SUDDENLY, THERE is a lot of interest in and support for women’s college and professional team sports. We’ve had the Cailtin Clark phenomenon, the rise of the WNBA (where’s OUR team?), record-breaking attendance at women’s college hockey games, and the local conversation about a soccer team for Boston.
But it’s not sudden, and it wasn’t organic. It’s a not-exactly-perfect illustration of the impact of law and policy. What we are seeing now is a result of Title IX, the landmark 1972 legislation that prohibited gender-based discrimination in any educational institution that received federal funding, at any grade level.
The law was largely written by Rep. Patsy Mink of Ohio, the first woman of color elected to Congress, in response to her own experiences with discrimination in school. It was carried by Rep. Edith Green of Oregon in the House, and by Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, a true male ally on women’s equality, in the Senate. It was signed by President Nixon, though there is evidence that he may have been distracted that day. And of course, Title IX has been in the news lately, as the Biden administration issued new rules earlier this year, which take effect on August 1.
Among other things, Title IX meant that women and girls theoretically had access to sports programs that were equally supported. One of the most transformational pieces of the legislation provided that colleges and universities had to provide scholarship opportunities for women. That’s a literal game changer.
More than 50 years after the initial implementation of Title IX, total compliance is of course elusive, but that doesn’t change the fact that women and girls have been given more access to sports programs, and we are seeing results. I am certainly not making the case that women have achieved parity. It is the rule, not the exception, that professional female athletes are likely to hold second and even third jobs, or work overseas, because they don’t actually make a living. I am hopeful this will change as there is more interest in women’s team sports, because it is the audiences that will bring the money.
I have never had any interest in hockey until a few years ago when, while working in the Boston mayor’s office, I became acquainted with and enamored of The Boston Pride, the three-time championship professional women’s team that was part of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), the first league in North America to pay its players a salary, albeit a small one.
The captain of the team, Jillian Dempsey, then also a full-time elementary school teacher in Winthrop, was the daughter of my colleague, Fire Commissioner Jack Dempsey.
The Pride was a total paradox – a championship team that was simultaneously an underdog in the Boston sports landscape. They were winning games, championships, and routinely selling out the admittedly small Warrior Ice Arena, but they were getting no respect from the media and other institutions in Massachusetts that value sports.
In March 2020, days before we closed the city for the pandemic, not knowing what was going to happen next, I organized a group of about 20 women to go see them play. When they came back post-pandemic, I bought season tickets, wanting to support the team and the league and to be able to invite friends to get to know them.
When the NWHL was purchased in 2023 by Mark Walter and Billie Jean King, disbanded, and brought back to life as the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), I bought in again, despite the fact games are now held in Lowell, which is a hellish commute with no great public transit options from my Dorchester home on a weeknight.
In the much-larger Tsongas Arena, the fan base is growing. At each game, there are thousands of people – the majority of them girls and women. The vibe is joyful and positive. It’s family-friendly, with local youth hockey teams taking the ice between periods, experiencing the highlight (so-far) of their young lives. It’s also very LGBTQIA-friendly, which is not always the case at other team sporting events. Any creative marketing person looking for those audiences is missing an opportunity if they don’t look at this.
The lack of media coverage for The Boston Pride was dispiriting, and it’s still not where it should be with the new league, but it’s getting better. It was so bad for the Pride, that two local women, Laura Everett and Abbi Holt, set up a platform called Boston Women’s Sports, got themselves credentialed, and were often the only local media covering games.
The situation seems to be getting better, with more local outlets stepping up in these last couple of weeks, as the Boston team advanced to the playoffs, and now the finals. I think the incessant chirping from some people may be helping. It also helps that the team has been exciting lately, with dramatic come-from-behind and overtime wins, and a finals game four that saw the opposing team’s winning goal reversed, and then answered by the Boston team within two minutes. Oh, yes, and that was in double overtime.
Wednesday night in Lowell, PWHL’s Boston and Minneapolis teams will play the deciding game for the inaugural league championship. The game, at the 6,500-person capacity Tsongas Arena, is sold out. There are a handful of tickets on the resale sites, and they cost thousands of dollars.
The excitement about this is a testament to the power of legislation and policy to change lives. Sure, it would be nice if it didn’t take so long for meaningful change to arrive, but everyone who is excited about women’s sports this week owes a debt of gratitude to Mink, Green, Bayh – and yes, even Nixon – along with all of the activists who pushed in 1972 and continue to push.
Go Boston!
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