[News-releases] NOW Blasts Bush's Commission, Joins Other Women'sRights Leaders in Setting The Record Straight on Title IX

NOW Press Office
202-628-8669 Rebecca Farmer, x 116
202-785-8576 (fax) 

NOW Blasts Bush's Commission, Joins Other Women's Rights Leaders in Setting
The
Record Straight on Title IX

January 31, 2003

"In the best Orwellian tradition, the Bush Administration is trying to
convince
us that left is right, up is down, war is peace and that its so-called
Commission on Opportunity in Athletics actually cares about women's equal
participation in sports," said National Organization for Women (NOW)
Membership
Vice President Terry O'Neill. "George W. Bush has mounted a double-barreled
assault on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that requires
federally funded schools and colleges to provide equal educational
opportunities to girls and women. The recommendations adopted on January 30 by
the group appointed to 'review' Title IX were not moderate, as some news
reports suggested?they were an outright attack on Title IX." 

"As the Reagan Administration did in the 1980s, the Bush Administration is now
trying to reverse Title IX's major progress for women and girls in athletics
and education," O'Neill said. "But Bush knows that the vast majority of people
in this country?70 percent of adults familiar with Title IX?want it to be
better enforced or left alone, and certainly not weakened, as this commission
is trying to do." 

"The majority leaders on Bush's commission are being disingenuous about their
real goal," O'Neill said. "They say they're for Title IX while doing
everything
they can to demolish it. Then they gag the minority, refusing to allow a
minority report to be released. But the voices of the majority of this country
will not be silenced. We call on the commission to respect the right of the
minority to have its say. What are they so afraid of anyway?" 

"We also deplore the unfair process by which the commission desperately tried
to project an image of broad and deep support for undermining Title IX,"
O'Neill said. "Such support doesn't exist, and stacking the commission with
opponents of equality, who in turn stacked their own hearings with like-minded
right-wing idealogues, can't change the fact that the people of this country
want equality for women and girls in sports." 

"The National Organization for Women stands with other women's rights
groups to
put the Bush Administration on notice that we won't go back to the days women
and girls were told they couldn't play sports because it wasn't ladylike,"
O'Neill said. "My twelve-year old daughter and her friends won't stand for
this
and neither will their parents. We reject the commission's attempt to weaken
Title IX's guarantee of equality, and we will accept no less than full
enforcement of that promise." 

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