Title IX: Boost for Women's Athletics or Bane for Men's?

Introduction to Title IX: It Seemed Fair at the Time

Title IX has had a profound impact on American athletic culture since it was included in the Educational Amendments of 1972. According to the "Save Title IX" group — an alliance of sixty organizations spearheaded by the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE) — in 1971 there were 32,000 women in varsity and intercollegiate sports in U.S. colleges and universities. By 1997, thanks to Title IX, that number had grown to 160,000 women participating in intercollegiate athletics on college and university campuses.

On high school campuses, the rate of growth of girls playing sports was even more dramatic, fueled in part by the knowledge that they would be able to participate in intercollegiate sports in college. In 1971, the year prior to Title IX, there were 294,000 girls playing interscholastic sports. By the 2002–2003 school year, over 2.8 million high school girls were playing interscholastic sports, according to the NCWGE.

According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), Title IX — when enacted by Congress thirty-seven years ago — specifically prohibited discrimination based on gender and marital or parental status in: admissions; housing and facilities; college and university courses; career guidance and counseling services; student financial aid; student health and insurance benefits; and "scholastic, intercollegiate, club, or intramural athletics." The AAUW also outlines a three-part test to determine whether a university or college is in compliance. The first prong is based on the proportion of female students attending the institution compared with females participating in intercollegiate sports. The second prong examines whether the school has a track record of expanding sports opportunities for women. The third prong asks whether the school is adequately accommodating women's athletic interests and abilities.

Main Body of Literature and Assessment of Challenges to Title IX

Studies show that recently, one out of three high school girls plays sports on a school team. That is a very positive development, according to an article in the Journal of Gender, Social Policy & The Law (Brake, 2004): "Studies show that girls who compete in sports not only receive a physical benefit, but also benefit academically and socially," Brake explains. Girls playing sports have "higher self-esteem, less risk of depression," less likelihood of "engaging in high-risk behaviors," and also "perform better in school than girls who do not play sports."

Moreover, engaging in vigorous athletic activities on a sports team — at the interscholastic and intercollegiate levels — gives girls and women "the opportunity to develop new relationships with their bodies, as a source of strength and learning."

Title IX: Contentious Issues Cloud the Positives for Women

The many positives listed above notwithstanding, all is not well in the world of Title IX. "Like other social institutions, sport has been resilient in preserving male privilege in its deepest structures," Brake's piece continues. Borrowing a phrase from Professor Reva Siegel called "preservation through transformation" — which means avoiding direct conflict with institutional shifts in ideology while maintaining "the underlying structure of inequality" — Brake argues that sport has regrouped "to preserve the central features of male privilege."

Brake's example of "preservation through transformation" in university sports is "the devastating loss of positions for women coaches and athletic administrators." The percentage of women coaching female athletes in college "has dropped from ninety percent in 1972 to forty-four percent in 2002, the lowest level on record." And though 361 new coaching positions were created in women's athletics between 2000 and 2002, Brake explains, "more than ninety percent of them were filled by men."

Brake's second example is that prior to Title IX, women's athletic departments were managed separately from men's, and women held "virtually all of the administrative positions for women's sports." Today, in the Title IX era, the two departments have merged, yet women "remain tokens in leadership positions" in intercollegiate athletics.

"By linking leadership and competence in sports with maleness," Brake continues, "sport's leadership structure reinforces women's marginal place in sports and reinserts a risk that the empowering potential of sports will be thwarted by gender dynamics that reinforce male dominance." Beyond that, there exists "a massive divide in salaries for coaches of men's sports and coaches of women's sports," Brake concludes, and Title IX does "next to nothing" about those disparities.

Title IX: Recent Evidence of Unfairness to Male Athletes

With those issues and opinions as background, today there is a growing sense that, although the original intention of Title IX was just and fair, unjust ramifications are being discussed in the public forum. The College Sports Council (CSC) is an advocacy group taking the position that Title IX is unfair to male athletes in colleges, universities, and high schools. Composed of a coalition of student athletes, coaches, alumni, and parents, the CSC has kept pressure on the issue through media releases and public statements, including a June 23, 2009 press release asserting unfairness based on a new study. That study shows that "at the NCAA Division I level, there are far more women's teams (2,653) than men's teams (2,097)," a fact that is denying "thousands of male athletes" the chance to play sports at the college and university level (CSC).

Secondly, the report cited by the CSC asserts that in "gender symmetric" sports there are "far more scholarships available for women (32,656) than for men (20,206)." The third point in the CSC press release notes that men's volleyball is "by far the most difficult" scholarship to obtain at the Division I level, with 489 high school athletes for every full-ride NCAA scholarship.

The underlying data the CSC used comes from two NCAA reports: the "1981–82 – 2006–07 NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation Rate Report" and the "2006–07 NCAA Division I Manual." Data from the National Federation of State High School Associations was also factored in. The CSC press release concludes that since "women are accorded far more opportunities to compete and earn scholarships" at the Division I level, "it's time to erase all institutional gender discrimination, and that includes bias against boys."

In August 2008, the College Sports Council launched a petition drive aided by several Olympic champions — John Naber (four Gold medals, 1976), Peter Vidmar (Gold, gymnastics, 1984), and Dan Gable (Gold, freestyle wrestling, 1972), among others, who publicly endorsed the national campaign. The petition calls for "the men and women across the country" to "discuss and implement a set of common sense reforms" that will make Title IX fair to both genders. The petition alleges that male collegiate teams "are being eliminated" and player rosters "are being capped" at an "alarming rate," to the detriment of men's sports programs.

The petition also states: first, when men's teams are eliminated, women athletes are "being robbed of their training partners, teammates and biggest supporters"; second, "straightforward and common-sense fixes to the enforcement mechanism are already available," including a "simple survey that would allow any student, male or female, to express interest and be given opportunity"; third, the current method of enforcement is "discriminating against male athletes" and "artificially limiting opportunities to participate"; and fourth, "the current tenor of the debate over the future of Title IX sets up a zero-sum contest pitting men against women," which is harmful to "the collective cause of all college coaches."

The concern about Title IX's fairness to male athletic programs is not new. In 2001, a female student editor (Krebs, 2001) wrote a compelling editorial pointing out that Title IX is "killing male sports at the college level — i.e., baseball, wrestling, swimming and diving, gymnastics, track and golf." Krebs asserts that at Boston University, the football program was cut after 91 years as part of the university's athletic program. She also notes that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) dropped its swimming and diving program — despite the fact that graduates who excelled in those sports and went on to the Olympic Summer Games had won a total of 16 Gold medals (Krebs, 2001).

Krebs also highlights that at the University of Minnesota, women's rowing was added in 2001 at the expense of the men's golf team, asking: "Why should the women get a sport added when there were males denied the chance to even try out for the golf team?"

Jamie Seiberlich — a journalism graduate from the University of Wisconsin — wrote that "men are truly getting screwed over" because Title IX is forcing schools to "cut mainstream programs for men to simply play a numbers game" (Seiberlich, 2001). At the time, for example, the University of Wisconsin had added sailing and precision ice skating for women while cutting the university's baseball program in order to add those women's sports. "Men, simply for being men, are punished under this law for having more testosterone in their blood and being naturally more competitive than women," Seiberlich wrote.

In Sports Illustrated, writer E.M. Swift reports that "the victims are men, not the women that Title IX was originally enacted to protect." The most recent "egregious example" of sex discrimination against men that Swift cites occurred at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. In 2007, the school's board of visitors voted to eliminate 10 of Madison's 28 sports teams, including seven men's teams (archery, cross-country, gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, swimming, and wrestling) and three women's teams (archery, fencing, and gymnastics). So, if an individual was on the men's cross-country team in 2006, by 2007 he would be "excluded from participation" in his sport on the basis of his gender (Swift, 2006). By contrast, a member of the women's cross-country team in 2006 would be unaffected, since that team was not eliminated.

Swift contends that the math Title IX adheres to — if 61% of a school's student population is female, then 61% of its student athletes should be female — is skewed in favor of women's sports. "Never mind that if a majority of those women have no interest in competing in intercollegiate sports, do not feel discriminated against, are not discriminated against and stand to gain absolutely nothing from the elimination of men's sports teams" (Swift, 2006). The Sports Illustrated article argues that "proportionality" is really just another word for "quotas" — and that quotas discriminate against males and against sports programs.

Conclusion

A recent panel discussion in the White House Eisenhower Building featured tennis legend Billie Jean King and U.S. Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes, among others. The panel was convened to celebrate the 37th anniversary of Title IX. As noted in a USA Today article (Klemko, 2009), College Sports Council chairman Eric Pearson — though present — attacked the NCAA for making decisions not based on actual interest in sports shown by women, but rather seeking women's sports with "large rosters" in order to "satisfy the gender quota." NCAA Director of Gender Initiatives Karen Morrison rebutted Pearson, stating: "The CSC's study is off the mark because Title IX states schools must offer gender equitable opportunities, aid and benefits without discrimination on the basis of sex — there is no distinction made with respect to individual sports" (Klemko, 2009).

It is clear that to some, Title IX is not fair, while to others, Title IX is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. However, if it can be shown statistically that men's programs are being unfairly cut to make room for women's sports that are token in nature and not widely embraced, then changes must be made and Title IX must undergo a major makeover.

Works Cited

American Association of University Women. "Report Card on Gender Equity." Retrieved June 28, 2009, from (2004).

Brake, Deborah. "Revisiting Title IX's Feminist Legacy: Moving Beyond the Three-Part Test." Journal of Gender, Social Policy & The Law, 12(3), 453–473. (2004).

Klemko, Robert. "Title IX celebrated as study raises scholarship questions." USA Today. (2009). Retrieved June 29, 2009, from

Krebs, Jamie. "Title IX unfair for male sports programs." The Alestle. (2001). Retrieved June 27, 2009, from http://www.siue.edu.

McErlain, Eric. "New Study of Gender Symmetric Teams Reveals Significant Disparity in Athletic Opportunities." (2009). College Sports Council. Retrieved June 28, 2009, from http://collegesportscouncil.org.

McErlain, Eric. "Olympic Greats John Naber, Dan Gable and Cael Sanderson Join with Actor Billy Baldwin Calling for 'Common Sense' Reform of Title IX." (2008). College Sports Council. Retrieved June 27, 2009, from

McKindra, Leilana. "Latest gender-equity report shows spending gaps persist." National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). (2008). Retrieved June 27, 2009, from http://www.ncaa.org.

Save Title IX. National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education. Retrieved June 28, 2009, from (2003).

Swift, E.M. "Title IX was necessary then, but now it's just unfair." Sports Illustrated. Retrieved June 28, 2009, from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/em_swift/10/10/title.ix/.