NONFICTION - April 7, 1991

ARE WE WINNING YET?: How Women Are Changing Sports and Sports Are Changing Women by Mariah Burton Nelson (Random House : $19; 256 pp.) . Is there anyone more determined--or, sadly, more likely to be frustrated--than the female athlete seeking parity? Mariah Burton Nelson, a Washington Post columnist and veteran of college and pro basketball, surveys the sporting landscape and reports on who’s getting how far, in everything from basketball to body surfing. She has done a prodigious amount of research, only to tell us what we might have guessed: If a woman gets involved in a loner sport (like body surfing), all she has to contend with are bratty 10-year-olds who consider her to be below even them in the pecking order. If she’s interested in a bastion of male bonding like football, she can either forget it or consign herself to a life of making enemies and threatening lawsuits. This is an honorable study, full of anecdotal material, but it lacks a point of view; Nelson exhorts her female readers not to give up, but they need perspective and strategy more than they need cheerleading.