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In their book, Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano emphasize the importance of eliminating gender inequality in sport by highlighting the benefits of athletic participation for females. Their main focus, however, is on what they believe is the most negative consequence of this inequity, that is, the promotion of women's secondary status in other valued social realms, such as politics and business. According to the authors, three key factors determine one's position and prestige in American society--winning, power, and money--each of which is more closely associated with men than women. The institution of sport, they claim, is pivotal not only in reifying these masculine associations but also in promoting perceptions that male dominance in athletics and other sociopolitical realms is biologically grounded. Sex segregation in sport further naturalizes sex difference by obscuring the overlap in athletic ability of females and males across the recreational-to-elite sport spectrum.
The authors argue that female participation in sport, particularly in integrated (coed) sports, is the pathway to gender equality and that the "separate but equal" mandate, (i.e., men and women must compete with and against their own sex) restricts this possibility. McDonagh and Pappano rightfully claim that the separation of men's and women's sports is rooted not in actual physical differences between the sexes but, rather, in antiquated and erroneous beliefs that women are weaker, more physically vulnerable, and less athletically capable than men. Thus, according to the authors, if women were allowed to compete in athletics alongside men according to their abilities, profound changes in social ideology and practice would follow.
McDonagh and Pappano acknowledge that Title IX has been critical in advancing gender equity in sport. The intent of Title IX was to provide females with the same educational opportunities that previously had been guaranteed to white men under the GI Bill of Rights in 1944 and to African-American men via the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Although Title IX has increased female involvement in sport at the...