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TITLE IX: Girl Power
Thirty years later, the effects of Title Nine are sweeping educational reform and can be seen everywhere from schoolyards to the Olympic arena.
By Laura Dayton
Published: Fall 2001
Let's try an experiment in time travel. It's the best way to understand how Title IX - the 1972 educational reform prohibiting discrimination in sports based on gender - came to pass, and why its sweeping ramifications took so long to take effect.
If you can, think back thirty years ago when the news making headlines in the United States revolved around the Vietnam War. Flags and bras were being burned, and the Democratic National Convention took place against a backdrop of mayhem and murder. Women and African Americans escalated their fights for equal rights, and slowly, small skirmishes were being won.
On the congressional floor hundreds of issues were being debated. Amid the furor over the major feminist concerns of equal pay and the right to choose, perhaps the 1972 Congress believed an amendment regarding young women's interscholastic and intercollegiate sports would be an insignificant concession. At the time, most people (women included) did not believe women could excel at sports the way men did.
The popular mindset was that college was a great place for women to get her M.R.S. (read "wife"), and soon after, she'd be having babies, not spiking balls, making goals and vaulting over 14-foot-high bars. Such thinking likely caused many an old codger to grin in secret delight that a "little" educational amendment would placate the feminists yet result in relatively little impact on the status quo.
So, on June 23, 1972, with little controversy, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Educational Amendment Title IX, which contained a section prohibiting discrimination against girls and women in federally funded education, including sports. Like a snowball on a downhill run, what seemed insignificant at the beginning created an avalanche that has completely changed the status of women in sports today.
If those old codgers are still alive, I bet they're not grinning now.
The Sydney Games
Let's return to the present. The recent Sydney Olympics were a shining example of the dramatic changes made possible by Title IX. The opening ceremonies set the mood when Cathy Freeman was handed the torch from a series of her Australian countrywomen (who had all been Olympic athletes) and took center stage against a backdrop of shimmering water and flame. The moment was a deliberate celebration of the female athlete, and with more women participating and breaking records than ever before, that celebratory feeling carried through the entire Games.
Did Title IX have any Olympic influence? Just ask Dot Richardson, who with her teammates won gold in the first-ever women's Olympic softball competition at the 1996 Games, and gold again at the 2000 Games. When she was 10, Dot's exceptional playing was noticed by a Little League coach, who asked if she wanted to be on his team. Sure she did! But the coach said they'd have to cut her hair short and they'd call her "Bob." Later, after Title IX was in place, Dot went on to become a four-time All-American in college and was named NCAA player of the decade for the 1980s. Do you think that would have happened without Title IX?
And just ask Cheryl Miller, who won an Olympic gold in 1984 for women's basketball. "Without Title IX, I'd be nowhere," she admits. In 1972, there were only 132,299 girls playing basketball in high school. Twenty years later that figure had more than tripled. Now women's basketball is receiving the attention it deserves, especially after the thrilling wins by the U.S. team in the 1996 and 2000 Games, and the resulting development of women's professional basketball.
Although there are still areas of inequity, the increase in public support of girls' and women's sports has had innumerable positive effects. The media is giving female athletic stars equal attention, and young girls at last have as many role models as boys have. Sports that were once seen as essentially men's territory - lacrosse, wrestling, rugby and ice hockey - are increasingly attracting women participants. After a World Cup championship and a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics (and a silver in 2000), U.S. women's soccer is now rocking the athletic world with professional teams and generating incredible excitement among spectators and future players.
The Way It Was
For women, the Olympic dream has been a long time coming. When the first Games were held in ancient Greece, only men could compete. Although the very concept of democracy - government by the people - was born in Greece, the privilege didn't extend to women. Universal inclusion was an idea whose time was yet to come (and still is, judging from the ongoing battles between differing ideologies around the globe). Women were relegated to the role of spectators in the original Olympic events and in most events of any consequence, and that was the way things stood until the second quarter of the twentieth century.
By then, suffragettes had won voting rights for women in many western countries, and the world hadn't come to an end. Apparently, in 1928 the time was right to give a nod to women athletes. So in Amsterdam, a city considered liberal by most standards, the stage was set for the first women Olympians in gymnastics and track and field. The longest event for women was the 800-meter race, won by Lina Radke of Germany. As the athletes crossed the finish line, several of the competitors collapsed to the ground in exhaustion, a result not uncommon among male competitors too.
In response to this, the Olympic officials, who were aghast at subjecting "the weaker sex" to such an ordeal, immediately withdrew the 800-meter as an event and the event wasn't reinstated for 32 years. The 100-meter remained the only track event for women other than the hurdles until 1948, when the 200-meter was added. By 1960 there was no way to deny that women were tough enough to compete in longer events, and the women's 800 meter was reinstated, with the 1,500 meter following in 1972, smack on the heels of the enactment of Title IX.
Title IX's
Slow-Growing Tsunami
As for myself, I was already in my second year of college when Title IX passed. I grew up with three brothers, so I was lucky that sports and an active, physical lifestyle were always a part of my life. For most of my classmates, sports weren't "cool." Some of these women today wage their own wars with obesity, underachievement and low self-esteem - all factors that an active lifestyle and participation in sports can ease or eliminate.
Considering that in 1972, schools had virtually no organized female sport programs, Title IX would take many years to put into effect. As late as the 1970s, girls' sports not only were neglected, they were often actively discouraged. In the government publication "Title IX: 25 Years of Progress," it was cited that "In 1971 a Connecticut judge was allowed by law to disallow girls from competing on a boys' high school cross country team even though there was no girls' team at the school. And that same year, fewer than 300,000 high school girls played interscholastic sports. Today [1997], that number is 2.4 million."
Legislative efforts to sabotage the original intent of the amendment were waged almost yearly until 1980, when the Department of Education was established and given the responsibility to oversee the implementation of Title IX through the Office for Civil Rights. From that point, Title IX began to work its magic, slowly though, as most social reforms do. Understanding Title IX's impact requires us to look not just at the burgeoning statistics in female sport participation but also at the mindset of the young women athletes of today.
While sports have created the most controversy regarding Title IX, the gains in education and academics from the amendment are also noteworthy. Title IX bans sex discrimination in athletics and academics. Before then, many schools saw no problem in refusing to admit women or in imposing strict limits.
Today's colleges welcome women, and women are taking full advantage. Consider that in 1972 women received only 9 percent of medical degrees, compared to 38 percent in 1994. In 1972 women received only 7 percent of the law degrees, compared to 43 percent in 1994.
As for the playing fields, today's young people have never known a time when girls' sports were not supported in American public schools. They go at sports with gusto. They've grown up with female sport mentors. They are a new breed.
Title IX has progressed from its origin as an obscure legislative amendment into the heart of sports vernacular: at least one San Francisco retail sporting goods shop now invites girls and women with its "Title IX" storefront name. One gear manufacturer has even introduced baseball helmets with a hole for a ponytail.
Today's female athletes have equal opportunity to use their natural athletic abilities to win scholarships and achieve athletic greatness. Their numbers have swelled exponentially, with more young women participating in a growing number of sports than ever before. All this is part of a dramatic change, but social movements take a long time and there is still much that needs to be done.
Title IX's Future
The ratio of girls who participate in sports has leaped from 1 in 27 in 1971 to 1 in 3 today. However, that still leaves two-thirds of teenage girls sitting on the sidelines. According to "Physical Activity & Sport in the Lives of Girls," a recent massive report by the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, young women are twice as likely to be inactive
compared to young men. This is in spite of a growing body of evidence that points out the academic achievements and positive lifestyle choices made by those girls who choose to participate in sports.
So why do girls still shun sports? According to clinical psychologist Mary Bray Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, pubescent girls enter a "social and developmental Bermuda Triangle," in which they "lose their assertive, energetic, and 'tomboyish' personalities and become more deferential, self-critical, and depressed" as they seek to conform to abiding feminine stereotypes.
Those stereotypes, although negated by those who are among the one-third of girls who are involved in sports, are still a very real, and very dangerous, nemesis of the future of female sports. A look at the teenage magazines gives you a good idea of the messages targeting girls: lots of advice on how to snare the boy of your dreams, how to flirt effectively and how to look sexy. As in the past, being popular with boys is still pushed in the media as the crowning achievement for teen girls. Even the token sport-related articles provide less information on technique than on hair and makeup tips. As the President's Council report notes, "Girls may perceive that it is socially unacceptable to be strong, physical and athletically talented."
Girls are also receiving some mixed messages from their coaches. Penny Rosario, who played softball in the 1996 Olympics and is now coaching, explains one of these. "One of the main things I try to teach them is aggression," she says, explaining that girls are too often steered away from that all-important "eye of the tiger." In batting practice, girls are frequently taught to "just make contact," and that sort of advice, says Rosario, "leads to bad habits, with girls taking half-swings." She coaches girls to visualize that they're "squashing a grapefruit" when they hit.
Reaching the majority of young women who do not choose to participate in sports is a job that ultimately falls on local athletes and teachers. The national media has done a good job of promoting many of the premiere female athletes, but a school hero often carries more clout for a teenager. As coaches and teachers, we need to understand that new, positive messages regarding female athletes need to filter down to the kids. Sometimes that may take a little after-school homework pitching the school's best female athletes to the local media.
But it's not all a tug-of-war. Many girls can't wait for the movement to further expand their athletic ambitions. Kids involved in the teen chat program ONtheLINE are launching a Web site to encourage national conversation among female high school athletes. There they will post training diaries, get info on college recruiting, exchange opinions and stories. Other sites are also available to encourage the continuation of the progress Title IX has begun.
There is no doubt that Title IX has opened opportunities for female athletes. While there is still a long ways to go, the world of high school and collegiate sports will continue to expand for the women of the United States. And for the health of our nation, that is a very good thing.
Contributing to this article were freelance journalists Christine Bettencourt, Alisa Solomon and Becky K. Lane, Ph.D.
The Women's Sports Foundation
Few female athletes have had as profound an influence on the politics of women's sports as tennis legend Billie Jean King. Years before Title IX, she was spearheading boycotts against the big tournaments to force them to increase prize money for women. In 1971, she also introduced the idea of commercial sponsors in sports. In 1974 she founded the Women's Sports Foundation to educate athletes, coaches, parents and communities about the complexities of and compliance with Title IX.
She's won 20 Wimbledon titles, was the first woman to earn more than $100,000 in any sport, founded the first magazine for women's sports, coached Olympic athletes to gold, and has been at the center of two of the most influential events in women's sports.
The first is the infamous "Battle of the Sexes," in which she defeated Bobby Riggs in 1973. The second, perhaps not as famous but just as far-reaching, is her creation of the Women's Sports Foundation. King has changed the face of women's sports, and the Foundation is a testament to her continued commitment to bring equality to women and girls.
To visit her site, log on to womenssportsfoundation.org. The site is loaded with valuable information for athletes, coaches and parents.
New Rules for Coaching
Title IX has brought an influx of female coaches, making the field more competitive. With more athletes, there is more opportunity. Which may also mean an aspiring coach needs even more education to make the grade by today's standards.
The female athlete also has special needs. Like today's athletes, many coaches have grown up with Title IX and have the skills necessary to coach girls as well as boys. Still, other problems have arisen complicating the coaches' role. Many parents have an unfounded fear that most female coaches are lesbian. Charges of sexual harassment are increasing, making coaches nervous about any kind of physical contact or unsupervised meetings.
One of your best resources for dealing with the "new code of ethics" is available online at womenssportsfoundation.org, which provides expert advice and interpretation of issues that may fall under Title IX.
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On June 23, 1972, with little controversy, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Educational Amendment Title IX, which contained a section prohibiting discrimination against girls and women in federally funded education, including sports.
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At the 2000 Sydney games, Cathy Freeman was handed the torch from a series of her Australian countrywomen (who had all been Olympic athletes). The moment was a deliberate celebration of the female athlete, and with more women participating and breaking records than ever before, that celebratory feeling carried through the entire Games.
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When she was 10, Dot Richardsons’ exceptional playing was noticed by a Little League coach, who asked if she wanted to be on his team. Sure she did! But the coach said they'd have to cut her hair short and they'd call her "Bob." Later, after Title IX was in place, Dot went on to become a four-time All-American in college and was named NCAA player of the decade for the 1980’s
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The USA defeated China in the 1999 Word Cup and soon afterward won silver in the 2002 Sydney games.
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LeeAnn Pekovitch (Spring 2000) is a multi sport athlete who gave girls in Malta, MT a great role model.
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Martinsville High School, IN, has found remarkable success by unifying their weightroom programs. As a result, the women’s athletic programs have also seen remarkable success.
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Billy Jean King
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