This comes as no suprise to me nor should it to you. The area that it is most obvious on this day in on the ice where girls and women's hockey gets the short end of the proverbial, metaphorical and actual stick.
Tu Thanh Ha and Hayley Mick file a story early this morning for the Friday edition of the Globe and Mail that illustrates the need for Title IX type action by the federal government in Canada.
What Title IX is is a wonderful law in the United States that simply says that if you spend a dollar on a boy you have to spend a dollar on a girl. It is an educational tool but it has been applied the most to sports, specifically at the NCAA level. Title IX took hold in about 1972 and for those of you who are geyser enough to recall, back in those days girls really didn't play sports like now. What Title IX did was force the schools to start building women's teams in basketball and soccer and hockey and cheerleading to try to achieve balance. This has had a trickle down effect and is the big reason why girls are playing these sports today: to feed the NCAA machine.
It is a brilliant law and one that, even though schools with football teams are perpetually in non compliance with, has taken women's sports from being virtually non existent to ESPN.
Opportunity and hope is what it has provided and for the majority of girls who morph into women who aren't good enough or don't want to play college sports it gives them a life long love for the thrill of playing along with the health benefits that come with.
But boys will become men and men have a sense of entitlement when it comes to sport especially hockey, no matter what Toronto mayor David Miller says. He says " It's 2009. It is not 30 years ago. Girls' hockey is extremely popular and the girls have a right to play " The prevailing view in the industry is not that though, it is this from an arena operator in Nova Scotia who told the Globe and Mail that you "Can't kick out customers who have been coming back for 15 years and replace them with new customers which may or may not be women." This in a Nova Scotia where only 10 per cent of rinks have a policy in place to serve women.
That is why we need a Canadian version of Title IX.
Women do count.
WFDS
We also need an olympic version, for ski jumpers.
ReplyDeletes
This coming from a party that patronizes women with such brilliant strategies such as "Pink Book III". If they are equal then you should treat them as equals.
ReplyDeleteUh, Anonymous, I am not the Liberal Party, and I never heard of Pink Book I or Pink Book II let alone Pink Book III.
ReplyDeleteBut I am right about this, give me that.
And sign your name.
WFDS
Sorry about the insult. I thought since you were on the Lib blogroll that you were a Lib.
ReplyDeletePink book 3 here
http://www.liberal.ca/pdf/docs/pinkbook_en.pdf
The problem with ice time is better addressed by building more facilities.I agree that in the short term that forcing other leagues out of prime time is the answer but only temporarily.
It is not just women that have rights but men, all minorities and religious groups etc. What happens when the Muslim league ask for fair ice time? What about disabled kids? You get my point,I hope.Even if you don't agree with me.
David
Uh, let me clear that up, part two.
ReplyDeleteDavid I am a Liberal. I would be a card carrying Liberal if they ever got around to sending the cards. But I pay to be in the party; the party does not pay me.
So I am biased, but not a lap dog.
Thanks for your comments.
WFDS