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Opinion: The four women -- and 37 words -- that changed the world 50 years ago [cnn.com]

 

By Leigh Fondakowski, Image: Screenshot from article, CNN Opinion, June 23, 2022

On June 23, 1972, a piece of legislation quietly made its way to the desk of President Richard Nixon. Buried within the large omnibus education bill were 37 words that would make up Title IX, a landmark civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools or other educational programs funded by the federal government.

The handful of women who were behind Title IX didn't even lobby on its behalf because they knew drawing attention to its inclusion could have killed the whole bill, according to Bernice "Bunny" Sandler, one of the architects behind Title IX. And even this handful of women did not then recognize the full scope and long-term implications of this law: that it would require gender equity in hiring and admissions practices on nearly every college campus in America, revolutionize women's sports, and become the mechanism for handling sexual harassment and sexual assault on campuses -- terms that were not even commonly used in 1972.

Armed with telephones and typewriters, these women -- including Sandler, legal scholar Pauli Murray, Reps. Edith Green and Patsy Takemoto Mink, among others -- created a movement that one of them would call the "academic sex revolution."

[Please click here to read more.]

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