November
14 , 2003
Front-Page
News
Uphill Battle Martha Ackmann, senior lecturer
in women’s studies, was quoted, along with Smith economics
professor Andrew Zimbalist, in a recent Gannett News Service
report about how various women’s professional sports leagues
are struggling. Here’s an excerpt from the article titled “Women’s
Pro Sports Strain to Build Niche”:
“Nearly 30 years after Title IX opened the door for women to compete in
college athletics, the jury is still out on whether a women’s pro league
can carve out something more than a small niche in the world of multimillion-dollar
sports.
Women’s sports, simply, are a hard sell in terms of sponsorships, attendance
and television ratings.
‘It goes to show a lot about the state of corporate America that they’re
willing to give a kid (basketball phenom LeBron James) $90 million, but not $2.8
million to a group of accomplished women,’ said Martha Ackmann, a professor
of women’s studies at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.
Five women’s pro sports leagues were launched off the buzz of the 1996
Atlanta Olympics. Two have failed—softball and basketball (the American
Basketball League).
‘It’s not that the women’s leagues aren’t a good idea,
it’s just many of them have been run into the ground trying to compete
for dollars and sponsors in a very tough economy,’ said Andrew Zimbalist,
a Smith College professor of economics who specializes in sports business. ‘It
takes patience and deep, deep pockets to be successful. Nothing is an overnight
success anymore.’ ”
In fact, according to the report, only professional women’s golf and
tennis are doing well.
Pontigny Revisited Last weekend’s Weissman Center symposium,
Artists, Intellectuals, and World War II:
The Pontigny Encounters at Mount Holyoke College, 1942–1944, received press attention
from the Valley Advocate, WFCR, the Daily
Hampshire Gazette,
and other papers. An article is also slated to run this week
in the Boston-based Jewish Advocate.
“The idea is to get some of the best minds of today to revisit some of
the concerns of the original Pontigny and to gauge their contemporary relevance,’’ Weissman
Center codirector Christopher Benfey told the Gazette before the two-day event. ‘’We
invited people who we felt could bridge what happened 60 years ago with the present
moment."
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