Speaker 1: It was the filibuster to end all filibusters in the U. S. Senate.
Speaker 1: In February nineteen sixty four, just three months after President
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives passed a landmark civil rights bill.
Speaker 1: Among other things, the bill banned discrimination in public facilities
Speaker 1: on the basis of race and other traits. Kennedy's successor,
Speaker 1: Lyndon Johnson, spearheaded the historic legislation. Its purpose is not
Speaker 1: to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to
Speaker 1: end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long. Many
Speaker 1: in America were not happy to see such divisions end.
Speaker 1: The House passed the bill, then several Southern Senators began
Speaker 1: a record setting attempt to frustrate its passage. They succeeded
Speaker 1: to laying a vote for almost three months. Their epic
Speaker 1: filibuster came to an end just before ten a m.
Speaker 1: On the morning of June tenth, nineteen sixty four, an
Speaker 1: exhausted Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former KKK member,
Speaker 1: It is nearly fourteen hours of speaking on the Senate floor.
Speaker 1: His lengthy address was in vain nine days later, the
Speaker 1: Senator approved the Act and President Johnson signed the bill
Speaker 1: in a nationally televised ceremony. Tonight, I urge every public official,
Speaker 1: every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man,
Speaker 1: every housewife. I urge every America to join in this
Speaker 1: effort to bring justice and hope to all our people.
Speaker 1: The Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four was truly
Speaker 1: a landmark moment for African Americans, but it was also
Speaker 1: a game changing moment for women, including every housewife in America,
Speaker 1: as the President referred to them. Nestled into Title seven
Speaker 1: of the Act was a single word, sex, and that
Speaker 1: word kick started a revolution that is still unfolding today,
Speaker 1: from core rooms to World Cup soccer fields. It's ready
Speaker 1: to call transcends. The passion cannot begins me poten root.
Speaker 1: Now we found our way. Let us play. Let us
Speaker 1: from Ozzie. This is the threat. I'm Sean braswell. This
Speaker 1: season on the Thread, we've celebrated the twentieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the ninety Niners and their unforgettable Women's Soccer World Cup
Speaker 1: victory with a journey back through time to see everything
Speaker 1: that led up to that moment at the Rose Bowl
Speaker 1: in In this final episode, we conclude the journey that
Speaker 1: began with Brandy Chastain's winning penalty kick by revisiting a
Speaker 1: historic anti discrimination law, Title seven of the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Act of nineteen sixty four, and we'll find out how
Speaker 1: that legislation still governs the fate of the current US
Speaker 1: women national team, even after their triumphant victory at this
Speaker 1: year's World Cup in France. Before the U. S Senate
Speaker 1: considered it, the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four
Speaker 1: underwent a contentious debate in the House of Representatives. Like
Speaker 1: their Senate colleagues, the Southern congressman in the House opposed
Speaker 1: to the law tried everything in their power to sabotage it.
Speaker 1: Historian Rosalind Rosenberg it looked as though the Act would pass,
Speaker 1: at which point a Southern Congressman by the name of
Speaker 1: Howard Smith from Virginia rose to ask for an amendment
Speaker 1: to Title seven, and that amendment was the word sex.
Speaker 1: That employers should be barred from discriminating not only on
Speaker 1: the basis of race and national origin and religion, but
Speaker 1: also on the basis of sex. This was an addition
Speaker 1: that looked as though it might well scuttle the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act, which Howard Smith hoped would be the case.
Speaker 1: Smith figured that many Northern congressmen and labor leaders might
Speaker 1: change their minds on the bill if they thought it
Speaker 1: women had to be hired on an equal footing with men.
Speaker 1: He proposed the change almost jokingly. He said he was
Speaker 1: going to do it to help quote the minority sex.
Speaker 1: Karen Blumenthal is the author of let Me Play the
Speaker 1: Story of Title nine. Now, some of the men in
Speaker 1: Congress thought that was hilarious, because women, of course, were housewives,
Speaker 1: and they were mothers. They were not people who went
Speaker 1: into the workplace. But there was at least one woman
Speaker 1: in Congress listening to Smith who did not think it
Speaker 1: was funny at all. So Martha Griffith's is one of
Speaker 1: the unsung heroes of the women's movement. She was the
Speaker 1: granddaughter of a suffragette. She had grown up as a
Speaker 1: very good student, a debater in high school. She wanted
Speaker 1: to go to college, but the family funds were tight,
Speaker 1: and her father said, no, we're gonna have to spend
Speaker 1: money sending your brother to college. Martha's mother would not
Speaker 1: deny her daughter that chance. She took in borders and
Speaker 1: work spare jobs so Martha could go to college and
Speaker 1: then law school. So she went to the University of
Speaker 1: Michigan Law School, was very successful there and decided later
Speaker 1: to run for Congress. She was one of the first
Speaker 1: women elected to Congress in the nineteen fifties who was
Speaker 1: not following a husband. Griffiths served ten terms in Congress
Speaker 1: and was the first woman ever to serve on the
Speaker 1: powerful House Ways and Means Committee. This interview clip from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four will give you a sense of what
Speaker 1: Martha Griffiths was like. At the time, it looked like
Speaker 1: the Equal Rights Amendment, in shrining gender equality in the U.
Speaker 1: S Constitution, might actually get ratified and tell the passage
Speaker 1: of the Equal Rights Amendment. Was there no protection for
Speaker 1: women under the law in our constitution? Not really. They
Speaker 1: never applied the fourteenth Amendment to women. They didn't apply
Speaker 1: the fifteenth when the fifteenth Amendment had been written, which
Speaker 1: had every citizen could vote, in the name of heavens,
Speaker 1: Why couldn't women vote. Why did you have to have
Speaker 1: the nineteenth Amendment? Well, of course, the answer was they
Speaker 1: didn't consider women people. Griffiths was a force in Congress.
Speaker 1: She was not afraid to speak her mind. It's an
Speaker 1: airline chief executive involved in an employment dispute told Griffiths
Speaker 1: that his company wanted stewardesses that were quote young, attractive,
Speaker 1: and single. Griffiths wrote him back a stinging letter that asked,
Speaker 1: what are you running an airline or a whorehouse? Martha
Speaker 1: Griffiths also did not have the patients to stand by.
Speaker 1: While Howard Smith joked about employment discrimination on the floor
Speaker 1: of Congress, author Karen Blumenthal. When the laughter stops, Martha
Speaker 1: Griffith stands up and says, you know, I guess if
Speaker 1: there's any question that women are a second class, you know,
Speaker 1: your response would prove that the men quieted down. So
Speaker 1: she proposes that women should indeed be included in the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act, that this is not a joke, that
Speaker 1: women need to work just like men do, and that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be discriminated against. Griffith's appealed to the white
Speaker 1: men in the chamber by pointing out that without the
Speaker 1: word sex, the bill would favor black women over white women.
Speaker 1: She argued, quote, a vote against this bill today by
Speaker 1: a white man is a vote against his wife, or
Speaker 1: his widow, or his daughter or his sister. So when
Speaker 1: the time came, Congress, to the surprise of many, actually
Speaker 1: approved adding sex to the Civil Rights Act that affected employment.
Speaker 1: And when this happened, somebody in the visitors gallery yelled,
Speaker 1: we made it. We are human. A couple of days later,
Speaker 1: the House passed the entire Civil Rights Bill, sex included.
Speaker 1: We've now completed this season's journey back through history, from
Speaker 1: the fight over a single word in the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Act in nineteen sixty four to the penalty kick heard
Speaker 1: around the world. Let's recap. Thanks to Congresswoman Martha Griffith's
Speaker 1: the word sex appears in Title seven of the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act of ninety four. Then, because of a trailblazing
Speaker 1: legal scholar named Polly Murray, sex not only stays in
Speaker 1: that law, but a new legal foundation is laid for
Speaker 1: sex discrimination that culminates with the passage of Title nine,
Speaker 1: another landmark law that banns sex discrimination in education. But
Speaker 1: Title nine would never have been passed without the efforts
Speaker 1: of women like Bunny Sandler and Edith Green, and it
Speaker 1: never would have been enforced without the women of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six Yale Crew team. Thanks to these figures,
Speaker 1: Title nine would usher in a new era of women's
Speaker 1: sports in America. Among those early beneficiaries of Title nine
Speaker 1: were the members of the first U. S women's national
Speaker 1: soccer team in the mid nineteen eighties. These women had
Speaker 1: hand me down uniforms and virtually no compensation, but they
Speaker 1: had a love of the game that transcended their circumstances,
Speaker 1: and that paved the way for the ninety Niners, whose
Speaker 1: triumph on that summer day in Pasadena put an exclamation
Speaker 1: point on almost four decades of history. But it's a
Speaker 1: journey that is not over. Women's sports in America may
Speaker 1: be successful, but they are far from equal. Title nine
Speaker 1: to me is opportunity. Tracy Noonan was a goaltender for
Speaker 1: the ninety Niners. It was opportunity for girls that we
Speaker 1: hadn't had before. When I look at when my mom
Speaker 1: grew up, she would have loved to have played soccer.
Speaker 1: She you know, I know that the high school that
Speaker 1: she went to, they weren't allowed to They didn't have
Speaker 1: female sports. Noonan was born in nineteen seventy three and
Speaker 1: into a generation of women who had significantly more opportunities
Speaker 1: to compete and to play. Someone once called Title nine
Speaker 1: the biggest thing to happen to sports since the invention
Speaker 1: of the whistle. Nina Chaudrey is general counsel at the
Speaker 1: National Women's Law Center, a nonprofit founded in the same
Speaker 1: year as Title nine. Title nine has been a game changer,
Speaker 1: and it has allowed women to really emerge from their
Speaker 1: second class status, which is where they were relegated. The
Speaker 1: participation numbers for women in sports before and after Title
Speaker 1: nine are stunning. Karen Blumenthal. Before Title nine is passed,
Speaker 1: there's only seven undered girls in the entire United States
Speaker 1: playing soccer. In five years, there's eleven thousand girls playing
Speaker 1: and it didn't stop there. Before Title nine. One in
Speaker 1: twenty seven girls played sports in America. Today that number
Speaker 1: is closer to two and five. The number of young
Speaker 1: women playing high school sports is ten times as high
Speaker 1: as it was in the nineteen seventies. And these numbers
Speaker 1: continue to grow and grow. And the supporters are of
Speaker 1: course parents, and not just moms, but dads who love
Speaker 1: to play sports and wanted the same thing for their daughters.
Speaker 1: Emily Pickering, one of the members of the first US
Speaker 1: women's national team, is one of those parents, you know,
Speaker 1: And I tried to teach that to my daughter, and
Speaker 1: and instill in her the fact that you know, we've
Speaker 1: come a long way, and and Title nine really changed
Speaker 1: the landscape of everything for women, and it's a landscape
Speaker 1: that is here to stay. Marrily Dean Baker, Princeton's first
Speaker 1: female athletic director, summed it up. I was called a tomboy.
Speaker 1: My daughters are called athletes. And during the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: many Americans became aware of just what amazing female athletes
Speaker 1: they had. That's next on the thread. At the Olympic
Speaker 1: Games in Atlanta, US women won thirty nine gold medals,
Speaker 1: including team victories in softball, basketball, and soccer. Americans started
Speaker 1: to pay attention Karen Blumenthal, and so the women all
Speaker 1: started winning gold. And then a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: the soccer team comes around, and these women are fierce,
Speaker 1: they're good, they're muscular, they're talented, and they're winning. This
Speaker 1: was the payoff for giving women the simple opportunity to play.
Speaker 1: And then, of course comes that fateful summer day in Pasadena.
Speaker 1: Whether this one was that it continues from the roast
Speaker 1: ball and Pasadena, the one, the one that's world historians
Speaker 1: Susan Ware, ninety thousand people coming to watch a women's
Speaker 1: sporting event. This is just enough to make any older
Speaker 1: woman's heart flutter, you know, the thought that that many
Speaker 1: people cared so much about women's sports and is barely
Speaker 1: twenty five years after the passage of Title nine, where
Speaker 1: women's sports were basically at zero. But the ninety nine
Speaker 1: did not just inspire a new audience for women's sports.
Speaker 1: Tracy noon in again. So the legacy to me is,
Speaker 1: you know, really about inspiring that next generation that this
Speaker 1: is what women's soccer can look like. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a big moment I think for not only the
Speaker 1: young girls in this country, but also for boys and
Speaker 1: for men to understand that this is a marketable sport
Speaker 1: and it's just not something to keep the girls busy with.
Speaker 1: That impact upon men and boys has been particularly special.
Speaker 1: Tim Nash is the author of It's Not the Glory
Speaker 1: and has covered the women's national team for decades. One
Speaker 1: of the cool things about is they actually gave fathers
Speaker 1: an opportunity to go to a sporting event with their daughters,
Speaker 1: and it was their daughters picking the event, and the
Speaker 1: level of acceptance from boys about girl soccer players just
Speaker 1: went through the roof. Kristen Press was eleven years old
Speaker 1: in the summer of I think for everyone who saw
Speaker 1: the game, it was the first time that you had
Speaker 1: seen women in such a magnitude. Now she is a
Speaker 1: striker for the current national team, it was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is what we could do, this is what we're
Speaker 1: chasing after. That's so much bigger than we imagined. National
Speaker 1: team defender Crystal Dunton turned seven during the World Cup.
Speaker 1: It was hard for women to even be taken seriously
Speaker 1: already at that time, and I think them winning it
Speaker 1: and the success they've had really allowed the world to
Speaker 1: see we can play the sport. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: just a man's game, it's it's every one's game. It
Speaker 1: is now everyone's game. And for the assistant coach, Lauren
Speaker 1: greg that is one of the beautiful things about what
Speaker 1: the nine accomplished. They had created generation. They wouldn't know
Speaker 1: any differently, and that's I think one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm most proud about. Like I have a seventeen and
Speaker 1: a twelve year old daughter. They don't know any different.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that women today are treated equally.
Speaker 1: If I just look back over my lifetime historian Susan
Speaker 1: Ware again and think about the amazing changes that have
Speaker 1: happened for women just in the past forty going on
Speaker 1: fifty years. It is a truly phenomenal amount of social
Speaker 1: change for women more broadly, and also in women's sports.
Speaker 1: And yet if you go, oh, if you go to
Speaker 1: any high school and you start asking the girls about
Speaker 1: how are they treated, how are they teams treated? Well,
Speaker 1: when the boys team comes in third, they get announced
Speaker 1: on the p A and there's a it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: But when our volleyball team, you know, when state, nobody
Speaker 1: really pays attention. They're just all these small things that
Speaker 1: remind us that women's sports are still struggling for equality.
Speaker 1: Karen Blumenthal. It's not as bad as in the seventies,
Speaker 1: where literally women's teams had to go home, launder their
Speaker 1: own uniforms and hand them off to another team for
Speaker 1: their next game, but it's still not equitable. Women easily
Speaker 1: make up the majority of students on American college campuses today,
Speaker 1: yet they are still often underrepresented on sports teams. Their
Speaker 1: teams still receive lower budgets and have worse facilities than
Speaker 1: their male counterparts. Nina Chaudry again, the General Council of
Speaker 1: the National Women's Law Center. Many schools across the country
Speaker 1: are out of compliance. I sometimes say that I could
Speaker 1: throw a dart at a map, and wherever atlanted, that
Speaker 1: school would be out of compliance. There's no shortage of examples.
Speaker 1: Often we see disparities between bloys baseball fields and girls
Speaker 1: softball fields. That's a big one, because I think it's
Speaker 1: very visible when boys have press boxes and dugouts and
Speaker 1: lighting and girls have none of the above. And Nina
Speaker 1: Chaudrey says not all women are treated equally either. While
Speaker 1: we've certainly come a long way since Title nine for
Speaker 1: women and girls of color in particular, and other groups
Speaker 1: of women who are marginalized, I think there's still even
Speaker 1: more work to do. And even at the pinnacle of
Speaker 1: women's sports, the national soccer team, things are not much better.
Speaker 1: The United States has dominated women's soccer for almost three
Speaker 1: decades thanks to Title nine and the women of the
Speaker 1: early U S national teams. The national team has won
Speaker 1: four World Cups and four Olympic gold medals. It is
Speaker 1: successful by almost any measure you can imagine. But here
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, the US women are not treated the
Speaker 1: same as their male peers, not even close. Title nine
Speaker 1: has created opportunities for millions of female athletes and contributed
Speaker 1: to the phenomenal success of the women's national team in soccer. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: what hasn't changed is the great wage disparities and discrimination
Speaker 1: based on gender that plague our society, including in sports,
Speaker 1: and we are conducting a legal fight to try to
Speaker 1: remedy that for these great women champions. Jeffrey Kessler is
Speaker 1: an attorney at the Winston Strong Law firm who is
Speaker 1: representing the women's national team in their current legal fight
Speaker 1: for equal pay. This morning, the US women's soccer team
Speaker 1: is making moves off the field with a gender discrimination
Speaker 1: lawsuit against their employer, the US Soccer Federation, the goal
Speaker 1: changing working conditions and what players get paid. Carly Lloyd,
Speaker 1: Alex Morgan, and Megan Repeto are the team's star athletes
Speaker 1: and among the twenty eight players named in the class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit. They actually filed it on International Women's Day
Speaker 1: in March, alleging institutionalized gender discrimination. Caitlin Murray is a
Speaker 1: journalist and author of the National Team, The Inside Story
Speaker 1: of the Women Who Change Soccer. For a lot of
Speaker 1: the American public, something like this takes them by surprise
Speaker 1: because we see these players with these big endorsement deals
Speaker 1: and their stars and their popular and you just kind
Speaker 1: of assume that things have always been pretty good for them.
Speaker 1: But in actuality, this team has been waging similar battles
Speaker 1: the entire time it has existed. She's right. The current
Speaker 1: national team comes from a long line of fighters. It's
Speaker 1: in their DNA were no strangers to confrontation. Just before
Speaker 1: the Olympics, the team learned that the US Soccer Federation
Speaker 1: was still unwilling to pay them anything remotely close to
Speaker 1: what the men's team received. The men were to be
Speaker 1: given bonuses if they received gold, silver, or bronze medals
Speaker 1: at the Olympics. The women would only get theirs if
Speaker 1: they won gold. They decided they were going to boycott
Speaker 1: playing for the national team unless US Soccer offered the
Speaker 1: same bonuses that they were offering to the men's team.
Speaker 1: So nine of the team's veterans, including Mia Hamm and
Speaker 1: Michelle Acres, refused to attend training camp. Tracy Noonan, they
Speaker 1: held out they risked not going to the very first
Speaker 1: Olympics um but that was kind of a starting point
Speaker 1: of all right, we have some leverage here and we
Speaker 1: need to start to use it. Months later, the players
Speaker 1: in US Soccer reached a compromise. In the end, US
Speaker 1: Soccer agreed to give the women a bonus if they
Speaker 1: won gold or silver, so it was still not equal
Speaker 1: to the men's bonus. The still had to fight for
Speaker 1: their rights. Even after they won the World Cup in Pasadena,
Speaker 1: the players organized their own nationwide victory tour following the
Speaker 1: World Cup because US Soccer had nothing planned. Then US
Speaker 1: Soccer threatened to sue the team to stop the tour.
Speaker 1: That's when Mia Ham, the team's best known player, dropped
Speaker 1: a bombshell in defense of her teammates. She responded, quote,
Speaker 1: if you sue US, I'm prepared to never play for
Speaker 1: US Soccer again. The US Soccer Federation caved. Two decades later,
Speaker 1: the unfair treatment persists. For the past three years, US
Speaker 1: women's soccer games have generated more revenue than US men's games,
Speaker 1: but the women still do not enjoy a level playing field.
Speaker 1: Team lawyer Jeffrey Kessler again, they are the more prominent
Speaker 1: television and media attraction and sponsorship attraction right now, Yet
Speaker 1: by all calculations, even putting aside the World Cup for all,
Speaker 1: there are other matches, they are making no better than
Speaker 1: sevent in terms of what the men could make. There
Speaker 1: is one important difference between the men's and women's teams,
Speaker 1: according to Kessler, and it's not gender. The imployant difference
Speaker 1: between those teams is that the women are consistently the
Speaker 1: double one ranked team in the world and the repeated
Speaker 1: world champion, and the men have not been as successful.
Speaker 1: In May twenty nineteen, US Soccer filed its response to
Speaker 1: the team's complaint. It did not dispute that the men's
Speaker 1: and women's players are not paid equally, but it claims
Speaker 1: that those inequities are a result of quote different pay
Speaker 1: structures for performing different work. US Soccer claims that's because
Speaker 1: the two teams negotiated separate collective bargaining agreements. Essentially that
Speaker 1: the women are comparing apples to oranges, and if the
Speaker 1: women got apples, it's because they negotiated for them. That
Speaker 1: is true, but irrelevant. Every type of wage discrimination is
Speaker 1: agreed to by the employee. That's how you work. So
Speaker 1: just like you could not agree to a collective boggy
Speaker 1: agreement received less than the of a wage, you can't
Speaker 1: use a collective boggy agree with as a defense to
Speaker 1: say it's okay, we could justify a jedda base wage
Speaker 1: discrimination because you agreed to it. Perhaps the biggest grievance
Speaker 1: is about bonuses for World Cup performance. Each member of
Speaker 1: the women's team, for example, or ninety dollars for reaching
Speaker 1: the quarterfinals of the World Cup this year, The men's
Speaker 1: players would receive six times that if they performed as well.
Speaker 1: The US Soccer Federation did not respond to our request
Speaker 1: to comment. One thing is certain, the current national teams
Speaker 1: drive to fight for equality is as strong as their
Speaker 1: drive to win the World Cup. We caught up with
Speaker 1: a few of the current players in New York City
Speaker 1: just before they left to compete in the World Cup.
Speaker 1: We asked them about the challenge of trying to win
Speaker 1: on the field and in the courtroom at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit different. You know, on the field
Speaker 1: where we're focused, who are prepared to win this is
Speaker 1: midfield or Carly Lloyd, one of the team's captains. Off
Speaker 1: the field, you know, it's it's a there's a lot
Speaker 1: more that we, I think is women have to do.
Speaker 1: We kind of have to be a lot more active
Speaker 1: than some of the male figures. On social media and
Speaker 1: you know, doing all interviews and you know, fighting for
Speaker 1: equality and the equal pay and all of these things.
Speaker 1: The upside of the fight is huge, though, Midfield or
Speaker 1: Morgan Bryan, I do think, you know, we're pioneering women's
Speaker 1: sports and and pushing for more, and so I think
Speaker 1: that's something that we've always had in our d NA
Speaker 1: and wants to be a part of us, is that
Speaker 1: we not only are great on the field and and
Speaker 1: push along the women's game, but we're also pushing along
Speaker 1: women and the team now has a bigger platform than ever.
Speaker 1: Striker Alex Morgan, I think this team has the capability
Speaker 1: to really create shockwaves throughout the world, and I think
Speaker 1: we have the platform to be able to do so.
Speaker 1: And now it's just following through and making sure that
Speaker 1: we're playing at our best every single day, because this
Speaker 1: is going to be the most challenging World Cup that
Speaker 1: we've ever played in. Many worried before the World Cup
Speaker 1: that the lawsuit would be a distraction and hinder the
Speaker 1: team's performance. The team's attorney, James Kessler, well, is that
Speaker 1: a distraction to be? I don't have to trade the
Speaker 1: play of the World Cup. So we have a very
Speaker 1: good division of labor will take care of the legal side.
Speaker 1: They can take care of the plague side, and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll achieve victories on both sides. The U S women
Speaker 1: did take care of the playing side this summer and
Speaker 1: did what they do best, win World Cups. That's it us.
Speaker 1: When's up pot World Cup, the World Cup party can
Speaker 1: officially start. Now US defeats Netherlands by the score, do nothing,
Speaker 1: and now it's time to see if they can win
Speaker 1: on the legal side, and if the team does manage,
Speaker 1: as Kessler puts it, to achieve victory on both sides,
Speaker 1: I think it would be huge. It would send a
Speaker 1: message to girls and women everywhere, empower them to speak
Speaker 1: up uh and ask for what they're entitled to. Nina
Speaker 1: Chaudhry of the Women's National Law Center again, for them
Speaker 1: to stand up and say that they should get better
Speaker 1: and that they're demanding better, I think it's really powerful
Speaker 1: and will inspire others to do that as well. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to the legal side of things, says Kessler,
Speaker 1: there's something even more important than inspiration precedent. This is
Speaker 1: an incredibly important issue, not just for the women's national team,
Speaker 1: not just for women in sports, but for women. This
Speaker 1: is really the first case I'm aware of and gender
Speaker 1: based discrimination of professional sports. We're going to be that
Speaker 1: pedcess the case I hope for others. But it is
Speaker 1: merely the latest battle in a long running struggle for equality.
Speaker 1: What would Bunny Sandler, the godmother of Title nine we
Speaker 1: covered in episode four, think about the national team's current
Speaker 1: legal battle her daughter Deborrah Sandler. She would be absolutely
Speaker 1: insistent that the women have the same status, the same pay,
Speaker 1: the same awards, the same facility at these the same
Speaker 1: opportunities that the men have. That would be what she
Speaker 1: would really want, and that's what she was fighting for
Speaker 1: all along. It's what the nine were fighting for two
Speaker 1: and it's a fight that still inspires current national team
Speaker 1: captain Alex Morgan. Again, this is all of us, you know,
Speaker 1: looking at these ninety niners and the fact that they
Speaker 1: paved the way so much, and you know, we are
Speaker 1: so grateful for what they did in the sport for us,
Speaker 1: and now it's up to us to continue to pay
Speaker 1: that way. I love Himer. Whatever she hands me, I'm
Speaker 1: handing her back with the hope of championship quality. This
Speaker 1: is poly Murray again, the civil rights pioneer from episode five,
Speaker 1: whose legal scholarship was behind everything from Brown Versus Board
Speaker 1: of Education to Title nine, and so so many of
Speaker 1: my heroes have been the champions, the Jackie Robinson's, the
Speaker 1: people who climbed over and said, I'll show you, I'll
Speaker 1: show you. If only Polly Murray could have seen the
Speaker 1: ninety niners and the current national team show the world
Speaker 1: what a champion looks like. If only she could have
Speaker 1: seen them fighting for victory both on and off the field.
Speaker 1: That's the only reason why the team is where it
Speaker 1: is today, because they have been waging these sort of
Speaker 1: fights and battles all along. Journalist Caitlin Murray again. They
Speaker 1: have had setbacks over and over again on the field,
Speaker 1: and then you know, off the field, they've had legal
Speaker 1: battles and boycotts and other problems. But the team always
Speaker 1: recovers from these things. They always find a way to
Speaker 1: progress forward and a way to inspire a new generation.
Speaker 1: During the final, I was in my living room and
Speaker 1: I was on the floor with my my hands, you know,
Speaker 1: like my head perched in my hands, just watching with
Speaker 1: my dad. Becky sower Brunn is a leading defender on
Speaker 1: the current team and a lead plaintiff in the team
Speaker 1: teams lossuit. She's telling her own version of a story
Speaker 1: that thousands of Americans can tell. And what I felt
Speaker 1: when they won basically was the reason that I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a soccer player. I wanted to experience with
Speaker 1: those women were experiencing on the field because they just
Speaker 1: looked so happy, and I wanted to know what that
Speaker 1: felt like. But that was then and this is now.
Speaker 1: As they say, forget about the nine for a moment
Speaker 1: and where you might have been when Brandy Chastain's penalty
Speaker 1: kick hit the gold net. That's probably not the question
Speaker 1: your friends will ask you in twenty years. That's not
Speaker 1: what your daughters and sons will remember. No, the question
Speaker 1: will be where were you that glorious summer of when
Speaker 1: the U S women's national soccer team dazzled millions with
Speaker 1: their play, when they attracted a whole new generation of
Speaker 1: soccer fans, when they can in you the fight of
Speaker 1: those like Bunny Sandler and Paully Murray, when they stood
Speaker 1: up for women everywhere and change the course of history forever.
Speaker 1: Where were you then? Made its shame wasn't built in
Speaker 1: a day Curious. The Thread is written and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Sean Braswell. It was produced by Robert Coulos and
Speaker 1: Shannon Williamson. Evan Roberts edited our show, and it was
Speaker 1: mixed and mastered by Matt Tamarillo. Special thanks to Face Lessenger,
Speaker 1: Tracy Moran and Carly Stern, and a big thanks as
Speaker 1: well to the folks at Fox Sports for allowing us
Speaker 1: to use some of their World Cup interview footage. This
Speaker 1: season features the song let Us Play, written and performed
Speaker 1: by Tea cut Gin. You can hear more of their
Speaker 1: songs at teacup gin dot com. To learn more about
Speaker 1: The Thread, visit Aussie dot com, Slash the Threat all
Speaker 1: one Word, and make sure to subscribe to The Thread
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio, or
Speaker 1: listen wherever you get your podcasts