Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside

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Synopsis
While sportswriters rushed into Major League Baseball locker rooms to talk with players, MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn barred the lone woman from entering along with them. That reporter, 26-year-old Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke, charged Kuhn with gender discrimination, and after the lawyers argued Ludtke v. Kuhn in federal court, she won. Her 1978 groundbreaking case affirmed her equal rights, and the judge’s order opened the doors for several generations of women to be hired in sports media. Locker Room Talk is Ludtke’s gripping account of being at the core of this globally covered case that churned up ugly prejudices about the place of women in sports. Kuhn claimed that allowing women into locker rooms would violate his players’ “sexual privacy.” Late-night television comedy sketches mocked her, as newspaper cartoonists portrayed her as a sexy, buxom looker who wanted to ogle the naked athletes’ bodies. She weaves these public perspectives throughout her vivid depiction of the court drama overseen by Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to serve on the federal bench. She recounts how her lawyer, F.A.O. “Fritz” Schwarz, employed an ingenious legal strategy that persuaded Judge Motley to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in giving Ludtke access identical to that of her male counterparts. Locker Room Talk is both an inspiring story of one woman’s determination to do a job dominated by men and an illuminating portrait of a defining moment for women’s rights.
Copyright:
2024

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
374 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781978837782
Related ISBNs:
9781978837799
Publisher:
Rutgers University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Melissa Ludtke
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Sports, Art and Architecture, Biographies and Memoirs, Social Studies, Communication, Sociology
Grade Levels:
Eleventh grade
Reading Age:
16 and up
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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