Title IX: Law Outlawing Gender Discrimination In Sports

Gender or Revenue

Title IX is a law outlawing gender discrimination in all publicly supported educational programs, it is best known for its effect on sports. It was signed into law by President Nixon on June 23, 1972. Title IX was made to help the underrepresented sex, the underrepresented sex being women in most instances, and this struggle is continued today. There is also a lot of contention towards Title IX due to its effect on boys sports, even if it does not deserve all of the blame. The whole 37 word long Title IX is, “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

Title IX is only 37 words long and calls for no gender discrimination but how to meet this requirement was confusing and unexplained so schools went to proportionality and statistics to play it safe. The three part-test was the beginning of this, “In order to comply with Title IX, a school’s athletics program must meet one of the following three tests: Provide athletic opportunities to male and female students in proportion to their overall enrollment at the institution, demonstrate a history of continually expanding athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex, or demonstrate that the available opportunities meet the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex,” ("Know Your Rights on Campus: Title IX and Athletics"). In many cases trying to succeed in proportionality is hurtful to athletes and truly hard, but what can schools do when they will be penalized if they do not meet these standards? If schools base their funding on gender population and the percentage of girls to boys is 60 to 40 but only 30 percent of the girls want to play sports while 60 percent of the boys want to play then the women have more funding for less

“In 2012, a group of psychologists analyzed men’s and women’s propensities by looking at how many of them pursue team sports in their leisure time…. only 26% of intramural participants are women. They also studied recreational activity in 41 public parks in four different states…. but only 10% of those playing competitive team sports were women. A 2013 ESPN report on youth sports found that 34% of girls in grades 3-12 say sports is a big part of who they are; for boys the figure is 61%,” ("Title LX Anniversary: History of Controversial Equality Law."). Eric Pearson, chairman of the American Sports Council, says, “We don’t believe anyone should be discriminated [against] on the basis of their gender. What we have to change is how the law’s regulated. Basically, you have to throw out the three-part test and develop a more effective set of criteria. Are you providing equal access to facilities? Are you providing equivalent funding? Are you providing the coaches? And from that, you have a very clear way to evaluate the quality of a program.” The implementation of Title IX and trying to succeed in gender equality by proportionality are both causing problems