Grant started playing netball in Scotland at the age of 11. Later, she was instrumental in forming a national governing body of Canadian female field hockey players. In 1968, she moved to Iowa where she received her Ph.D. in Sports Administration. Unexpectedly, she was also disappointed to discover that the United States had no athletic opportunities for female athletes.
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In 1969, in a story Grant frequently recalled, a field house on Iowa’s campus was to be built with fees paid by male and female students. Architectural plans did not include locker rooms or bathrooms for women. They were not allowed to enter the building. She claimed that she was told that women were not interested in sports.
“And I’m sure that was the trigger that made me a feminist,” Grant told Ellyn Bartges in 2009 in an interview for the Oral History Project at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. “I mean, I just — that blew me away.”
Grant laughed and continued: “I’m thinking, ‘The greatest democracy in the world, that’s what the U.S. always claims to be. Well, it’s only for a minority of the population because women are the majority here.’ So that was the start of a real understanding of how this world works.”
She had originally planned to return to Canada, but instead she stayed in Iowa and worked to improve these disparities over her more than three decades of experience as an administrator and professor. In 1973, a forward-thinking male university president, Willard L. Boyd, known as Sandy, named Grant as the athletic director of women’s sports at Iowa at a salary of $14,000, making her one of the first women in the country to hold the title.
She was employed until 2000. She marshaled 12 sports that won 27 Big Ten Conference championships. Then she taught courses until 2006. According to The Athletic, Grant grew the women’s sports budget from $3,000 to nearly $7 million. She was not averse to mischief and showmanship in her unflagging pursuit for equality for women.
Source: NY Times
