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Forty Years “on the basis of sex”: Title IX, the “Female Athlete”, and the Political Construction of Sex and Gender A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Elizabeth Ann Sharrow IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dara Z. Strolovitch August 2013 © Elizabeth Ann Sharrow 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project bears the subtle (and not-so-subtle) imprints of many relationships developed and forged during my tenure at the University of Minnesota. These relationships have inflected my work in a variety of dimensions and I have long anticipated acknowledging them here. The University of Minnesota was my home for fifteen years. First, I experienced it as an undergraduate, a period during which I discovered the sport of rowing. The Minnesota Athletic Department announced in the spring of my freshman year that women’s rowing—a sport I joined at the club level after arriving on campus—would become a varsity team in the fall of 2000. This decision was driven by efforts to comply with Title IX, and it would forever alter the course of my life. I wrote my summa thesis on the policy, and have Wendy Rahn, Jamie Druckman, and Barbara Welke to thank for cultivating my interest in policy and politics through their roles as advisors of my undergraduate research. My career in rowing, at first a means to make friends and community on a sprawling Big Ten campus, became increasingly central to my life as an undergraduate and I would go on to coach at Minnesota for five years after completing my B.A. My passion and interest for the human-face of policy implementation was largely inspired by the athletes and fellow coaches I worked among on the University of Minnesota Women’s Rowing team. I found friends there who did not take our work too seriously, even while training on the partially frozen Mississippi River in February. I fondly remember Minnesota rowers standing at the boat launch of the 2007 NCAA i Championships chanting: “Lutefisk! Lefse! Yah Sure You Betcha! We’re Minne-SO-ta and we’re gonna get-cha!” Although political science took me away from rowing, the Minnesota rowers drove me to write this project. During the latter years of my coaching career, I also worked to finish a Masters in Public Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. There I met Sally Kenney, who facilitated my interest in graduate-level work in political science, and who must be thanked for mobilizing my applications for doctoral programs after I decided to apply in the eleventh hour. Memories of her frank observations buoyed me through many gloomy hours during Ph.D. coursework when I would recall her observation that I “could outlast just about anyone with [my] stubbornness and hard work”. This project would not have been possible, nor might I have been encouraged to pursue it, without the uniquely supportive community in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. I was supremely fortunate to begin coursework with a boisterous, compassionate, and generous cohort. Special thanks go to Jonas Bunte, Giovanni Mantilla, Menaka Philips, Geoff Sheagley, and Laura Thaut, for cultivating community from day one of “Math Camp”. My other interlocutors in political science included David Forrest and Matt Hindman, with whom I learned to think critically about the field of American politics, and without whom I would have consumed fewer Monday night burgers and Totchos. The years on the West Bank were also made more lively through friendships with Logan Dancey, Moira Lynch, and Kjersten Nelson. These colleagues, along with Professors Bud Duvall, Kathryn Pearson, Joe Soss, Dara Strolovitch, and Joan Tronto, helped me define myself vis-à-vis my home discipline. ii Beyond political science, the broader graduate student community at Minnesota helped me develop and cultivate my interdisciplinary interests. Through the graduate minor program in Feminist and Critical Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS), I became acquainted with colleagues who would become friends and pillars of strength during moments of intellectual uncertainty. The Graduate Interdisciplinary Group in Sexuality Studies (GIGSS) connected me to Karisa Butler-Wall, Angela Carter, Jesus Estrada-Perez, Lars Mackenzie, Katy Mohrman, Raechel Tiffe, Eli Vitulli, and Elizabeth Williams (as well as Logan Casey, from afar), with whom Queer World was established. I found in them fierce allies and political comrades, as well as an encouraging domain to “[R]esist [E]very [L]imit”. My relationship with GWSS lead to the founding of the Gender, Sexuality, Power, and Politics (GSPP) Colloquium, allowing me to work more closely with Bud Duvall, Regina Kunzel, and Katie Bashore. Organizing our speaker series also gave me opportunity to meet Margot Canaday, who offered encouragement and support during my job search, as well as critical advising on archival research and FOIA requests. I also owe thanks to Doug Hartmann and Kyle Green, in the U of MN Department of Sociology, who cultivated a graduate student work group in sports studies. Beyond Minnesota, I have Doug McAdam and Sid Tarrow to thank for choosing my work for their Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Contentious Politics workgroup in the summer of 2010. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Social Science Research Council, for funding that workgroup through the Dissertation Prospectus Development Fund, and for creating the spaces in which I would meet the “Contentious iii Gang”, and especially Liz Fink, Janice Gallagher, and Elena Shih. A serendipitous roommate assignment also introduced me to Casey Oberlin, who has become a confidante, close friend, and persistent cheerleader as both of us “clip-clop” through social scientific archival research. During that same summer, I met Emily Alvarez, Camille Burge, Angela Carlsberg, and Rachel Moskowitz, while attending the ICPSR Summer Program and doing archival research in Ann Arbor, MI. I have treasured these friendships and continue to make excuses for attending conferences (both online and in- person) that make these friends from afar feel closer to mind. During the years I called Minneapolis home, I also found friendship and care from Betsy Hawes and Kaja Martinson, Megan Dunn, Emily Larson, Becca Carlton, Meg Tabaka, and Sally Olson, all of whom kept me in better spirits than I would have been on my own. The YWCA of Minneapolis deserves special recognition for providing me space to strengthen my body during years when I wondered how my mind would sustain the effort of a Ph.D. Likewise, the Minneapolis Board of Parks and Recreation should be commended for maintaining miles of trails around the lakes and the city more generally which gave me space to remain active, regardless of the heat index or the wind chill. I owe thanks to the generous funders of my research and writing, including: the American Association of University Women, the Gerald Ford Presidential Foundation, the Myra Sadker Foundation, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Social Science Research Council, and the University of Minnesota Graduate School. Above all, I owe the greatest intellectual debt to my dissertation committee: Dara Strolovitch, Regina Kunzel, Kathryn Pearson, and Joe Soss. Although each satisfied very iv distinct roles in my intellectual development, their collective effort provided the finest role models for scholarly work and exacting standards in research, argument, and writing. I am so grateful they allowed me to choose them as mentors to shepherd me along in my journey to finally leave Minnesota. Joe’s work encouraged me to approach policy from a less traditional direction and his keen ability to re-articulate my under-developed thoughts from multiple perspectives helped me make critical decisions about the direction of my argument. Kathryn’s enthusiasm for teaching and research helped convince me to apply for the Ph.D. program. Her mentoring over the years helped encourage me to write a project that I have remained excited about during the most demanding periods of revision. Regina inspired my interest in time—both in the study of history, and the acquisition of wristwatches. She welcomed me into the GWSS community, helped me navigate archival research, and seemed to intuit each moment when what I needed most was a quiet reminder to just keep going. But thanks especially to my advisor, Dara, without whom this project would have been immeasurably less rich, satisfyingly complex, and ultimately fulfilling. Her approach to the discipline of political science has enabled my creativity and allowed me to develop a project that draws upon multiple intellectual traditions. She impressed upon me that the practices of research and writing are mutually constitutive, and this orientation to scholarly pursuits allowed me to resist a purely linear approach to producing this work. Above all, Dara has allowed me and her other students to pursue our intellectual passions. The confidence that I have gained through her belief in my v work has cascaded across my intellectual relationships, enabling me to offer others the generosity of spirit and scholarly curiosity that she has offered me. I was amazingly lucky to pursue this degree so close to home, and my family was there at every step of the way. It was fitting that they were able to attend my dissertation defense since they were the ones who told me from the start that my education would be the most important thing I could ever commit myself to. They brought me to campus recruitment weekends at Minnesota and promised me that I would find a place in this massive university. They attended rowing events and practice job talks, and more than that, they opened themselves to my relentless conversations about sports, inequality, and politics, even when we quite dramatically disagreed.

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