Speaker 1: This season on the thread. We began in the Rose
Speaker 1: Bowl in Pasadena, California, with one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: moments in sports history. Whether this was that it continues
Speaker 1: from the Rose Bowl, but so much led up to
Speaker 1: that moment when the US women's soccer team hoisted the
Speaker 1: World Cup trophy. Long before the ninety niners took the
Speaker 1: country by storm, the members of the first national team
Speaker 1: in were just trying to keep up with the rest
Speaker 1: of the soccer playing world. We had to fight for
Speaker 1: every moment and every opportunity in a match. It was
Speaker 1: definitely harder than anyone could have ever anticipated. The first
Speaker 1: members of the women's national team played for little pay
Speaker 1: and even less recognition. They were just happy to have
Speaker 1: the chance to play the game they loved, something that
Speaker 1: the female athletes who came before them had not enjoyed
Speaker 1: in America. Back in my day in high school, which
Speaker 1: I know is a difficult concept for younger women to
Speaker 1: understand right now, but there were no teams for girls.
Speaker 1: There are no sports teams for girls in my high school.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen seventy two, thanks to a law called
Speaker 1: Title nine that banned sex discrimination and education, everything started
Speaker 1: to change. The doors gradually begin to open as people
Speaker 1: begin to talk about equal opportunity for girls and women,
Speaker 1: and including women in sports. Once these doors open, women
Speaker 1: just charged through. But just charging through was not enough.
Speaker 1: Many institutions in America were reluctant to put women on
Speaker 1: a level playing field with their male peers, especially when
Speaker 1: it came to sports. Then an unforgettable protest from the
Speaker 1: members of the Yale Women's crew team caught the attention
Speaker 1: of the country. They had Title nine and blue marker
Speaker 1: on breasts and backs, and they dropped trout Title nine.
Speaker 1: The law that the Yale women wanted enforced was far
Speaker 1: from inevitable. It came into being because of the efforts
Speaker 1: of several key players off the field. To get a
Speaker 1: bill that banded sex discrimination passed. Was an incredible feat,
Speaker 1: one that required not just political muscle and persistence, but
Speaker 1: a whole lot of strategy, subtlety, and smarts. Pagney pirates
Speaker 1: to the stage, Way Haney, We're making ways. The generation
Speaker 1: comes of page The Sandler points the way. Let us play,
Speaker 1: let us play, let us play, let us play let
Speaker 1: us play. I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to the Threat of
Speaker 1: podcast from Ozzie When Bernice Sandler died in January nine,
Speaker 1: at the age of ninety, she was fondly remembered as
Speaker 1: the godmother of Title nine, and she deserved that title.
Speaker 1: Without Sandler's efforts, the landmark law would never have gotten
Speaker 1: off the ground. My mother was unbelievably bright. This is
Speaker 1: Deborah Sandler, one of Bernice Sandler's daughters. She actually went
Speaker 1: by Bunny. That was her nickname, so I'll probably refer
Speaker 1: to her as Bunny when I talked about her in
Speaker 1: this Bunny Sandler was born in nineteen twenty eight in
Speaker 1: New York, the daughter of Jewish immigrants. They were, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly traditional in a lot of ways, so you know,
Speaker 1: my mother kind of grew up thinking that she would,
Speaker 1: you know, get married as one does and have children
Speaker 1: as one does. And Bunny Sandler did as one does.
Speaker 1: She got married, and she had two children, and then
Speaker 1: once her daughters were teenagers, she did something a bit
Speaker 1: more unconventional for a woman of her time. She went
Speaker 1: to school and decided she was going to be a
Speaker 1: psychologist or a therapist. So she got a doctor in
Speaker 1: counseling and did extremely well in school. At the age
Speaker 1: of forty one, Dr Bunny Sandler started to apply for
Speaker 1: teaching positions. She had an impeccable resume, a master's degree
Speaker 1: from City College in New York, a doctorate from the
Speaker 1: University of Maryland, and it just so happened that there
Speaker 1: were seven open positions at Maryland, a place she had
Speaker 1: already been teaching as a graduate student. Sandler was turned
Speaker 1: down for all seven of the positions. She was told,
Speaker 1: you don't really need this job because you have a
Speaker 1: husband supporting you. And she was told, you know, you've
Speaker 1: been out of work too long because you were home
Speaker 1: raising children, so you're not really right for this job.
Speaker 1: The frustrated Sandler went looking for more answers. This is
Speaker 1: the late Bunny Sandler in a interview talking about what
Speaker 1: happened next. So I went and asked one of my
Speaker 1: friends on the faculty without missing a beat, h he said, well,
Speaker 1: let's face it, you come on too strong for a woman.
Speaker 1: And I went home and I cried, and my then
Speaker 1: husband was really very good. He said, are there strong
Speaker 1: men in the department? And I said yes, And he said,
Speaker 1: then it's not you with sex discrimination. And it took
Speaker 1: me a while to realize that's what it was, and
Speaker 1: then I got mad. The University of Maryland picked the
Speaker 1: wrong woman to piss off Deborah Sandler again. My mother
Speaker 1: was a badass. She had, I think, a sense of
Speaker 1: righteous outrage whenever something was just not just, when something
Speaker 1: wasn't fair. Bunny Sandler's sense of justice began in school
Speaker 1: when she was a young girl. The boys got to
Speaker 1: do things like clap the erasers to get the chalk
Speaker 1: dusk out. The girls were not allowed to do that,
Speaker 1: and she complained about that. Sandler's outrage didn't stop when
Speaker 1: she got older. After she was rejected for the teaching
Speaker 1: positions in Maryland, Sandler started to do what she did
Speaker 1: best research. She assumed that since sex discrimination was wrong,
Speaker 1: it would also be illegal. She was mistaken at the time.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, there were no laws banning sex
Speaker 1: discrimination and education. But Sandler found something almost as good
Speaker 1: as a law. She was looking at an executive order
Speaker 1: and saw that the word sex was in there, and
Speaker 1: just literally, you know, cried out loud with discovery and delight.
Speaker 1: It was Executive Order one one two four six to
Speaker 1: be precise, signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson in ninety eight.
Speaker 1: The order banned federal contractors from discrimination on the basis
Speaker 1: of race, color, religion, national origin, and sex. An actual
Speaker 1: ban on sex discrimination. Sandler couldn't believe it, and because
Speaker 1: colleges received federal funds, the president's executive order also applied
Speaker 1: to them. It was just that American colleges weren't obeying it.
Speaker 1: But in order to bring a legal action to hold
Speaker 1: the school's accountable, Bunny Sandler needed examples of sex discrimination
Speaker 1: to prove her case. Lots of examples, so she put
Speaker 1: her research skills to work, and she began to talk
Speaker 1: to other women at the University of Maryland, where she
Speaker 1: had gone about their experiences. Karen Blumenthal is a journalist
Speaker 1: and author of Let Me Play, The Story of Title nine,
Speaker 1: the law that changed the future of girls in America.
Speaker 1: She began to expand her research and talked to women
Speaker 1: all around the country who had earned advanced degrees and
Speaker 1: then found themselves shut out in the workplace. Sandler compiled
Speaker 1: a lengthy report documenting sex discrimination and college hiring, pay,
Speaker 1: financial aid, and more. Then she started filing complaints against
Speaker 1: colleges with the U S Department of Justice. Sandler charged
Speaker 1: the colleges with violating Executive Order one, one, two, four six.
Speaker 1: She filed complaints against every college and university in the country,
Speaker 1: more than two hundred and fifty in total. She didn't
Speaker 1: stop there. She sent copies of the eight page complaint
Speaker 1: to newspapers and other media outlets. Then she has several
Speaker 1: hundred copies printed and she sends them to every congressional office.
Speaker 1: One of the members of Congress who received a copy
Speaker 1: of Bunny Sandler's complaint was Edith Green, a congresswoman from Oregon.
Speaker 1: It was a kind of fortuitous meeting of the two
Speaker 1: and she begins to work for Edith Green and helped
Speaker 1: provide information for her. Bunny Sandler's exhaustive research had put
Speaker 1: every college in the country on the hot seat. Now,
Speaker 1: with the help of Edith Green, her efforts were about
Speaker 1: to change the law itself. Then helped level the playing
Speaker 1: field for millions of American women. Edith Green was a
Speaker 1: Democratic congressperson from Oregon, and she was first elected in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. Susan Ware is a historian an author
Speaker 1: of Game Set Match, Billy Jane King and the Revolution
Speaker 1: in Women's Sports. To be a woman and to get
Speaker 1: elected to Congress in the midst of an era we
Speaker 1: think of as just the height of domesticity. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: quite an accomplishment. Green, a former teacher, helped create the
Speaker 1: first community colleges. She helped fund new libraries in rural areas.
Speaker 1: People in Washington started to call her Mrs Education. Then
Speaker 1: Green started to realize there was something more she could
Speaker 1: do for American education and for women. Author Karen Blumenthal, So,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, Edith Green is holding hearings and
Speaker 1: listening to some uh superintendent's talk about programs they had
Speaker 1: to keep boys from dropping out of high school. And
Speaker 1: she's listening to them, and she's says, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: did I hear you say you had programs only for
Speaker 1: boys to keep them from dropping out of high school?
Speaker 1: And they said, oh yes, And she said, well, what
Speaker 1: about girls? And they said, oh, well, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't really need high school degrees. They're just going to
Speaker 1: become housewives and mothers. And this was shocking to her.
Speaker 1: She couldn't imagine that this was legal. Green started to
Speaker 1: focus her attention on how women and girls were treated
Speaker 1: differently in education. Susan Ware Again, back in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who literally did not
Speaker 1: believe that there was such a thing as sex discrimination
Speaker 1: in higher education, and they needed to be shown that
Speaker 1: this was in fact a problem. But to show her
Speaker 1: fellow members of Congress the problem, Green needed evidence. Enter
Speaker 1: Bunny Sandler. Sandler provided Green with the data she had
Speaker 1: gathered on sex discrimination. She supplied the names of dozens
Speaker 1: of witnesses who could testify to that discrimination. In the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy, Edith Green called the first Congressional
Speaker 1: subcommit De hearings to address the issue. The congressional hearings
Speaker 1: were such a good place to do this, to gather
Speaker 1: all this information so it couldn't be dismissed as oh,
Speaker 1: that's just one anecdote or that's just one incident. To
Speaker 1: build the pattern, to really show people that this was
Speaker 1: in fact a serious issue. For seven days, Green solicited
Speaker 1: testimony about how women were being denied opportunities on campuses
Speaker 1: across the country, from admissions to employment. For example, at
Speaker 1: the time, most American law schools and medical schools limited
Speaker 1: women to less than ten percent of their student bodies,
Speaker 1: and even those women who did earn graduate degrees found
Speaker 1: it nearly impossible to get jobs. Green found such facts astonishing,
Speaker 1: and of course her point behind it is saying to them,
Speaker 1: look at all the wasted woman power, all these women
Speaker 1: who have these graduate degrees or who want to have
Speaker 1: professional careers, who aren't being hired. Why aren't we given
Speaker 1: them a cha ants. Green invited college administrators to testify
Speaker 1: on the issue of sex discrimination. No one accepted her invitation,
Speaker 1: no newspapers covered the hearings, and no one really paid attention.
Speaker 1: But Green had her evidence. Now came the hard part,
Speaker 1: getting a bill banning sex discrimination through a nearly all
Speaker 1: male Congress that did not think sex discrimination was a problem.
Speaker 1: Edan Green was up for the challenge. She knew that
Speaker 1: a larger higher education bill was about to come before
Speaker 1: the House Education Committee that dealt with issues like financial
Speaker 1: aid and school bussing. Green sees the opportunity Karen Blumenthal.
Speaker 1: Edith Green was a strategist. She knew that you had
Speaker 1: to work the system well, and she saw an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get into this Higher Education Act and amendment that
Speaker 1: would outlaw discrimination against women, and so Green went to work.
Speaker 1: She waits until the whole full House Committee on Education
Speaker 1: is together to propose this amendment to outlaw sex discrimination
Speaker 1: and education. And she does it because she has some
Speaker 1: great allies in this committee, including Shirley Chisholm, the first
Speaker 1: African American women in Congress, Patsy Mink, the first woman
Speaker 1: of color and Congress, and some other supporters. Not everyone
Speaker 1: in the House Committee was receptive to the need to
Speaker 1: address sex discrimination. The men in the committee, who are
Speaker 1: most of the members of the committee, think this is hilarious. Um.
Speaker 1: It just seems absurd to them. I mean, of course
Speaker 1: women should go to school, but they shouldn't go, you know,
Speaker 1: to Harvard Um. And one of them gets very tickled
Speaker 1: at the idea that you might have male stewardess is.
Speaker 1: After the laughter died down, a majority of the committee's
Speaker 1: thirty five members approved the bill, including Title nine. The
Speaker 1: next battleground was the Full House of Representatives. Supporters of
Speaker 1: the women's rights movement and Green's allies in Congress asked
Speaker 1: her what they could do to help get the bill passed.
Speaker 1: She advised them to do nothing. Green told them, nobody
Speaker 1: knows what's in this bill. If you start asking questions
Speaker 1: lobbying for it, they're going to ask questions. Susan Ware
Speaker 1: they didn't want to draw too much attention to it.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it was a better tactic to just
Speaker 1: include some of these writers or pieces of legislation and
Speaker 1: then have people vote on them and really not engaged
Speaker 1: too much about what they might actually do. The House
Speaker 1: started to consider the education bill for days. Members of
Speaker 1: Congress debated. The hot button issues like school bussing, and
Speaker 1: the question of sex discrimination flew under the radar. Then
Speaker 1: a powerful constituency took notice of Title nine, Karen Blumenthal.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that there are some people in
Speaker 1: the US who were opposed to it, and those are
Speaker 1: namely the Ivy League universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale. All of
Speaker 1: them are a guest at this idea that now, if
Speaker 1: this law passes, they may have to accept women. The
Speaker 1: Ivy League schools weren't the only ones opposed to Title nine.
Speaker 1: In the New York Times when it was being debated
Speaker 1: in the House, actually ran an editorial where they opposed
Speaker 1: this amendment, saying, you know, men and women have different
Speaker 1: needs and ambitions. Green eventually gave in. She agreed to
Speaker 1: support an amendment to address the Ivy League's concerns with
Speaker 1: the bill, and their compromise is that they will outlaw
Speaker 1: sex discrimination at public schools, including in the admissions of undergraduates,
Speaker 1: but not at private schools like Harvard and Yale and
Speaker 1: Notre Dame, and even today, in the fine print on
Speaker 1: the application to any of those schools there is a
Speaker 1: little disclaimer that says undergraduate admissions are not covered under
Speaker 1: Title nine of the Higher Education Act of nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1: Under the law, they still can make decisions based on gender.
Speaker 1: You heard that correctly. Ivy League colleges lobbied Congress to
Speaker 1: let them discriminate against women, and they succeeded. Green lost
Speaker 1: that battle, but she knew that she could still win
Speaker 1: the war. The slim down Title nine passed the House,
Speaker 1: it was time now for a second showdown in the
Speaker 1: US Senate, and it was in the in it that
Speaker 1: the subject of women's sports came up for the first time.
Speaker 1: Once the House approved Title nine, it was time for
Speaker 1: the U. S. Senate to consider it. Thus far, the
Speaker 1: subject of sports had not come out in the discussions
Speaker 1: of the bill. This was partly by design Edith Green
Speaker 1: knew what she was doing. Green had been very careful
Speaker 1: not to make sports part of the debate over Title
Speaker 1: nine in the House. Committee hearings. She knew the subject
Speaker 1: might end up overshadowing the broader intent of the bill.
Speaker 1: Historian Susan Ware. One thing that's important to remember about
Speaker 1: Title nine is that it wasn't originally about women's athletics.
Speaker 1: It was about the general discrimination that women faced in
Speaker 1: higher education, author Karen Blumenthal. In the Senate, this issue
Speaker 1: was taken up by Senator birch By from Indiana. At
Speaker 1: the time, or at least part of this time, there
Speaker 1: was only one woman in the Senate. I've had young
Speaker 1: people say to me, um, well, what are the women
Speaker 1: in a Senate say? Well, there was one. Birch By,
Speaker 1: who died in March nineteen, played a key role in
Speaker 1: Title nine's passage. The liberal senator from Indiana was a
Speaker 1: crusader for equal rights and expanding access in education. This
Speaker 1: is By in a nineteen sixty nine injury and I
Speaker 1: think we need you need to make educational opportunity available
Speaker 1: for more and more people. We need to give the
Speaker 1: young people of our state the best education we can.
Speaker 1: And birch By was one of the few male senators
Speaker 1: at the time that included women in such pronouncements. It
Speaker 1: was in the Senate debate on Title nine that the
Speaker 1: issue of college sports finally came up. It started when
Speaker 1: Senator By was questioned by his colleague, Senator Peter Dominic
Speaker 1: of Colorado. Dominic wanted to know how broad the ban
Speaker 1: on sex discrimination in colleges would be with locker rooms
Speaker 1: and dormitories now have to go co ed. By was
Speaker 1: quick to reassure his colleague, um, no, he makes clear,
Speaker 1: this is not about locker rooms. It's not about co
Speaker 1: ed dormitories. Then somebody says, well, you know, is this
Speaker 1: going to allow girls to play football? And again is
Speaker 1: laughter because again that's hilarious, and By assures and that, no,
Speaker 1: this is not intended to, um, you know, allow girls
Speaker 1: to play football, to which Senator Dominic jokingly replied, if
Speaker 1: I may say so, I would have had much more
Speaker 1: fun playing college football if it had been integrated. More
Speaker 1: chuckles ensued from the Senate gallery. And that was it.
Speaker 1: And so that's really the only discussion of sports, and
Speaker 1: all the debate in the House and in the Senate,
Speaker 1: this one little exchange about locker rooms and football. The
Speaker 1: Senate voted to pass the bill, including Title nine. It
Speaker 1: was time to make history. That's next on the thread.
Speaker 1: Title nine was signed into law by President Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: on June twenty three. It was a truly historic piece
Speaker 1: of legislation, but nobody really noticed Author Karen Blumenthal, and
Speaker 1: it got almost no attention. You know, a line here,
Speaker 1: maybe a secondary story inside there um. So people were
Speaker 1: hardly aware that there was this amendment in this huge
Speaker 1: education bill that outlawed discrimination based on sex. The next day,
Speaker 1: The New York Times devoted just one sentence to the
Speaker 1: part of the bill that outlawed sex discrimination, a single
Speaker 1: bullet point that read simply, the bill would take federal
Speaker 1: assistance away from any graduate school or public undergraduate college
Speaker 1: that discriminated against women in its admissions policies. Historian Susan
Speaker 1: ware it was just another piece of legislation, not unworthy,
Speaker 1: but not really all that noteworthy. Plus another development in
Speaker 1: the nation's capital was starting to dominate the news. I'm
Speaker 1: always struck by the fact that the actual Title nine
Speaker 1: legislation was signed into law by President Richard Nixon one
Speaker 1: week after the Watergate burglary that would eventually topple his presidency.
Speaker 1: So a lot was going on in Washington in June
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy two. A few people might have noticed
Speaker 1: at the time, but thanks to Title nine, a new
Speaker 1: era in America had begun, and today, nearly half a
Speaker 1: century later, it is impossible not to notice the impact
Speaker 1: of the law and of its proponents, like Bunny Sandler.
Speaker 1: Sandler became known as the godmother of Title nine. She
Speaker 1: continued to fight against sex discrimination long after Title nine
Speaker 1: was on the books. Historian Susan ware she made a
Speaker 1: career out of something that didn't even exist when she
Speaker 1: first started um, but it was a perfect match to
Speaker 1: her talents, both in terms of conceptualizing an issue, gathering data,
Speaker 1: and then trying to see a pragmatic way forward with
Speaker 1: legislation and political persuasion to try and change that situation.
Speaker 1: It was a profession that required a balance between dogged
Speaker 1: determination and civility. Again, Bunny Sandler's daughter, Deborah, she was
Speaker 1: never one of those people who would be out in
Speaker 1: the streets screaming at people. She that just wasn't her style,
Speaker 1: you know. She really believed in being um, civilized and
Speaker 1: polite and working within the system. Sandler also demonstrated plenty
Speaker 1: of persistence over the years. At one point she was
Speaker 1: supposed to go I think to Michigan to give a speech,
Speaker 1: and um, she said to the woman who had arranged
Speaker 1: for it, well, um, I don't fly. What's the train schedule?
Speaker 1: Because my mother at the time was afraid of flying.
Speaker 1: And the woman said to her, Girlie, you get on
Speaker 1: that plane or get the hell out of the movement.
Speaker 1: She's just well, okay, I'm gonna have to learn how
Speaker 1: not to be scared of planes. So she got on
Speaker 1: the plane and she eventually became a million mile flyer
Speaker 1: with United Airlines with all the business travel she did,
Speaker 1: and got totally comfortable with flying. Sandler gave more than
Speaker 1: three thousand presentations across the country, including many of the
Speaker 1: colleges she had once filed suit against, and she continued
Speaker 1: to advocate for women's rights and social justice right up
Speaker 1: until her death. Sandler never anticipate paid when she first
Speaker 1: started what an impact her work would have, including on
Speaker 1: the world of sports. I know that she was surprised
Speaker 1: and utterly delighted over the years to see um all
Speaker 1: the expanding opportunities for girls and women in sports as
Speaker 1: a result of Title nine. In on the fort anniversary
Speaker 1: of Title nine, Sandler was honored all over the country.
Speaker 1: The University of Louisville had a special celebration during halftime
Speaker 1: of a packed basketball game. Sandler was presented with flowers
Speaker 1: and a plaque at half court, and then she was
Speaker 1: given something even more special. Dr Sandler lastly here to
Speaker 1: thank you in person. The captains are joined by their
Speaker 1: distinguished alumni and current teammates. One after another, the captains
Speaker 1: of the women's sports teams at Louisville walk onto the
Speaker 1: basketball court team Captain Katie McDonald, and the women of
Speaker 1: soccer team Captain Aaron Conrad, and the women of field hockey.
Speaker 1: Each captain walks up to Sandler, give her a hug,
Speaker 1: and presents her with a T shirt. We are the
Speaker 1: notes of your symphony. The shirts from our captains bear
Speaker 1: the name of every woman that ever played at the
Speaker 1: University of Louisville. Your impact is unparalleled, and it lives
Speaker 1: on and on, and Sandler's impact and that of Title
Speaker 1: nine has gone far beyond sports. Here's Sandler again in interview.
Speaker 1: I think the real surprise has been that it's been
Speaker 1: like a social revolution, and we didn't know that at
Speaker 1: the beginning. We thought it was just a little bit
Speaker 1: discrimination here and there. But It's a social revolution that
Speaker 1: will have as much impact as the industrial Revolution, and
Speaker 1: the reach of that revolution continues to be felt. Sandler's daughter, Deborah,
Speaker 1: is now a family lawyer in California. It's possible I
Speaker 1: would not have ended up a lawyer if it was
Speaker 1: not for my mother, because one of the things that
Speaker 1: happened with Title nine is that there was an opening
Speaker 1: of opportunities for women and girls all over the place.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was a little girl, girls weren't lawyers.
Speaker 1: That didn't happen by the time I decided I was
Speaker 1: going to go to law school, thirty or fort of
Speaker 1: my graduating class where women. Sandler's efforts changed the composition
Speaker 1: of college campuses and workplaces. They gave millions of girls
Speaker 1: and women the chance to play organized sports. She always
Speaker 1: said to herself when she was a little girl, you know,
Speaker 1: and and later also she always said, I wanted to
Speaker 1: change the world. And as she got older and was
Speaker 1: looking back on her life, she said, I always wanted
Speaker 1: to change the world, and I did. The women behind
Speaker 1: Title nine, like Bunny Sandler and Edith Green, could not
Speaker 1: have changed the world without another trailblazer working behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: I am radical to the extent that I want to
Speaker 1: see the individual human being as free as is possible
Speaker 1: to to fulfill that individual human beings potential. Dr Polly
Speaker 1: Murray was a civil rights leader well ahead of her time.
Speaker 1: Murray realized early on she was different from most other
Speaker 1: people she met. She was mixed race, she was transgender.
Speaker 1: It was often hard for her to find acceptance. But
Speaker 1: I think one of the great things about Polly Murray
Speaker 1: is that while she could easily have been crushed by
Speaker 1: all of the rejection that she met, she turned this
Speaker 1: sense of being in between into one of the most
Speaker 1: important ideas of the twentieth century. Polly Murray knew that
Speaker 1: it was just as wrong to discriminate against someone because
Speaker 1: of their sex as it was to do so because
Speaker 1: of their race. So she set out to change how
Speaker 1: lawyers and the law thought about sex discrimination, and Dr
Speaker 1: Murray's unheralded efforts paved the way for Title nine and
Speaker 1: so much more that we take for granted today. What
Speaker 1: I always say is, while she might not have been
Speaker 1: a woman of her time, she is certainly a woman
Speaker 1: of our time. Let us play, let us play, let us.
Speaker 1: The Thread is produced by Robert Coulos Shannon Williamson and
Speaker 1: me Sean braswell. Evan Roberts engineered our show. This episode
Speaker 1: features the song let Us Play, written and performed by
Speaker 1: teacup Gin. You can hear more of their songs at
Speaker 1: teacup gin dot com. To learn more about the Thread,
Speaker 1: visit Aussie dot com, Slash the thread all one word,
Speaker 1: and make sure to subscribe to the Thread on Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: follow us on I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.