At The Olympics, It's Women First

Lynn La/CNET

The year: 1972.

The scene: A walnut-paneled conference room on K Street, "Lobbyists Row," in downtown Washington, D.C.

The players: A dozen of Washington's highest-priced legislative hit men – lawyers, ad-men and strategic planners who represent business and other "special interests."

They are seated around a large chrome and mahogany conference table. Their shoes are freshly tasseled and newly shined. The senior member opens the meeting.

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"O.K., here's the deal," he says. "I get a call from Nike and Adidas yesterday. All the other shoe companies are on board with them. So are the big casual clothes makers – athletic clothes, sweatshirts and so forth. So we'll be working for a kind of consortium on this one.

"They want us to try to get the government to solve a big problem they're having. It seems that 51 percent of the U.S. public does not use their products. That would be women. They don't wear soccer shoes, track shoes, basketball shoes, nothing. It's a dead zone in their marketing scheme. Now, can we put the fix in somewhere to turn that around?"

From across the table a wizened "legislative affairs director," himself a former member of Congress, is the first to answer.

"It looks to me like a straightforward legislative response is what we should push," he says. "You want to sell athletic shoes to women, the best way to do that is simple: Make someone spend money to encourage women to play sports they don't play now. You do that by forcing the schools and colleges to promote girls' sports."

A younger lobbyist responds, "Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't get the strategy. Local and state governments run schools and colleges. How can their policies toward women's athletics be affected by the Congress?"

Stifling a smile, the elder influence peddler says, "My boy, everything can be affected by the Congress. In this case, we write a bill, let's call it the Educational Amendments Act of 1972, that has a provision in it, somewhere deep in the bill, like Title IX, that says something like..."

He pauses and turns to a gnomish aide, who reads the draft legislation: "No American shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

The senior partner who had convened the meeting ods approvingly from his seat at the head of the table. "I think we're on our way," he says. "We push this baby through, get Nixon to sign it as a pro-business measure, and our clients will sell more goddamn shoes than they know what to do with."

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The above meeting never happened. It is merely a fictional playlet concocted as a public service by Reality Check to illustrate a fundamental point about government in modern American mega-capitalism: Major consequences of government involvement in any issue, for good or ill, are often massive, amazing, and, most importantly, unintended.

There is, of course, a Title IX. It does contain the words above, Nixon did sign it and it did precipitate an explosion in women's athletics. It was a piece of civil-rights legislation, not a marketing scheme. But after watching the 2000 Olympics, you could easily be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

For the first time, a sports über-extravaganza is being marketed more at women than men. The ads, the prime-time programming, the idolatry all skew female, as the marketers might say.

This reminds us that special interests are sometimes blind to their own interests. The athletic shoe industry was not the driving force behind passage of Title IX. And one now wonders why. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to them.

As of 1996, women have been purchasing more athletic shoes than men, and the market for sports apparel for women is headed toward the stratosphere.

Before Title IX, just one out of 27 high-school girls played sports; now, one out of three take part. Before the law, a paltry $100,000 was available to women for college sports scholarships; today that figure is $180 million.

Remember that during campaign seasons when a politician says the answer to a problem is to "Get the Government Off Our Backs." For that matter, remember it when politicians say that government is the solution.

And as we enjoy the performances of Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Jenny Thompson, Sheryl Swoopes and Marion Jones, we should remember that it took a government fire axe to open the door for them.

Sometimes, fair play is a good play.