2nd Best Female Athlete of 2009 ... a Horse?

My mother grew up a tomboy in the 1950s and 1960s. She remembers going to her brother's baseball games where she wasn't allowed to play because she was a girl. Title IX, which required gender equity in all schools receiving federal aid, was her Civil Rights Act for athletics. But last week, two horses made the Associated Press' top ten list of Female Athletes of 2009, raising the question, how far have we come?

According to an article for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the female athletes of the year are selected by the votes of U.S. newspaper editors who belong to the AP family -- an old boy's club if ever there was one. With few exceptions, female athlete of the year consistently goes to tennis players and golfers, apparently the only sports that register on their radar screen. But this year, female athletes numbers two and seven were horses.

Once, a male horse appeared on the top male athletes list. But Secretariat, a record-setting 1973 Triple Crown winner who could easily be considered the all-time greatest racing horse, only made it on the list in sixth place. To deem a horse the second best female athlete, and to have not one, but two fillies on the list, is a huge slap in the face for women who have come so far since Congress passed Title IX in 1972.

In 1972, a mere 1 in 27 girls participated in high school athletics; in 2006-2007, 41% of high school athletes were female. In 1972, women were provided with two percent of college athletic budgets; today, men still get a whopping $136 million more in athletic scholarships. Despite extraordinary gains, sports remain dominated by boys and men.

In other sports news, women ski jumpers lost an appeal to participate in the 2010 winter Olympics. The female athletes contended that they were qualified and organized enough as a sport to meet the requirements for qualification. According to the president of the International Olympic Committee, the decision was based on the fact that there are only 164 registered female ski jumpers in the world but over 2,500 male jumpers. These numbers and the committee's decision reflect two truths about women in sports. The first is that women are still looking for full recognition in sports; the second is that they continue to face more barriers to becoming athletes than men.

The votes cast this year for the horses Zenyatta and Rachel Alexandra reflect a history of disrespect for women in sports, a willful obliviousness to the historical sensitivity of the issue, and an enormous laziness on the part of those who nominate athletes for not finding any one of thousands of qualified women instead. In college, most of my female friends played a sport: Rugby. While I never participated myself, it was easy to see that sports were the highlight of their college life. Rugby gave them a confidence, purpose, and camaraderie other girls lacked. However, despite being league champions, our college newspapers never noted their wins and raising money for out of state tournaments was always a battle.

The point is that Title IX changed everything -- but we have farther to go, especially when stuffy editors can't think of 10 women deserving of female Athlete of the year.

(Photo: Hey Paul)