthal. In the Senate, this issue was taken up by Senator birch By from Indiana. At the time, or at least part of this time, there

was only one woman in the Senate. I've had young people say to me, um, well, what are the women in a Senate say? Well, there was one. Birch By, who died in March nineteen, played a key role in Title nine's passage. The liberal senator from Indiana was a crusader for equal rights and expanding access in education. This is By in a nineteen sixty nine injury and I think we need you need to make educational opportunity available

for more and more people. We need to give the young people of our state the best education we can. And birch By was one of the few male senators at the time that included women in such pronouncements. It was in the Senate debate on Title nine that the issue of college sports finally came up. It started when Senator By was questioned by his colleague, Senator Peter Dominic

of Colorado. Dominic wanted to know how broad the ban on sex discrimination in colleges would be with locker rooms and dormitories now have to go co ed. By was quick to reassure his colleague, um, no, he makes clear, this is not about locker rooms. It's not about co ed dormitories. Then somebody says, well, you know, is this

going to allow girls to play football? And again is laughter because again that's hilarious, and By assures and that, no, this is not intended to, um, you know, allow girls to play football, to which Senator Dominic jokingly replied, if I may say so, I would have had much more fun playing college football if it had been integrated. More chuckles ensued from the Senate gallery. And that was it. And so that's really the only discussion of sports, and all the debate in the House and in the Senate,

this one little exchange about locker rooms and football. The Senate voted to pass the bill, including Title nine. It was time to make history. That's next on the thread. Title nine was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on June twenty three. It was a truly historic piece of legislation, but nobody really noticed Author Karen Blumenthal, and it got almost no attention. You know, a line here,

maybe a secondary story inside there um. So people were hardly aware that there was this amendment in this huge education bill that outlawed discrimination based on sex. The next day, The New York Times devoted just one sentence to the part of the bill that outlawed sex discrimination, a single bullet point that read simply, the bill would take federal assistance away from any graduate school or public undergraduate college

that discriminated against women in its admissions policies. Historian Susan ware it was just another piece of legislation, not unworthy, but not really all that noteworthy. Plus another development in the nation's capital was starting to dominate the news. I'm always struck by the fact that the actual Title nine legislation was signed into law by President Richard Nixon one week after the Watergate burglary that would eventually topple his presidency. So a lot was going on in Washington in June

of nineteen seventy two. A few people might have noticed at the time, but thanks to Title nine, a new era in America had begun, and today, nearly half a century later, it is impossible not to notice the impact of the law and of its proponents, like Bunny Sandler. Sandler became known as the godmother of Title nine. She continued to fight against sex discrimination long after Title nine

was on the books. Historian Susan ware she made a career out of something that didn't even exist when she first started um, but it was a perfect match to her talents, both in terms of conceptualizing an issue, gathering data, and then trying to see a pragmatic way forward with legislation and political persuasion to try and change that situation. It was a profession that required a balance between dogged

determination and civility. Again, Bunny Sandler's daughter, Deborah, she was never one of those people who would be out in the streets screaming at people. She that just wasn't her style, you know. She really believed in being um, civilized and polite and working within the system. Sandler also demonstrated plenty of persistence over the years. At one point she was supposed to go I think to Michigan to give a speech, and um, she said to the woman who had arranged

for it, well, um, I don't fly. What's the train schedule? Because my mother at the time was afraid of flying. And the woman said to her, Girlie, you get on that plane or get the hell out of the movement. She's just well, okay, I'm gonna have to learn how not to be scared of planes. So she got on the plane and she eventually became a million mile flyer with United Airlines with all the business travel she did,

and got totally comfortable with flying. Sandler gave more than three thousand presentations across the country, including many of the colleges she had once filed suit against, and she continued to advocate for women's rights and social justice right up until her death. Sandler never anticipate paid when she first started what an impact her work would have, including on

the world of sports. I know that she was surprised and utterly delighted over the years to see um all the expanding opportunities for girls and women in sports as a result of Title nine. In on the fort anniversary of Title nine, Sandler was honored all over the country. The University of Louisville had a special celebration during halftime of a packed basketball game. Sandler was presented with flowers and a plaque at half court, and then she was

given something even more special. Dr Sandler lastly here to thank you in person. The captains are joined by their distinguished alumni and current teammates. One after another, the captains of the women's sports teams at Louisville walk onto the basketball court team Captain Katie McDonald, and the women of soccer team Captain Aaron Conrad, and the women of field hockey. Each captain walks up to Sandler, give her a hug, and presents her with a T shirt. We are the

notes of your symphony. The shirts from our captains bear the name of every woman that ever played at the University of Louisville. Your impact is unparalleled, and it lives on and on, and Sandler's impact and that of Title nine has gone far beyond sports. Here's Sandler again in interview. I think the real surprise has been that it's been like a social revolution, and we didn't know that at the beginning. We thought it was just a little bit

discrimination here and there. But It's a social revolution that will have as much impact as the industrial Revolution, and the reach of that revolution continues to be felt. Sandler's daughter, Deborah, is now a family lawyer in California. It's possible I would not have ended up a lawyer if it was not for my mother, because one of the things that happened with Title nine is that there was an opening of opportunities for women and girls all over the place.

You know, when I was a little girl, girls weren't lawyers. That didn't happen by the time I decided I was going to go to law school, thirty or fort of my graduating class where women. Sandler's efforts changed the composition of college campuses and workplaces. They gave millions of girls and women the chance to play organized sports. She always said to herself when she was a little girl, you know, and and later also she always said, I wanted to

change the world. And as she got older and was looking back on her life, she said, I always wanted to change the world, and I did. The women behind Title nine, like Bunny Sandler and Edith Green, could not have changed the world without another trailblazer working behind the scenes. I am radical to the extent that I want to see the individual human being as free as is possible to to fulfill that individual human beings potential. Dr Polly Murray was a civil rights leader well ahead of her time.

Murray realized early on she was different from most other people she met. She was mixed race, she was transgender. It was often hard for her to find acceptance. But I think one of the great things about Polly Murray is that while she could easily have been crushed by all of the rejection that she met, she turned this sense of being in between into one of the most

important ideas of the twentieth century. Polly Murray knew that it was just as wrong to discriminate against someone because of their sex as it was to do so because of their race. So she set out to change how lawyers and the law thought about sex discrimination, and Dr Murray's unheralded efforts paved the way for Title nine and so much more that we take for granted today. What I always say is, while she might not have been a woman of her time, she is certainly a woman

of our time. Let us play, let us play, let us. The Thread is produced by Robert Coulos Shannon Williamson and me Sean braswell. Evan Roberts engineered our show. This episode features the song let Us Play, written and performed by teacup 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 thread 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.