No individual in the United States should be barred from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education programme or activity receiving Federal financial assistance, according to the Title IX statute, which was approved by US Congress and is well known.
Innumerable films and news pieces are commemorating the 50th anniversary, which is on June 23, for the contributions it made to advancing female equality in athletics, particularly at the collegiate level. Indeed, it has become so ingrained in American culture that a firm selling athletic clothing for women called Title Nine used the catchphrase “Busy Boobs Need Better Bras” in its advertising.
Indeed, the effects of Title IX go far beyond athletics. It is the standard law governing sexual harassment on campuses, though the specifics change depending on who occupies the White House.
And the law completely flipped the gender ratio in colleges, which was almost 3-2 in favour of men in 1970, so that it is now the exact opposite.
Sports on a global scale are resembling this narrative. In contrast to the men, who won 41 medals at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, US women won 66 medals.
(A further six participants came from open or mixed events.) The trends going back a few decades continued in that stark gender gap, which was the biggest one to date.
Success in the Olympics is not always directly related to the college and school sports governed by Title IX. After their Olympic careers, women’s gymnasts frequently, if not always, compete in college.
In several sports, US women won medals in Tokyo, but the NCAA does not sponsor competition in those sports, and college equestrian competitions are only distantly related to the Olympic programme.
Although some athletes made only a slight detour from their school sports to their Olympic sports, such as Katie Zaferes, a former long-distance runner at Syracuse who switched to triathlon, and Sarah Robles, a shot-put specialist who turned to weightlifting.
In a broader sense, the development of women’s college sports and the wave of subsequent success on the international stage in sports like basketball and soccer expanded the possibilities for female athletes.
Prior generations had fewer opportunities, usually taking a fleeting bow on the international stage to commemorate medals in gymnastics, swimming, track and field, and figure skating, another sport in which NCAA competition doesn’t exist.
It goes without saying that there are still more male athletes than female athletes in that group. Additionally, the remaining progress—especially in college—could be contentious.
Identifying a school’s compliance with Title IX is the first problem. One of the “three-prong test’s” well-known components must be satisfied for a school to be in compliance:
Do you think the school “fully and effectively accommodates the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex”? Despite attempts to clarify it, this prong still feels a little dated. Athletic talent is sought after by colleges, even those without scholarships.
Students rarely express interest in or aptitude for a sport that isn’t offered at a college campus and doesn’t already exist there. Due to the exclusionary nature of many high school sports, it can be challenging to determine students’ “interests” and “abilities”. How many kids were able to play basketball or soccer but didn’t make the team?
* In all but the rarest of circumstances, women are “the underrepresented sex” at the school. What is the history of the school in creating opportunities for women? It’s challenging to put a number on this one too.
When does a school “max out,” and how long must it continue to add female-specific sports? To keep up, schools have added sizable women’s teams to sports like rowing over the past couple of decades, typically without a corresponding men’s team.
*, Do participation rates in sports correspond to the student body’s size? To put it another way, are 60% of the students at a school female, as 60% of schools are, and 60% of the school’s athletes female as well?
Just before the pandemic, the advocacy organisation ChampionWomen created a database that showed few schools were in compliance and many more would need to undergo challenging modifications to meet the standard.
The irony is that female-dominated colleges are less likely to adhere to participation rates than male-dominated institutions. In the ChampionWomen study, only a select few schools with a disproportionately large male student body performed well.
In other words, colleges that have been successful in achieving Title IX’s goal of expanding educational opportunities for women risk being penalised by a more strictly enforced outcome that expands athletic opportunities by either adding women’s-only sports or eliminating the football team.
Moving forward is made more difficult by the fact that there are doubts about the idea that varsity sports have an excessive influence on college culture.
According to a 2015 study by The Drake Group, student fees fund 98 per cent of NCAA athletic programmes, which is not always a good thing in a time when people are worried about student debt.
Additionally, the Operation Varsity Blues scandal uncovered several embarrassing instances of parents fabricating their daughters’ athletic resumes, even including some inventive photo editing, to gain admission to elite colleges that only accept a small percentage of applicants but wave recruited athletes through the gates. These athletes are frequently from wealthy families who can afford the best coaches.
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Last but not least, the NCAA must consider the effects of name, image, and likeness (NIL) opportunities that give student-athletes a chance to make money. However, women’s basketball players and some gymnasts have also done well.
As expected, the majority of that money has gone to football and basketball players. How will those opportunities be taken into account in Title IX evaluations by the NCAA and watchdog organisations?
The effects of Title IX, however, are substantial and hard to overstate, regardless of what happens in the future. Sports are popular among women. There are many female athletes. That’s just the way it is, and it undoubtedly always will be, according to the generations that have grown up since Title IX became law.
