Opinion: Don’t let the lawn signs confuse you. Prop 1 will advance sex equality for girls’ sports

Equality is on the New York state ballot this November. Proposal 1 aims to add wide-reaching equality protections to the state constitution. The measure seeks to improve on existing constitutional protections that currently prohibit race and religious discrimination by adding “ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed, religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”.

Prop 1 would update New York’s constitution, which was written in the 1930s, by adding rights that pretty much every other state already recognizes. Yet it’s hard to miss the lawn signs across the state that urge a “No” vote on Prop 1 in the name of “saving girls sports.” Opponents of Prop 1 have rallied to defeat the measure, ironically in the name of defending the equal rights of female athletes. This is confusing, and it is meant to be.

The opposition to Prop 1 in New York state is cynically following the playbook being used across the country this year, mobilizing fear, misunderstanding and hatred toward trans people as a weapon in a larger battle to defeat a measure that would modernize the state constitution. 

What’s particularly duplicitous about the messaging used by the opponents of Prop 1 is that they are weaponizing the very thing Prop 1 will do – advance sex equality – to try to defeat it.

What do I mean by that? Well, if you really cared about the equal rights of girls and women’s athletes, then you’d recognize the real and tangible forms of inequality that female athletes live with daily. For instance, the WNBA Finals just ended with television viewership that was off the charts: a 115% year over year increase to 1.6 million viewers. The WNBA delivered its most-watched regular season in 24 years, and the season finished with its highest attendance in 22 years. Meanwhile, viewership of this year’s men’s NBA finals tanked. Despite the popularity of the women’s game, the average NBA salary per season is $8,321,937, while the average WNBA player earns only $75,181. Let’s do the math: the average NBA player makes 110 times more than the average WNBA player. Compare the top draft picks this year in the WNBA and NBA, and the disparity is also shocking. Caitlin Clark, whose phenomenal impact on the popularity of women’s basketball has been dubbed the “Caitlin Clark effect,” will earn $338,056 over four years, a fraction of the $55 million contract signed by Victor Wembanyama, the men’s top pick.

Turning to collegiate sports, the salaries paid to head coaches of men’s teams remain well ahead of those paid to the head coaches of women’s teams. At my own institution, Columbia University, the head coaches of the men’s teams are paid 30% more than the head coaches of the women’s teams. Despite the skyrocketing popularity of women’s collegiate basketball, the NCAA distributed more than $170 million to Division I men’s basketball conferences, based on the men’s teams’ wins and participation in March Madness. How much did the NCAA distribute to the women’s conferences based on their wins and participation in March Madness? $0. 

Then, of course, there’s the ongoing and horrendous problem of sexual assault of female athletes by male coaches and athletes. A recent study showed that 21% of women and girls globally have suffered sexual abuse in a sporting environment during childhood, nearly double the rate of their male counterparts. 

The case of prized Louisiana State University running back Derrius Guice is one of many examples. Guice was accused of raping female students and taking nude pictures of others without their permission. Women victimized by Guice sued LSU, claiming that university officials either doubted the women’s stories, didn’t investigate or didn’t call the police, instead allowing Guice to continue his football career. In other cases, when male athletes are found to have engaged in sexual harassment or abuse of female athletes, they often just transfer to another school. 

To address this problem, the NCAA instituted new rules to vet athletes for past sexual misconduct or violence. But the new rules amount to nothing more than a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. “If an athlete answers ‘no’ to a list of questions about criminal convictions and school disciplinary action, officials at many multi-sport powerhouses – the University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, Ohio State University, and more – generally take their word for it,” USA Today reported. 

Then there are the multitude of cases of female athletes being sexually assaulted by their coaches. The problem was so endemic that Congress passed the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017 to create new and better protections against sexual assault for Olympic and Paralympic athletes. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, an organization set up by Congress as part of the new law, was charged with developing and enforcing policies, procedures and training to prevent abuse and misconduct, yet it has come under enormous criticism for being too close to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees, protecting abusive coaches rather than holding them accountable. 

State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal has taken the lead in criticizing the Center for SafeSport for its failures to keep athletes safe from sexual misconduct. Prop 1 would allow elected officials in New York like Hoylman-Sigal and others to take affirmative steps to protect athletes from abuse when other institutions have failed them.  

There are countless other ways in which sex discrimination structures athletics from kindergarten soccer teams to professional leagues: disparities in training equipment, access to facilities for team practice, athletic scholarships, transportation to and from games, the list can go on. 

Clearly, we need stronger laws prohibiting sex discrimination in sports. Prop 1 would create new tools to combat sex discrimination across the board in athletics. Yet the opponents of Prop 1 have framed their opposition to it in terms of “protecting girls sports.” They’ve spread misinformation and fabrications about how Prop 1 will supposedly mandate that boys play in girls’ sports leagues (it won’t) and claimed that transgender girls have an unfair advantage in girls’ athletic leagues (they don’t). 

In fact, fear-mongering about trans athletes is bad for the equality rights of all female athletes. “Excluding women who are trans hurts all women. It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being ‘too masculine’ or ‘too good’ at their sport to be a ‘real’ woman,’” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote recently. Research shows that a “person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance,” according to Dr. Joshua D. Safer. For a trans woman athlete who meets NCAA standards, Safer wrote, “there is no inherent reason why her physiological characteristics related to athletic performance should be treated differently from the physiological characteristics of a non-transgender woman.”

Caring about equality in sports means supporting laws and policies that achieve gender parity in sports regardless of sex. New Yorkers who support sex equality in sports should also enthusiastically support Prop 1, which would address the real drivers of sex-based inequality in sports such as differences in how much male and female athletes and coaches are paid, what facilities and equipment they can use and how vulnerable they are to sexual violence. 

If you really care about sex equality in sports, vote “yes” on Prop 1.