Nov 30, 2004 Credit Where Credit Is Due By Laurel Park :: Views- 1374

I'm very fortunate to have grown up in an era when a vast range of athletic, educational, and career options were available to women. When my sister graduated from high school in the early 1960s, the only sports available for girls were synchronized swimming and cheerleading. When she applied for a graduate fellowship toward the end of that decade, she was told that the department did not want to "waste" the money on female students who would probably leave academe to marry and raise children within a few years of earning their degrees. In contrast, I've always had a seemingly unlimited number of athletic and educational choices available to me and would never consider limiting my options based on my gender. I obviously know that it hasn't always been that way, and until fairly recently inequitable treatment of women was the rule rather than the exception. I can vaguely remember when there was no state cross-country championship for high school girls, and when Olympic track events for women were limited to distances of 800 meters or less. In some circles, women are still struggling for equal pay, equal promotion criteria, and other forms of equal treatment in society. The quest for equality has also spread to language, with attempts to implement "gender-neutral" language and thus eliminate perceived bias or superiority; for example "first-year students" instead of "freshmen" and "chairperson" or simply "chair" for "chairman".

While I don't get all bent out of shape over language and am probably more passive than I ought to be about some issues, I really do get upset when the accomplishments of women are belittled or ignored. This is true in all areas of society, but particularly in athletics. Fortunately, this seems to be changing, but with a few exceptions, our society is still overwhelmingly fixated on male sports and male athletes. I realize that we are working against social norms that have been centuries in the making, and that some sports (such as football) have no good "female" counterpart. And to be fair, media coverage of female athletes has improved tremendously in the past twenty years. The incidents I see these days are much more subtle and suggest that we still have a ways to go before the cultural transformation is complete.

This thorn in my side gets a good, solid twist every April during publicity for the Boston Marathon. Here's a pop quiz: Who was the last American to win Boston? If you said Greg Meyer, you're wrong. Greg was the last American man to win the race (in 1983), but fellow Michigan Wolverine Lisa Larsen-Weidenbach claimed the women's title two years later. While taking nothing away from Greg's achievement, I find it insulting that Lisa's victory is constantly ignored. I've seen this everywhere from regional news articles to national running publications, and even in comments from prominent members of the running community (who really ought to know better). Some people have argued that Lisa's victory is less impressive than Greg's because it took place during a year when the women's field was extremely weak (no prize money), but a win is a win. Every time I see Greg identified as "the last American to win Boston" it sets my teeth on edge. When I point out the error I am met with either a roll of the eyes or a response indicating that the speaker considers me another one of those irrational femi-Nazis in desperate need of some Midol.

I was likewise dismayed to see a similar mistake in Chris Lear's excellent book "Sub-4". Lear describes Brian Diemer's bronze medal in the 1984 Olympic steeplechase as "...to date [2003], the last Olympic medal won by an American distance runner" (p. 52). I'll bet Lynn Jennings, who won her own bronze medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, would be surprised to read that. At first I thought it was a typo or editing error, but the mistake popped up again later in the book (p. 180). And in a frustrating show of consistency, Lear joined the masses by proclaiming Greg Meyer as "the last American to win the Boston Marathon" (p. 2). Lear is pretty knowledgeable when it comes to running, but clearly in these two cases a little bit of historical background research would have been useful.

I suspect that mistakes of this kind are innocent rather than malicious in nature, and in some ways that makes them even more frustrating. It tells me that the despite all the progress society has made, in some areas the accomplishments of women still aren't that important, or at least not as important, as those of men. The fact that they appear repeatedly indicates that there is still some work to be done in order to get the psychological aspect of equality on par with the legal aspect. Hopefully in the not-too-distant-future, referring to Greg Meyer as "the last American to win Boston" will be as unacceptable as calling a female executive "sweetheart".