Feminist Law Professors

An article entitled “Equal Cheers for Boys and Girls Draw Some Boos” in today’s NYT reports:

Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls’ basketball team as well as the boys’, more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.

The eight remaining cheerleaders now awkwardly adjust their routines for whichever team is playing here on the home court :”Hands Up You Guys”becomes”Hands Up You Girls”: to comply with a new ruling from federal education officials interpreting Title IX, the law intended to guarantee gender equality in student sports.

“It feels funny when we do it,”said Amanda Cummings, 15, the cheerleading co-captain, who forgot the name of a female basketball player mid-cheer last month.

Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.

But the ruling has left many people here and across the New York region booing, as dozens of schools have chosen to stop sending cheerleaders to away games, as part of an effort to squeeze all the home girls’ games into the cheerleading schedule.

Boys’ basketball boosters say something is missing in the stands at away games, cheerleaders resent not being able to meet their rivals on the road, and even female basketball players being hurrahed are unhappy. …

I’m a Gamecocks basketball fan, and I have to admit that I attend far more men’s games than women’s, because I like the stadium crowds, and the feeling of being part of the University community that the large fan base following men’s basketball generates. And, it’s fun to read about our team in the NYT, even when we lose badly. But I have to say, I’ve never seem the point of female cheerleaders doing complicated dance or gymnastics routines. Neither seems to inspire the audience very much, and I’ve always assumed they were performed largely to justify calling cheerleading a “sport” for Title IX compliance purposes. There are men on the squad too, but the male Gamecocks’ cheerleaders tend to be stocky, and they get to wear full coverage clothing. They hoist the female cheerleaders up over their heads several times each game, it is true, but the women lift each other up as well. The NYT article linked above notes:

Cheerleading has long been a source of contention. Some women’s sports advocates complain that schools count it as a varsity sport as a sneaky way to increase the numbers of the female side of the athletic department balance sheet without changing historic disparities. Others see the varsity letters as a mark of respect for the athletic and acrobatic feats the squads perform.

At University of South Carolina basketball games the Gamecocks’ pep band generally does a far better job of engaging the audience than the cheerleaders do, and while the cheerleaders are overwhelmingly white and female, the band members are a bit more varied in size, shape, gender and skin color. They play up tempo music, they stamp their feet and clap at appropriate times, and they generally make the stadium atmosphere more fun and exciting. They demonstrate at every home game that generating enthusiasm from fans doesn’t require flips, dips or pyramids by extremely thin women in tight, revealing costumes. The South Carolina soccer and volleyball teams do great without cheerleaders; I’m sure football and basketball players could get by without them somehow!

The NYT article makes it sound like cheerleaders are being forced upon girls’ sports teams, and I don’t doubt that some of the relevant high school female basketball players have expressed disinterest in having cheerleaders at their games. They may feel, as I did when I was in high school, that cheerleaders are rather pointless and silly. I was happy to cheer for my high school teams from the stands when I attended games, mostly to support friends, but I also played varsity sports myself, and I thought this made me superior to the pom-pom shakers. The possibility of having cheerleaders cheering for me never crossed my mind. The NYT article further states:

Rosie Pudish, the parent who filed the original complaint, said she did so even though her own daughter, Keri, a varsity basketball player at Johnson City High School, did not particularly want cheerleaders at her games.

Then why would she do this, given she must have known that it would bring her a lot of personal abuse?

Ms. Pudish said that as many as 60 cheerleaders, along with their friends and parents, would attend the boys’ games, injecting a level of excitement and spirit that was missing from the girls’ contests.

“It sends the wrong message that girls are second-class athletes and don’t deserve the school spirit, that they’re just little girls playing silly games and the real athletes are the boys,”said Ms. Pudish, an accountant who works for the federal government.

The National Women’s Law Center seems to agree, as the article reports:

Federal education officials would not specify how many Title IX complaints concerning cheerleading the Office for Civil Rights is investigating. But a spokesman said the department received 64 complaints nationwide last year concerning unequal levels of publicity given to girls’ and boys’ teams : which includes the issue of cheerleading : most from New York state. That compares with a total of 28 such complaints over the previous four years.

In September, the Prince George’s County, Md., public schools agreed to provide publicity equally for its male and female athletes, including cheerleaders at competitive events, as part of a lengthy list of changes after the National Women’s Law Center raised Title IX complaints against the 134,000-student district. Last February, a statewide group of physical education teachers in California called for cheerleaders to attend girls’ and boys’ games”in the same number, and with equal enthusiasm”as part of its five-year goals.

And for the first time this fall at Westborough High school in the Boston suburbs, cheerleaders were provided for all the varsity athletic teams, including girls’ field hockey and volleyball.”In our minds, there’s no major or minor sports,”said Brian Callaghan, Westborough’s athletic director.

I admit that cheerleading isn’t really on my personal radar as an important feminist issue, but I don’t think it is petty either, not by a long (three point?) shot. It will be interesting to see how the role of cheerleading evolves as this push for equality progresses. When I was in high school, girls’ teams couldn’t even get uniforms or decent practice or playing fields. It’s possibly an optimistic sign that cheerleading is a current feminist Title IX focus.

–Ann Bartow