U.S. women's Olympians enjoy unprecedented success Read more here

[seabeyond]

As of early Tuesday evening, the U.S. women had outperformed the U.S. men, winning 20 gold medals to the men's 10, and 36 overall to 29.

"There is no doubt in anybody's mind this is a direct function of our having the strongest sports law in the world as far as gender equity," said Donna Lopiano, the former president of the Women's Sports Foundation and now a consultant with Sports Management Resources. "And we haven't seen the end of it. It started with individual sports, then the team sports kicked in at the '96 Olympics, and next you're going to see us winning in traditional men's sports such as wrestling, boxing and weightlifting. It's a domino effect. "We are way ahead of the world in the rights of women to compete, and young girls now are making demands because of the images they are seeing through global media, images like what we are witnessing at these Olympics."

*

But a story that didn't get as much attention was the historic performance by American female swimmers. Led by teenagers Missy "The Missile" Franklin and Katie Ledecky, the women had their most successful meet since the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which were boycotted by many of the top Eastern European swimmers. This year's women won 14 medals overall, and eight golds, a huge improvement over the two they won in Beijing and three they won in Athens. The team even had a female coach for the first time, University of California's Teri McKeever.

*

"So, yeah. We have a mindset we really don't care . We're way past that. There are no feminists on my team. We're not running around burning our bras trying to make people believe in our team. I mean, I would burn mine 'cause it doesn't fit like it used to. We just play basketball and whether anybody cares or writes about it, there's nothing we can do about that. We're not in PR business, we're in the basketball business and we're pretty damned good at it."

Lopiano believes that, too, will change with time. "The next generation will demand equality in sports media and TV. The images of these athletes today will be cemented in them, and things will keep changing."

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/08/07/2252505/lets-hear-it-for-the-girls-us.html

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*interesting though. not feminist and i totally respect her point yet she says, the next generation will make the demand. i saw a video on msnbc talking about this and it directed e to this subject. how this is pumping our girls to be strong women. it is a good thing. and the different sports orgs here in the nation is having a real escalation in membership and enthusiasm. Olympians inspire girls: Strong is the new pretty. also, viewership of the olympics is up 55% of this years olympics vs last olympics by young girls.



a commercial that is awesome. i think empowering. i picked it up out of video/media.

[Rabid_Rabbit]

1. Thanks

I remember reading about a study that showed the longer girls where involved in organized sports the less likely they where to drop out of school, have a child before marriage, experiment with drugs etc
I think my very show 8 year old daughter has become more confident and sure of herself through her involvement in soccer and gymnastics.

[seabeyond]

2. keep it up. i have found thru sports

that though we would think it would interfere with school, it does the opposite. the kids have to really focus, learn to prioritize, be more organized and tend to get better grades, too.

[redqueen]

3. Women need to stop treating "feminist" like a dirty word. The right demonized the word "liberal",

but we seem to have finally moved past that

It's past time women stopped letting sexists demonize this word.

[seabeyond]

4. exactly. all thru the article then declare not feminist. showing they are not gay? allowing

the menz (ok, edit, a lot of womenz and this being one is doing exactly the same, what we accuse the menz of. they are part of the problem.) to control how we are allowed to define ourselves.

i get why the woman said what she did. but also, point out the contradiction of not feminist, next generation can make the demand, or be the "feminist". it was kinda odd, lol.