Rob Andrews: “I congratulate the women of the University of Portland on their outstanding achievement of winning the NCAA Division I…”

“I congratulate the women of the University of Portland on their outstanding achievement of winning the NCAA Division I soccer championship, and their achievement gives us pause to look backward at the world that their mothers lived in and forward to the world in which their daughters will live. The world in which the mothers of these outstanding champions lived frowned on the idea of young women playing sports. We did not fund it. We did not support it. We discouraged it in ways that not only failed to enrich the lives of little girls but failed to enrich the lives of their brothers and boy counterparts. When the mothers of these women were in high school and college, athletic opportunities for young women were the exception, not the rule. That changed because title IX was enacted over 3 decades ago, because women of vision like the late Patsy Mink stood here and made sure that it was enacted. We have not only the opportunity to congratulate the women of the University of Portland; we have the opportunity to protect this opportunity for their daughters as well.”