A sweeping history of the federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in education, published on the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” —Title IX’s first thirty-seven words By prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, the 1972 legislation popularly known as Title IX profoundly changed the lives of women and girls in the United States, accelerating a movement for equal education in classrooms, on sports fields, and in all of campus life. 37 Words is the story of Title IX. Filled with rich characters—from Bernice Resnick Sandler, an early organizer for the law, to her trans grandchild—the story of Title IX is a legislative and legal drama with conflicts over regulations and challenges to the law. It’s also a human story about women denied opportunities, students struggling for an education free from sexual harassment, and activists defying sexist discrimination. These intersecting narratives of women seeking an education, playing sports, and wanting protection from sexual harassment and assault map gains and setbacks for feminism in the last fifty years and show how some women benefit more than others. Award-winning journalist Sherry Boschert beautifully explores the gripping history of Title IX through the gutsy people behind it. In the tradition of the acclaimed documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, 37 Words offers a crucial playbook for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and who is horrified by current attacks on women’s rights.

This book examines the history and evolution of Title IX, a landmark 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination at educational institutions receiving federal funding. Elizabeth Kaufer Busch and William Thro illuminate the ways in which the interpretation and implementation of Title IX have been transformed over time to extend far beyond the law's relatively narrow statutory text. The analysis considers the impact of Title IX on athletics, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and, for a time, transgender discrimination. Combining legal and cultural perspectives and supported by primary documents, Title IX: The Transformation of Sex Discrimination in Education offers a balanced and insightful narrative of interest to anyone studying the history of sex discrimination, educational policy, and the law in the contemporary United States.

This book explores the discrepancies among what protections Title IX provides to pregnant and parenting students, what colleges communicate, and what pregnant and parenting students actually experience. To actually protect pregnant and parenting students, the authors argue that a school must provide multifaceted support that is effectively communicated to an entire campus community, including students who are parenting, who are pregnant, and who may become pregnant. The first part of the book portrays the realities of pregnancy and parenting in college. The chapters illuminate related Title IX applications, population demographics, how unplanned pregnancies in college occur, and physical and mental health challenges that these students often experience. The authors then discuss what compliance with Title IX legally entails and why meeting it is often an afterthought. In the second half of the book, the authors use mixed-methods research to map the compliance landscapes of three schools in the southeast as examples: a large state school, a mid-size private university, and a small private college. Offering eye-opening interviews with pregnant and parenting students, interdisciplinary research, and proposals for multifaceted support and communication on college campuses, this volume will engage students, scholars, and activists with an interest in higher education administration, educational policy, reproductive health, bioethics, gender studies, and rhetoric.

Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an "unbought and unbossed" firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Chisholm spent her formative years moving between Barbados and Brooklyn, and the development of her political orientation did not follow the standard narratives of the civil rights or feminist establishments. Rather, Chisholm arrived at her Black feminism on her own path, making signature contributions to U.S. politics as an inventor and practitioner of Black feminist power—the vantage point centering Black girls and women in the movement that sought to transform political power into a broadly democratic force. Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life. In so doing, Curwood suggests new truths for understanding the social movements of Chisholm's time and the opportunities she forged for herself through multicultural, multigenerational, and cross-gender coalition building.