No boys allowed! Jimmy Cao, a 16-year-old senior, is not allowed to play on the Hillsborough High School girls field hockey team, even though there's no team for boys. Letting boys play on girls teams could eliminate opportunities for female athletes, according to New Jersey's governing body for high school athletics. Title IX, however, does permit girls to play on boys teams — including contact sports such as wrestling or hockey — if there's no team for girls.

Laura Pappano, co-author of “Playing With the Boys: Why Separate Is Not Equal,” played field hockey in high school and at Yale. She spoke to editorial writer Julie O’Connor about why she believes it would be good for the girls on this team, and female athletes in general, to let Cao play.

Related editorial:

Boys in field hockey would be bad for girls

Q. Should a boy be allowed on a girls high school field hockey team?

A. Judges have ruled boys do not have to be allowed to play on girls teams. The rationale is that Title IX is meant to give the underrepresented group, women and girls, more opportunities. In 1992, a Pennsylvania court found field hockey wasn’t a specific opportunity that needed to be divided up, but rather that as a whole, males had more opportunities in sports. Girls may play on boys teams, but legally, boys may not play on girls teams.

But in my opinion, these things should be decided on a case-by-case basis — and there are boys who play on girls field hockey and volleyball teams. If boys and girls have equal opportunity to participate in a particular high school’s sports program, then why not let this boy play?

There are a lot of guys who aren’t as good players as girls. Has this boy played a lot of field hockey? Everyone sees he’s a boy, and panics.

But if someone’s skilled, it’s a pleasure to play with them, boy or girl. What you should be worried about is an unskilled player, hacking with a stick. That’s where it gets dangerous.

Q. Why do you say that when possible, boys and girls should play on sports teams together?

A. There’s a devaluation of women’s sports. If women and men could play sports together, it would move us more toward equality. Unless we’re talking the most elite levels of competition, the difference between male and female athletes cannot be generalized based on gender above all. The notion that a girl can’t compete with boys and boys are always superior is completely untrue. When we create artificially sex-segregated teams, we reinforce the false belief that female athletes are just not as good as male athletes.

Q. Have you ever played on sports teams with boys?

A. Yes. When I was 13, I was the only girl on a boys baseball team. None of the boys wanted me there, even though I knew how to play. I was determined not to be pushed off the team. I now know girls who play on boys baseball teams, and get so much joy and self-satisfaction from that.

Q. Are you against single-sex teams?

A. No. For some girls, it remains scary to play with boys. For those who want to develop their confidence, their game and their skills in a single-sex environment, I think we ought to offer that opportunity. But we should also offer opportunities for boys and girls of similar skill levels to play together.

Q. You say, "Sports are played by individuals, not a collection of sex-group attributes." What do you mean by that?

A. There’s great variation between males and females. If you look around your office and decide to form a softball team, you may not decide all the guys are better than all the women. I’d want to know who played in high school or college. That’s more meaningful than one’s sex.

In sports, men end up being this privileged group, but they may not necessarily have the same level of skill. There are women who are really fast and strong and powerful. Look at Abby Wambach — she’s a tremendous soccer player. When we think “female athlete” and “male athlete,” we come up with these prototypes of the football lineman and the female gymnast. Those do exist, but women and men come in all shapes and sizes. A lot of times it’s the skill, not the brute size of someone, that really makes a difference — especially at the high school level or younger.

Q. Some argue that if boys and girls play on the same team, the girls will get hurt. What's your response?

A. One of the key arguments against allowing girls access to sports is worry about injury. There’s a paternalistic attitude and belief that girls getting hurt is worse than boys getting hurt. When anybody gets hurt, it’s a problem.

The notion that a female athlete is more likely to get injured than a male athlete doesn’t make sense. That argument was used in New Jersey Little League back in 1973. The ultimate ruling was that just as Little League protects weak boys, it can protect weak girls. And in high school wrestling, judges have found that when girls are skilled and qualified wrestlers, there’s no need to “protect” them from injury any more than there is an interest in protecting the boys from injury.

Q. Do you worry that allowing boys on a girls team will take away opportunities for female athletes?

A. If we’re going to open up the high school field hockey team to male players, I would hope we’d make the same effort to include more girls on the football team and create mixed soccer teams. You’d have one soccer team for the top players, and another team for the next set of players. They’d be sorted by skill, not gender. It’s better for our society when men and women — and girls and boys — play together.

Q. Is there any sport in which women absolutely cannot play with men?

A. I don’t think we know yet. Women keep improving, and the history of women in sports is still young. They’re getting better with training, coaching and support. We don’t know what heights they’ll reach.

Q. Why do you say that Title IX opened doors for females to play sports, but also limited women's athletics to second-class status?

A. Title IX created opportunities, but made them sex-segregated. As soon as you create “male sports” and “female sports,” you enforce a culture in which male and female athletes are treated differently from the youngest ages — even before puberty, when research shows there are no physical group differences that would affect athletic ability.

There are physical differences between males and females, and not all advantage males. But the rules and social structure of organized sport don’t reflect actual physical differences. Rather, they enforce cultural stereotypes, which portray males of all ages as superior athletes and females as inferior by comparison. We end up with male and female versions of sports in which women’s events are typically shorter in time or length or require fewer points to win (like tennis sets or badminton, in which women’s games go to 11 and men’s to 15 points). Such distinctions give women’s sports second-class status and allow for excuses that women’s play isn’t as compelling or worth watching as men’s. You see lower ticket prices for women’s events, less media coverage and institutional support. That’s a problem.