Sarah Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News in their extensive interviews that questions about whether she can be both a mother and a high-powered politician are irrelevant, in part because she grew up under, and benefited from, the federal law that bars sex bias in public education.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded education programs. The law is widely credited with increasing girls’ and women’s high school and college athletic opportunities.
Asked by Gibson last week whether it was sexist for someone to ask whether Palin could manage a large family and the vice presidency, the Alaska governor said:
“I don’t know. I’m lucky to have been brought up in a family where gender has never been an issue. I’m a product of Title IX, also, where we had equality in schools that was just being ushered in with sports and with equal opportunity for education, all of my life. I’m part of that generation, where that question is kind of irrelevant, because it’s accepted. Of course you can be the vice president and you can raise a family.”
The interview transcript is here, with this exchange under the heading “Sarah Palin on sexism.”
Gibson accompanied the Republican vice presidential nominee on a walk through Wasilla High School in Alaska, where in 1982 Palin was a member of the girls’ basketball team that won the state championship after she hit a crucial free throw late in the game.
Palin also ran track and cross country at Wasilla High, and she is still an avid runner in addition to being a “hockey mom,” the Anchorage Daily News reports here.