Cal State Long Beach Professor Invited to Oxford Round Table in England to Discuss Women's Rights, Issues of Gender Discrimination


Margaret Costa, a professor of kinesiology and physical education at California State University, Long Beach, is one of 35 people from around the world invited to a “think tank” on individual rights and freedoms as part of the Oxford Round Table at the University of Oxford in England.
Scheduled from March 30-April 4 at Oxford’s Lincoln College, the round table will focus on human and civil rights with particular reference to women’s rights and issues of gender discrimination in both the public and private sectors. It is limited to only 35 persons in order to facilitate productive informal dialogue.

Costa wrote the American chapter in a book, titled “Sport and Women: Social Issues in International Perspective,” that was published in February by Routledge Press. “The book looks at sport for women from selected world regions,” said Costa, a resident of Huntington Beach. “I discuss Title IX among other social issues for women in sport.”

A sport historian, Costa was a Fulbright-Hays scholar in Brazil in 2000 and gave a keynote lecture on “Sport for Women in Zimbabwe: Issues and Controversies,” in Alexandria, Egypt in 2001.

First held in 1989, the Oxford Round Table is a unique forum in which participants discuss important policy questions over a five-day period in a collegial, “think-tank” atmosphere. The program will include discussions of legislation and court decisions in the United States and United Kingdom and emerging issues in Europe emanating from the Human Rights Act of the U.K. and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe.

A CSULB faculty member since 1974, Costa earned her B.S. and M.Ed. degrees from the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.