by Senator Marsha Blackburn
Across our country, more than 3 million female high school and college athletes compete, practice, and train every day to achieve athletic success.
For many of these young women and girls, athletic participation is more than just a game: It is a life-long passion that improves their physical health, boosts their self-confidence, and teaches them the discipline and leadership skills to succeed on and off the field.
In many ways, the success of women’s athletics would have been impossible without Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that codified protections on the basis of sex. By requiring equal resources for facilities, training, recruitment, and scholarships for female athletic programs, the law opened the floodgates for women in sports. In fact, since 1972, the year Title IX became law, the number of female college athletes increased by a factor of seven, while the number of female high school athletes has increased more than ten-fold.
Despite the incredible outcomes for women, for years we have seen the Biden-Harris administration wage a war on the very Title IX provisions that enabled greater women’s participation in sports.
On the 50th anniversary of Title IX in 2022, for example, the Department of Education announced new rules that allow students to participate in activities that do not align with their sex — essentially forcing schools to allow biological males to play on female teams. To make matters worse, just in April the administration redefined “discrimination” to allow biological men to use women-only locker rooms and bathrooms.
Make no mistake: With its radical interpretation of Title IX, the Biden-Harris administration is erasing women’s achievements and changing the world of athletics as we know it.
You do not need to be a biologist to understand that there are inherent biological differences between men and women that put women at a competitive dis- advantage in sports and jeopardize their safety during competition.
In fact, since 2003, biological men have wrongfully displaced women and girls from more than 1,000 championship titles, medals, scholarships, and records, including at least 28 women’s sports titles in volleyball, swimming, mountain biking, track and field, weightlifting, and cycling — with much of this happening in just the last few years.
The results are tragic: Young women — who often dedicate their entire lives to their sports — miss out on scholarships, career opportunities, and the hard-earned records that they deserve.
Thankfully, many of these young women are bravely speaking out against the Biden-Harris administration’s radical agenda, including Tennessee’s Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer who was forced to compete against and share a locker room with a biological male during the NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships.
Now more than ever, Congress should stand with the female athletes fighting for fair play and celebrate the incredible contributions women have made to the world of sports. That’s why, in the U.S. Senate, I introduced a resolution to establish October 10 as “American Girls in Sports Day.” Of course, we picked that date for a special reason: As the 10th day of the 10th month, October 10 is represented by the roman numerals XX — the same numerals of the female sex chromosome.
In addition to establishing “American Girls in Sports Day,” this resolution would call on sports-governing bodies in the United States and abroad to protect biological women and girls in sports. Just last month, I led 22 of my Republican colleagues in demanding that the NCAA prohibit biological males from participating in women’s sports to restore fair competition.
In the last 50 years, female athletes have gone from the sidelines to the center stage of competition. As we continue to fight for women’s participation in sports, we must keep in mind what is at stake — and the “American Girls in Sports Day” resolution will help ensure that happens.
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Marsha Blackburn is the senior U.S. senator representing the people of Tennessee.
Photo “High School Soccer” by Anil Sharma.
