![]() ![]() Our work is based on the premise that sport has a unique ability to build girls’ leadership skills and address limiting gender norms at the community level. Women Win is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that uses sport as a strategy to empower adolescent girls to achieve their rights. Their research shows that sport made women “physically and mentally stronger and promoted emotional development.” In that way, they add, “sports participation fosters independence and initiative.” 2 1 Phoebe Clarke and Ian Ayres of Yale Law School write in the Journal of Socio-Economics that athletic competitions “create forums for individual success,” and this appetite for achievement appears to last well into adulthood. Recent research suggests that sport participation for girls has a causal effect on their social lives as adults. The impact of Title IX transcends the playing field. ![]() Over 40 years later, Title IX has been credited with reducing the gap in girls’ sport participation in the United States from 1 in 27 to 1 in 3. One of the most significant implications of the law was the mandate to fund men’s and women’s sport programmes equally. In 1972, the United States enacted a law known as Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, which made discrimination on the basis of sex illegal for any institution receiving federal funding. History shows us, however, that when we make sporting space equitable, what becomes possible for girls and women expands exponentially. The strategy of using sport to improve gender outcomes is transgressive and unlikely. ![]() It is precisely this stark gender imbalance that makes sport a prime lever to accelerate extreme changes in gender equity globally. This is evidenced by the fact that less than 1 per cent of voting members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the governing body of the world’s most popular sport, are women. Even in the most visible sporting environments, arcane attitudes and practices persist. A girl in Mumbai, India, is still most often not welcome to step up to bat at the local cricket ground. It is the place where discrimination against women and male domination are broadly considered reasonable and acceptable, despite the right to sport being enshrined in international conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is, arguably, one of the last frontiers of gender equity. Sport, however, is not one of those spaces. We are at a point in history where it is possible to find gender-equitable spaces in the world. ![]()
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