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Progress and Challenges in Women's Sports Outlined in Talk by Catharine Stimpson
 Catharine Stimpson is one of the pioneers of women's studies in higher education. She is also, by her own account, a professional sports fan. As both a feminist and a fan, she sees significant advances along with challenges in the ongoing struggle for gender equity in athletics. One positive development, she says, is the fact that more and more fathers have become advocates for their daughters' participation in sports.
In an October 20 talk titled "The Atalanta Syndrome: Women, Sports and Cultural Values," Stimpson used the legend of the great female hunter and athlete Atalanta to highlight progress and goals in this area. Stimpson was a founder of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. While at Barnard, Stimpson founded Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , which remains to this day a premier women's studies journal and a cutting-edge resource for feminist scholarship. She is currently University Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Science at New York University. She was the inaugural lecturer in a new series established to honor the late Helen Pond McIntyre, a 1948 Barnard graduate and Trustee of the College.
Stimpson admitted that feminists have feared sports because of the traditional associations with masculine aggression and violence, and even war.
Despite Title IX and the fact that women make up 56 percent of all undergraduate college students in the United States, spending on male athletic programs continues to dwarf the budget for women's sports, she noted. Only 36 percent of athletic operating budgets and 32 percent of sports recruiting dollars are devoted to women's sports, she said.
However, on a positive note, Title IX has boosted high school girls' participation in sports, from 294,000 in 1971 to 2.8 million today.
And, more significantly, said Stimpson, is the fact that "more and more fathers are taking an active role in their daughter's athletic involvement."
"Today, more and more fathers are bringing suits under Title IX to give their daughters better high school sports facilities and training," she said. "We have softball dads as well as soccer moms. The transmittal of the culture of sports from father to son has been broadened to include daughters."
Stimpson views developments such as these with particular optimism because, she said, sports in our culture "pass on to us our authority figures, our celebrities, our heroes and heroines, our epic narratives and legends; and some of our values."
She lamented, however, the increased sexualization of women athletes.
She noted a pioneering study of the media guide cover photographs of the Division I schools of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which the schools themselves distribute, found that during the 1990s, the covers changed to have a rough parity of men's and women's sports, but the images of women were more apt to be gender stereotyped and "sexually suggestive."
"Let our Atalantas be champions," she said, "but have them emanate sexual charisma as well. Let her be swifter and stronger, let her go higher, but let her have glamour, allure."
She referred to images from this past summer's Olympic coverage which, in her opinion, oversexualized the champions of sport, especially the media's habit of overusing images of women soccer players removing their jerseys in celebration.
Stimpson also expressed concern about the implications of genetic engineering for the athletics of the future.
She noted that "gene doping," intended to strengthen muscles for medical purposes, is also a dream come true for athletes. "What, we must ask, are the meanings and consequences of such engineering to our construction of the human? To which athletes are these technologies available? Are we practicing a form of neo-eugenics, in which we seek to breed a superior race, based not on race but on the capacities to perform competitively? If so, what are the costs?"
Lastly, she was troubled about the responsibility of educational institutions to keep athletics in their proper place. She wondered whether colleges, with some Division I schools paying their football coaches upwards of $1 million per year, can continue to support libraries as opposed to football stadiums or admit student athletes at the expense of offering financial aid to deserving students.
"Will we work to reassert the primacy of academics over sports? And confront alumni and legislative and trustee anger?" she asked.
Helen McIntyre served Barnard in an unbroken sequence from her student days as Undergraduate President of the college: in 1975, she became President of the Alumnae Association and served as a trustee from that time, including a term as Vice Chairman of the Board, until her death in 2002. The lectureship is a gift of Eleanor Thomas Elliott, trustee emerita, Helen McIntyre's classmate and friend, and perpetual Barnard colleague.
Planned to be an annual Center event, the lectureship will bring to Barnard a scholar who has made an extraordinary contribution to the field of women's studies, and is a way to honor permanently her devotion to her college and to education for women.
To read the complete lecture, click here. For more information, please contact Glenn Slavin in the Barnard Office of Public Affairs, (212) 854-7522, gslavin@barnard.edu
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