How Does Title 9 Affect Women's Collegiate Sports

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Title IX caused a significant change in the way women’s sports are viewed. With Title IX prohibiting gender discrimination in funding for high school and college athletics, young girls and women who wanted to play sports were provided those opportunities to do so and received more funding. This law positively impacted women and girls in sports because it prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities. When Title IX was passed, the United States changed. The passing of Title IX helped women’s sports in the United States improve and do better than in other countries. This research paper will dive into the effects of Title IX and how it specifically affects women’s collegiate sports. The two main things Title …show more content…

This was added on because some colleges, specifically mentioned in the book, Grove City, could not argue that they don’t accept any specific funding from the government, so they therefore don’t have to comply with the rules. Although many sports were cut due the lack of overall funding, the number of NCAA women’s teams increased by 20 percent from 1981 to 19899. This increase in numbers was attributed to the coaches who started in the late 1970s who saw the potential and began coaching women to the max. Men and women sports were both cut, but sports like women’s soccer teams and track exploded in numbers and became extremely popular for people to watch. While Title IX was a mostly beneficial law, there were some negative consequences with it. One of the most common is cutting the funding for non-revenue collegiate men's sports, which is, with a few exceptions, essentially all sports except for football and …show more content…

This caused lots of criticism about where the colleges’ loyalties lie. It also led to debates on the fairness and intentions behind budget decisions based on Title IX. While Title IX helped women's sports, it often took the blame for why less popular men's sports were getting less funding. Further proof that they did not evenly split the budget given for sports was when the NCAA did a study in 1977 that showed “women were getting 14 percent of athletics department budgets nationally, but 55 percent of their budget came from nonathletic sources, such as campus general funds, donors, and state appropriations” (Suggs 62). Men's sports were still prioritized a lot higher than women's in the terms of budgets, for collegiate athletes. However, this is unfair because the individual universities control what money goes where and Title IX only makes it so men and women have to have the same amount of funding. This is one of the main criticisms of Title IX, but over the years, most people agree that Title IX is not solely responsible for cuts to non-revenue generating men's collegiate