Fifty years ago, pioneering men and women fought for the passage of Title IX.
They knew their efforts would pay off by giving girls and women like us opportunities that our mothers and grandmothers didn't have. The results have been profound. An entire ecosystem of youth sports for girls has flourished, giving countless women the same opportunity to develop critical skills to achieve workplace equality with their male peers.
A recent Ernst & Young study found that 94% of female business executives participated in sports as children, making sports participation the most direct path to business success in adulthood.
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Lia Thomas looks on after finishing fifth in the 200-yard freestyle at the NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships at the McAuley Aquatic Center on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta on March 18, 2022 . (Mike Comer/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
As former college swimmers, we know that achievements don't happen by accident. It takes work, dedication, perseverance and sacrifices. We learned this when we were little girls, we would get up at 4:30 am to go swim practice and then return to the pool that afternoon to continue working and master our art. We learned this in the recruiting process, where each of us earned a spot on the swim teams of our dream schools, where we were able to continue pursuing our dreams at a higher level.
Despite this, it was not until 2020 that we realized how much we had taken for granted the opportunities that Title IX offered us.
Today, as we approach the 52nd anniversary of the landmark anti-discrimination law, women's sporting opportunities are under attack.
The Biden administration has proposed new rules that would require schools to allow trans athletes to compete on teams that align with their gender identity, unless the school can demonstrate that allowing men who identify as women on women's teams would undermine “fairness in competition” or “security.”
But what about equity of opportunity? What could be more unfair than telling an athlete that she didn't make the team because the team had a male body?
President Biden addresses the National Action Network convention remotely from the White House on April 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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It is precisely this form of injustice (lack of equal opportunity) that Title IX was passed to address. And yet, proponents of the new rule are perfectly happy to take women's opportunities and give them to men.
Sadly, the party that once prided itself on promoting greater opportunities for women is now actively working to undermine these benefits in the name of “inclusion.”
In fact, all 51 Democratic US senators recently voted against the amendment on the protection of women and girls in Olympic and amateur sports, which would help protect women's sports at the Olympic level. The irony should be painfully obvious to anyone with a brain. Or a heart, at any rate.
For us, this is not a theoretical question; It is something that was forced in our faces. And we mean it literally.
Not only were we forced to compete against swimmer Lia Thomas, but we were also forced to watch this 6-foot-4 man with man parts undress in our locker room. To be perfectly clear, the anatomy we and many other women were forced to look at confirms that he is a man. We were constantly informed that there were no undressing protections that any man who simply asserted a woman's identity would not have access to.
Paula Scanlan, left, and Riley Gaines attend the premiere of “Lady Ballers” on November 29, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Jason Davis/Getty Images for Bentkey Ventures)
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We don't seek sympathy with our stories, we seek action. President Biden has proposed changing Title IX to allow men who identify as women to participate and destroy the integrity of women's sports. Not only is this widely unfair, it is also discrimination on the basis of sex. Enough is enough.
Those before us gifted us Title IX, and we will fight tirelessly to give it to the young girls who dream of winning at an elite level like we once did.
Riley Gaines is an ambassador for the Independent Women's Forum, director of the Riley Gaines Center, host of the OutKick Podcast “Gains for Girls” and former 12-time All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky. Paula Scanlan is an ambassador for the Independent Women's Forum and a former swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania.
