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The Law
The 1972 law is simple yet very powerful (and larger than just sports):
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"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 education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." |
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Compliance
Title IX is administered by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education. In 1979 a policy interpretation for Title IX was issued which included what has become known as the "three-prong test" of an institution's compliance.
- Prong one - Providing athletic opportunities that are substantially proportionate to the student enrollment, OR
- Prong two - Demonstrate a continual expansion of athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex, OR
- Prong three - Full and effective accommodation of the interest and ability of underrepresented sex.
A recipient of federal funds can demonstrate compliance with Title IX by meeting any one of the three prongs.
The Impact
Women's participation in collegiate sports has grown five-fold from about 30,000 in 1972 to about 170,000 today.
Men's participation grew 35% during the same time from 170,000 to 230,000.
In 1972 women accounted for 42% of the college students and 15% of the student-athletes; today they represent 54% of the college population and 43% of the athletes.
My Point-of-View
I support the 23 recommendations made by the President's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. In their 2003 final report entitled "Open to All: Title IX at 30" the 15-member commission had some unanimous recommendations such as:
- (#1) The Department of Education should reaffirm its strong commitment to equal opportunity and the elimination of discrimination for girls and boys, women and men
- (#5) The Office for Civil Rights should make clear that cutting teams in order to demonstrate compliance with Title IX is a disfavored practice
- (#6) The Office for Civil Rights should aggressively enforce Title IX standards, including implementing sanctions for institutions that do not comply. The Department of Education should also explore ways to encourage compliance with Title IX, rather than merely threatening sanctions.
- ($16) In providing technical assistance, the Office for Civil Rights should advise schools, as necessary, that walk-on opportunities are not limited for schools that can demonstrate compliance with the second or third parts of the three-part test.
- (#23) Additional ways of demonstrating equity beyond the existing three-part test should be explored by the Department of Education
Very reasonable.
The recommendations were the result of nine months of meetings, research, public hearings and testimony targeted to strengthen and improve Title IX.
The commission included women's activists Donna De Varona and Julie Foudy. However at the last minute De Varona and Foudy withdrew their support for the recommendations that they were a integral part of creating.
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Opposing commission factions trade barbs over final recommendations
By Erik Brady, USA TODAY
Only in the contentious world of Title IX could there be an argument over what "unanimous" really means.
Secretary of Education Rod Paige said in a statement late Wednesday that he will consider only recommendations passed unanimously by the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics.
But only hours before that, two commission members released a minority report in which they said they had changed their minds on at least two of the recommendations for which they had voted.
Paige is not allowing a do-over. He will consider all 15 unanimous recommendations..
"This report includes several recommendations unanimously agreed to by all of the commissioners in public meetings," Paige said. "I am pleased that the commission, made up of a diverse group of individuals with vastly different points of view, was able to agree on some important recommendations, and the department intends to move forward only on those."
Julie Foudy, captain of the U.S. women's soccer team, and former Olympic swimmer Donna de Varona released their minority report Wednesday morning at a rally on Capitol Hill attended by senators and movie stars. They declined to sign the commission report and instead issued their own report with its own set of recommendations, including one that says Title IX's current athletic policies should be preserved without change.
The report also asks Paige to reject a series of recommendations in the commission report — including ones they had voted for.
Commission co-chairs Ted Leland and Cynthia Cooper held a news conference at the Department of Education.
Cooper, a former WNBA star who is planning a comeback, blasted Foudy and de Varona for calling the report slanted and inaccurate.
"They accuse the final report as being slanted and biased," said Cooper. "It seems to me they were biased."
"I embrace and ditto all of Coop's comments," said Leland, athletics director at Stanford University.
That's the kind of day Wednesday was: Opposing camps traded brickbats at dueling news conferences in the morning and afternoon. |
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My opinion? Divisive politics.
In the end none of the recommendations were implemented. Emotional appeals such as the one below stopped the effort to evolve and improve the oversight of Title IX. Read the Commission's recommendations. Or just look again at the 5 recommendations that I posted above. How could anyone not agree with those?
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From the National Organization for Women (NOW):
"The Bush administration wants to weaken Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in funding girls' and boys' athletic and academic programs. Before Title IX, only one in 27 girls played varsity high school sports. Today it's one in 2.5, with nearly 3 million girls now playing school sports — and those numbers would improve even more if Title IX were fully and fairly enforced, which still isn't the case. Do not let the Bush administration destroy this important federal assurance of equality. Please sign this petition that we will send to George W. Bush and members of Congress." |
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