This interview is available only in the print version of the January-February 2000 Utne Reader. See back-issue ordering information.
INTRODUCTION TO INTERVIEW: When the U.S. women’s soccer team won the World Cup last summer, People magazine gushed about the refreshing contrast these “clean-cut and entirely charming” young women with “unmistakable passion” provide to often chemically enhanced, money-hungry, professional male athletes. Even Sports Illustrated, noting with sexist surprise how quickly the team became a national conversation piece, dubbed them “Queens of the World.”
Female stars are emerging in basketball, too. And female college athletes earn better grades and get into less trouble than their male counterparts. But can women save sports? Writer Lynette Lamb posed this and other questions to Mary Jo Kane, director of the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport.
Part of January-February 2000 cover story section.
