A game changer for women, Title IX turns 40 this weekend
While people associate Title IX with sports opportunities for women, the law did not mention athletics or sports. (AP Images.)
Saturday marked the 4oth anniversary of Title IX, a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in all education programs and activities operated by recipients of federal funds.
Signed 40 years ago by Richard Nixon, the law states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Title IX’s protection applies at all elementary and secondary schools, colleges and universities—public or private—that receive federal financial assistance, and at certain other educational institutions. The protection extends to all aspects of these institutions’ education programs and activities. Title IX prohibits all forms of sex discrimination, including gender-based harassment, sexual harassment, and sexual violence.
It is interesting that Title IX is most often associated with opening the doors for women to play school sports.
The words “sports” or “athletics” are not even mentioned in Title IX. At a time when women earned 9 percent of all medical degrees and just 7 percent of law degrees, {Sen. Birch} Bayh and the other Title IX supporters were simply hoping to provide more opportunities for women in higher education, give them a better shot at higher-paying jobs.
“It was clear that the greatest danger or damage being done to women was the inequality of higher education,” Bayh said. “If you give a person an education, whether it’s a boy or girl, young woman or young man, they will have the tools necessary to make a life for families and themselves.”
But just as admissions numbers and financial aid fell under the broad definition of “education program,” so, too, did athletics.
“Sport is an educational opportunity. You learn about yourself and the world through sport,” said Angela Ruggiero, president-elect of the Women’s Sports Foundation and a member of the 1998 U.S. team that won the first Olympic gold medal in women’s ice hockey.
It wouldn’t be enough for schools to tack sign-up sheets on a bulletin board and count that as a team, or clear out a storage closet and call it a locker room. Title IX called for equal opportunity to play, and that meant schools had to offer scholarships and provide the same access to equipment, coaching and facilities.
Some prominent coaches and athletic directors, worried that Title IX would gut football, pushed to have revenue sports — namely football — excluded from the compliance formula. But their attempt to amend the legislation in 1973 backfired. Spectacularly.
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare was instead ordered to develop a framework for how Title IX was to be interpreted and followed, with most of the regulations addressing athletics. It was these rules, issued in 1975, that provided the backbone for the legislation and have allowed it to withstand repeated challenges in court.
Here are some highlights from a federal report by the US DOE Office of Civil Rights on the enforcement of Title IX and the challenges that remain:
•While women and girls have made great progress in an array of fields of study, female students remain underrepresented in many of the most rigorous math and science courses…the data sample reveals that more girls than boys are enrolled in Geometry and Algebra II, but girls remain underrepresented in Physics and AP Math (Calculus and Statistics) and are less likely to take and pass AP tests than their male peers.
•In higher education, in 2008-09, women earned fewer than 18 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences, and women from underrepresented minorities earned less than 7 percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences. Similarly, fewer than 17 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in engineering were awarded to women, and less than 4 percent were awarded to women from underrepresented minorities.
•Boys take AP tests and pass AP tests at a higher rate than girls. In fact, 73 percent of boys enrolled in an AP course took an AP exam, compared to 70 percent of girls. And 60 percent of boys passed an AP exam, compared to 55 percent of girls.
•Girls represented 42 percent of the interscholastic athletics participants and 49 percent of enrollment in schools. 35 percent of the schools offering interscholastic athletics reported a gap of 10 percentage points or more between the percentage of girls enrolled and the percentage of athletes who are girls.
• Fifty-five percent of students bullied or harassed on the basis of sex were female, although females represent 51 percent of the population; 79.6 percent of students disciplined for bullying or harassment on the basis of sex were male.
•About one in five women will be a victim of actual or attempted sexual assault while in college, as will about 6 percent of undergraduate men. Public high school students reported nearly 3,600 incidents of sexual battery and over 600 rapes and attempted rapes in a recent year.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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75 comments Add your comment
Tech Man
June 24th, 2012
1:57 pm
I should have said “continues to impact the lives of many high school and college students”.
Tech Man
June 24th, 2012
2:03 pm
Bernie
June 24th, 2012
1:48 pm
—————————
As a conservative Title IX dad that has coached women’s athletics for 20+ years we are all about penalizing women….
Dr. Monica Henson
June 24th, 2012
2:09 pm
I’m proud to be a Title IX beneficiary. The NC High School Athletic Association launched varsity girls’ volleyball in 1976, the year I was a freshman in high school, as a direct result of this legislation. Before that, the only varsity sports choices at little rural school I attended in the Great Smoky Mountains were basketball and softball. Incidentally, although we played some Georgia schools in basketball, we didn’t play the Tennessee team that was closest to us geographically because they still played six-person teams where only two players could cross the half-court line.
I grew up to spend 1987-1994 as a high school basketball official for both boys’ and girls’ games in Georgia and NC, after coaching high school girls varsity basketball and track. It took a couple of years for me to convince my local GHSA-sanctioned association to allow me to officiate varsity boys’ games, although my same-age (late 20s) male peers were assigned to varsity games for both boys and girls without reservation by the booking agent. This was in the days before three-person crews for regular-season varsity games, and he didn’t believe that I could keep with 17- and 18-year-old boys or “control” male coaches in a boys’ varsity game. (It’s a matter of positioning, not speed, except on the fast break transition, and even young men have difficulty keeping up with the kids on that.) Once I proved myself by officiating a few games with the agent, I was assigned a full varsity schedule like the guys were. I did catch a few comments like, “Why don’t you go home where you belong and cook supper?” from time to time.
In 1985, my first year of teaching, the principal assigned me to coach cheerleading because I was “the only girl coach” in the athletic department.
My daughter, now 23, started playing soccer when she was 4, and was her high school team’s Most Valuable Player. It never occurred to her that it was a privilege to play sports–she saw it as her right and her due, as long as she could make the team. That’s the way it should be for both boys and girls.
catlady
June 24th, 2012
2:13 pm
Rockerbabe-you and I are the same age. In my high school of about 1400 there was one girls’ sport–track and field. Cheerleaders were cute and jumped and shook their pompoms.
Contrast that with my daughter’s (1200) school: cross country, track and field, tennis, golf, basketball, softball, competitive gymnastics, soccer. (Boys’ teams for all these also, substituting baseball and wrestling for softball and gymnastics.
There wasn’t much call for women’s sports in college because women hadn’t had a chance to develop those skills.
True tales: In 1973 my husband and I applied for a loan to buy a house. I was asked what kind of birth control I used.
Same year. I went to the pool hall to get the “best burgers in town.” I was told to wait out on the stoop; women were not allowed in there.
In the late 60s I was deciding about college. I was leaning toward my dad’s alma mater (Duke) when I was told the only women they admitted were for nursing. Many other schools were the same, including The Citadel, a public college.
In 1960, after years of practice with my dad, I was ready to try out for Little League. My dad had to break it to me that I was ineligible because I was a girl.
In the mid 80s, the Georgia men’s tennis coach was arguing to get “his men” the sole use of the new facility. He said “the girls” could easily use the old facility.
In the late 60s girls could play basketball as intermurals in high school. They had to play half court, however, as it was “too hard for girls to run up and down the court. What if it was ‘their time of the month’?”
Those of you who are younger: Can you even imagine that?
Dr. Monica Henson
June 24th, 2012
2:13 pm
For those young ‘uns who don’t get the Tennessee reference, until the late 1970s, high school girls basketball was played very differently from the boys’ rules. This was to avoid overexerting delicate feminine players, I guess.
I also remember reading in the newspapers while I was in high school about the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and Old Dominion University’s women’s basketball team’s successes, because women’s sports weren’t part of the NCAA and they sure didn’t ever televise them. I watched men’s college basketball games on Saturdays and Sundays while I was in high school, but I didn’t see a women’s college game on TV until decades later.
Dr. Monica Henson
June 24th, 2012
2:18 pm
Catlady, as a young teacher, I was asked once in an interview for a teaching job if I was all done having babies, and what would I do if my elementary school-aged children were sick.
I was watching the movie Anchorman with my son earlier this year, and he couldn’t believe it when I told him that the sexist workplace behaviors in the movie were based on reality for women in the early 1970s.
Dr. Monica Henson
June 24th, 2012
2:21 pm
When I was a high school basketball official, my favorite comeback line to male coaches who asked me “Are you trying to be a man?” was “No, I’m not. Are you?”
catlady
June 24th, 2012
2:25 pm
BTW, in some areas we still have a long way to go. My local high school has had some problems with scheduling the facilities. For example, the baseball team has a field right on campus, complete with lights; the softball team has had to go off-campus and play at the county rec department. For years the boys’ basketball team had first claim over the gym; the girls’ team practiced late into the evening. I am glad to see parents more willing to speak up when their daughter’s team is being relegated to second class status.
As my examples in the post above demonstrate, Title IX has been about a lot more than sports!
catlady
June 24th, 2012
2:29 pm
Dr. Henson–that’s the kind of basketball we had to play. I remember watching Old Dominion and Louisiana Tech, when Kim Mulkey used to run down the court, braids just flying.
Jane Dubbya
June 24th, 2012
2:32 pm
@Bernie:
From the security of living quarters in his mommy’s basement … “Bernie” has once again joined the discussion!
And he’s once again turned his sophomoric attention to lashing out at Republicans, whom he apparently prefers to blame for all his personal failings in life. Of which there are no doubt many.
A word of advice, Bernie—Get a JOB and start paying taxes! And THEN let’s see if your perspective doesn’t change … and if mommy doesn’t begin to smile again.
Bernie
June 24th, 2012
2:45 pm
Jane DUbya, is that ALL you have….? does the name RICHARD JEWEL ring a BELL?
Bernie
June 24th, 2012
2:53 pm
Jane Dubbya @ 2:32 pm
Ahhhh! Another one of my adoring FANS! Sometimes TRUTH is stranger Fiction and that includes YOU, JANE – ” another faceless and cowardly TOAD hiding behind a PSEUDONYM!
Jane Dubbya
June 24th, 2012
3:16 pm
Caught your attention, Bernie?
Your mommy’s asked me to intercede and help you see that “others” are not what stand between you and success. It’s YOU in your present sour perspective of thinking the world somehow owes you a living.
We do not. Nor does your mother (a nice enough woman, who by the way found solutions to quite enough problems in her day!).
Those Republicans you fear are under your bed each night (really?) simply want you to GROW UP and start realizing life is challenging you to accept responsibility for your own actions. And that those who commit themselves to the hard work of success … ACHIEVE it in America, as in no other country on earth!!
Bernie
June 24th, 2012
3:23 pm
Jane, what you fail to realize is that attempts at INTIMIDATION are always a losing BET! They only reveal the FEAR within the person that feels a need to Silence another’s opinion. A Typical REPUBLICAN PARTY ploy! just as you and others like you who have INTIMIDATED the women of GEORGIA and across this GREAT NATION.
Jane Dubbya
June 24th, 2012
3:31 pm
And by the way, Bernie—those Sociology 101 profs you so adore? They’d most likely be selling kitchen wares are the local strip mall if we weren’t a society obsessed with sheepskin!
Bernie
June 24th, 2012
3:45 pm
Jane, surely you are very comfortable at this moment in your LIFE or so it seems. Great JOB, Nice CARS, loving family, Big HOME, Many Bills and all is perfect in your world. What you have not learned, all of that “STUFF” is temporary and it is not promised to you Always!
The Oppressing of another Human Being is not a virtue I would aspire to, If I were you.
Karma is very Tricky about those things!
Jane Dubbya
June 24th, 2012
3:46 pm
… They’d most likely be selling kitchenware at the local strip mall …
(Sorry—your mom called again as I was drafting that. She seems to have quite unreasonable hopes for you. I can’t imagine why.)
Prof
June 24th, 2012
7:48 pm
I would guess that both Bernie and Jane Dubbya were born after Title IX was passed, and that explains their trivial political repartee that turns the entire subject into a partisan joke. Neither–especially “Jane”– seem able to imagine what it was like for females to live in the 1950s and 1960s when the inferiority of women was absolutely taken for granted by the culture.
Title IX not only opened up school sports for athletic young women but led to the legal prohibition of sexual harassment in the workplace. I love “Tech Man” defending Title IX because he has a daughter………
Bernie
June 24th, 2012
9:39 pm
Prof @7:48pm – No one is laughing, Jane (not his real name) is proably connected to widely read publication of your Naming, in some fashion. His whole intent is to silence anyone who speaks out against the “GOOD OLE BOY NETWORK” and its treatment of Women. In days gone by, He would be the representative sent to your home along with a few of his friends with crosses and matches.
Jane Dubbya @3:16 pm – Caught your attention, Bernie?
As you can see from His post at 3:16pm is a direct attempt to intimidate and silence. This is how politics is played in Georgia. Jane’s Behavior is reminiscent of the Civil Rights Movement era. Similar tactics like these are the typical Modus Operandi from that era. and YET, I am the one that is slated with “Your comment is awaiting moderation”. How RICH!
Jane Dubbya
June 25th, 2012
7:06 am
@Bernie: It took you HOURS and all you came up with in defending your puerile political slanders … is to talk sexist and wrap yourself in the civil rights movement??
Your mother’s going to have to get used to you living in her basement. She’s raised a lemon.
mystery poster
June 25th, 2012
12:06 pm
People who have come of age since Title IX (and after the feminist movement of the ’70s) have no idea what it was like.
My mother had a job interview with Mohawk Airlines in the 1970s that ended with “well, if my wife had 3 kids I wouldn’t want her working.”
Better sports team solution
June 25th, 2012
3:48 pm
I do not understand the proportionality rule in regards to collegiate athletics. It seems that a much more equitable solution would be to require schools to offer both men’s and women’s teams for each team that that they field including equal funding. If you field a men’s basketball team then you must also filed a women’s and vice versa. The only problem here is of course football. I do not believe that the NCAA offers women’s football. As it stands today, collegiate male athletes that do not play football do not have the same number of opportunities that female athletes do. For example at my Alma mater, the University of Florida there are no men’s volleyball, soccer, lacrosse or gymnastics teams. Also, the men’s tennis, golf and baseball teams do not offer the same number of scholarships as the equivalent women’s teams do.
bu2
June 25th, 2012
6:08 pm
Basically, the proportionality rule is the simplest way to avoid getting sued. You can show that you are meeting all that’s desired, but that’s pretty tough to do. Texas has been one of the leaders in women’s sports and yet has lost lawsuits. Title IX is just a good thing run amok since the government runs it and lawyers write the rules.
Anonmom
June 26th, 2012
9:42 pm
I’m a beneficiary of Title IX and I am very grateful for it. I grew up believing I could have it all– I could go to grad school — pay back all my loans — get married — have babies — be a mom and be there for them — still succeed in the work force and balance it all with grace and success because, well — no one told me I couldn’t ….. well. Truth is, there are only 24 hours in the day — 7 days a week — 12 months a year — you can only do so much as a professional and still have so much time to be a mom and so much time for yourself (health, sleep, friends, etc) — it doesn’t work — soemthing has to give. It’s worked out pretty well — my boys have come out beuatifully, my career is doing well althoguh it’s not in the box I thought it would be in when I graduated — we’ve paid back the 6 figure loans to get here and we might be able to retire by the time we’re 80 – but life is great. But, because of Tilte IX, I and the vast majority of my friends and famale relatives went to grad school and became professionals — none of us became teachers. Our mothers all had, essentially, 3 choices: teaching, secretary or nurse. We had the world at our disposal and we grabbed it. There are stories about the women of my mother’s genearation in grad school — one in her law school class — two in her med school class — those doors weren’t open to women. So women now get do these things. But the children don’t get the benefit of all of us who have chosen to take those doors in the classroom and heading up the school house and in charge of the distrirt and the county — the quality of those in charge of the children of tomorrow, across the board (setting aside the fact that there are numerious exceptions) — has declined in the classroom because of the opporunities presented to my generation by Title IX. Then when you layer onto that the fact that society now has thousands of boys who are going unaccounted for — dropping out of school — not graduating, not getting trained with any skills — not being employable. The context of the 70/30 statistic of just how far Title IX has reversed the “boy preference” is quite scary — socieites as a whole don’t generally last with so many unemployable and uneducale young men…. We have gone overboard on this one. (and as I’ve said, I’m very gratedful for the opportunites that I have taken and received and didn’t think twice about but I really do think that there have been some significant unintended consequences).
The Weekly Reader (06/29) | Leonard Presberg
June 29th, 2012
2:41 pm
[...] A big happy birthday to Title IX! [...]