Susan Ware, “Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports” (UNC Press, 2011)

UNC Press Presents Podcast · Jan 17, 2014 · 51m

If you’re younger than 45 or so, you probably don’t remember the “Battle of the Sexes.” This tennis match, between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King, is one of the iconic moments in American history of the 1970s. It represented a breakthrough moment for women in sports, a symbol of the progress women were making to finally receive something like equality of opportunity and resources in athletics.

For Billie Jean King, however, the match was only a small part of a life lived in the pursuit of the opportunity for access and success for herself and for women in general. As Susan Ware outlines in…