Home >  Lifestyle

The best-known Education Amendment of 1972 withstands constant challenges to retain rights for women in the classroom and on the playing field

Sunday, October 06, 2002

By Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Title IX has turned a reviled, celebrated, torn and tattered 30 this year.

The law that mandates gender equity in educational programs that receive federal money has been criticized for ruining collegiate sports and hailed for saving them, blasted for going either too far or not far enough.

	Diane Juravich, Post-Gazette   Related stories Title IX opens doors for athletes such as Kaye and Meagan Cowher Authors of Title IX focused on education Wrestling with consequences: Courts focus on proportionality A Title IX Timeline

The history of Title IX has been one of lurches, long pauses, flurries of progress and unending argument.

The elimination of men's teams at some universities has been labeled an "unintended consequence" of Title IX.

In fact, much of what has happened in the years since Title IX passed could be termed unintended consequences.

Those who shaped and lobbied for the legislation were focused on the classroom more than the playing field -- they believed it would give women professors and students a tool for fighting bias, not break open collegiate sports.

Nearly all women's teams were coached by women before Title IX; now the majority are coached by men. As women's sports became more visible and prestigious, they became more attractive to male coaches. Unintended.

Women involved in high school and collegiate athletics figured they might finally have a shot at better playing facilities and more scholarships. They didn't necessarily envision that they'd be creating new teams.

They also didn't anticipate that change would take so long.

The woman who filed the class-action complaint against universities that set the stage for Title IX thought it would take two years for the discrimination in academia to be eliminated.

Bernice Sandler, senior scholar at the Women's Research and Education Institution in Washington, D.C., was a newly minted Ph.D. at the University of Maryland in 1969. She wasn't considered for any of the seven faculty positions open, and when a professor told her that the reason was that she came on "too strong for a woman," she began to investigate discrimination in education. Ultimately, she filed discrimination complaints against more than 250 universities on behalf of women, then did research for the late Rep. Edith Green, D-Ore., one of the congresswomen who introduced the bill.

"I was totally naive. I really thought two years," said Sandler, who has done research on academic discrimination and remained a strong proponent of Title IX. "After two years passed, I thought, well, I'd better stick with this at least another year. Then I upped it to 10, then 20, then 50. I realize now it was just the first step of a very long journey."

Sandler also never anticipated that the law would be so important in sports. Though she knew it would affect the sports side of academia, she, like most of those who conceived and wrote the legislation, were much more focused on the classroom than the on playing field.

Though progress was much slower than she anticipated on the academic side, it generally came without the high-profile suits and bitter nationwide disputes that have characterized the sports side.

"The real way Title IX made changes was not through lawsuits," said Sandler.

"A lot of changes occurred when someone internally noticed a problem and pointed it out: 'Look, we have a bus that takes boys home, and the girls have to walk -- that's not right.' Or that girls would receive pink forms listing possible occupations that might include 'social worker,' while boys would get a blue form that would instead list psychologist." The school would recognize the inequity and change it.

Often the threat of legal action was enough.

Sandler gave as an example a juvenile justice course at the University of Michigan in the late '70s. Women weren't allowed because they would be working with male offenders. So, "women [students] go to university officials, who don't take them seriously. Then they go to a lawyer, who does take them seriously. The lawyer talks to the university. The university checks with its lawyer, who says yes, this is a problem. So the university changes."

There was plenty of opposition along the way, and there is still plenty of academic inequity at educational institutions, but progress has been made.

"I anticipated that most people would see it was right, that most people would follow the law. And, in fact, that's what happened," said Sander.

Though much changed in athletics, there was broader opposition.

A sporting chance

In the early years of Title IX, one of 13 amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there were questions about what the law required of college athletic departments and legal challenges that left many issues in limbo.

In 1979, the Department of Education said that a school must meet one of three criteria to comply with Title IX: fulfill the proportionality goal (percentage of men vs. women athletes equals percentage of men vs. women students); show it had recently expanded opportunities for women; or prove that women have been accommodated.

There was more movement in the next few years, until a Supreme Court decision in 1984 on a suit brought by Grove City College in Mercer County. Grove City argued that because it didn't receive federal funds, it didn't have to comply. The Supreme Court ruled that only departments that received federal money were required to comply, a narrow interpretation that gutted Title IX.

Progress snailed down until Congress restored the broader interpretation with the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which took effect in 1988. Since there was no enforcement mechanism, movement toward proportionality remained slow at most universities until 1992, when four women athletes filed a lawsuit claiming that Brown University had violated Title IX when it dropped two women's sports, even though it also had dropped two men's teams. The women said that Brown violated the criterion by allowing its percentage of female athletes to be too far below the percentage of female undergraduates. The case went to the Supreme Court, which in 1997 let stand lower court rulings in favor of the women.

New challenges

That put an end to the uncertainty over what compliance meant. But as colleges began to make budget decisions based on Title IX, some decided it was necessary to cut men's programs.

That led to another crucial lawsuit, one still in the works. The National Wrestling Coaches Association filed suit against the Department of Education challenging Title IX's p roportionality requirement. The Department of Justice has filed a motion to dismiss the suit on procedural grounds.

This latest round aimed at Title IX has some supporters concerned. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige appointed the Secretary's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics in June and announced four town hall meetings to hear from experts and receive public comment on Title IX. The 15-member panel is to report its findings by Jan. 31.

Though the stated purpose of the town meetings is "to examine ways to strengthen enforcement and expand opportunities to ensure fairness for all high school and college athletes," some proponents believe the Bush administration is attempting to undermine the law.

The first hearing was held Aug. 27-28 in Atlanta. Those urging that Title IX be left intact slightly outnumbered those pushing for change.

The Women's Sports Foundation and the Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, both strong Title IX proponents, see the lawsuit and the hearings as serious threats.

Women's Sports Foundation Executive Director Donna Lopiano said that she believed the main purpose of the hearings was to weaken Title IX.

Though many women coaches and athletic directors share the concern, most don't see a crisis.

"Is it still under threat? You've got to be always alert," said Susan Hofacre, athletic director of Robert Morris University. She is one of 17 women athletic directors among 305 AD's at Division I schools.

"You've got to make sure gains aren't given back, make sure people understand that just because there have been advances made that it doesn't mean everything's OK. There is still improvement to be made, particularly in high school athletics.

"Do I see as crisis? I wouldn't define it as a crisis. I see it as another stage in the evolution of a movement."

Looking ahead

What will that evolution look like?

Some fear the elimination of men's sports will continue. Universities say that they don't have enough money to beef up women's sports to the degree necessary to comply with Title IX, and thus they have to continue to cut back men's sports.

Many in and out of collegiate sports say this is a disingenuous argument.

Marcia Greenberger, founder of the National Women's Law Center, argued at an NCAA seminar this year that Title IX is not responsible for widespread elimination of men's programs. Rather than looking for ways to cut excesses in men's football and basketball programs, she said, "colleges are cutting back on men's so-called low-profile sports. So these men's teams are feeling the squeeze."

Women's gymnastics teams have been cut at a faster rate than men's wrestling teams since passage of Title IX, said Debbie Yohman, head gymnastics coach at the University of Pittsburgh.

Those who want to make it work have generally found ways to do so, said several local officials.

"Universities that have cut teams have chosen the easy way out," said Yohman. "The hard way is to find a way to implement women's programs, to grow them, to bring them to level that they are competitive at the level of men's programs. The hard way is finding new sources of revenue, new promotions. It's tightening the belt everywhere."

Yohman said the Big 10 has been a leader in this regard. "I think they've attacked it from the point of 'How can we do this?' not 'How can we avoid this?' They've found a way to do it."

Brian Colleary, the athletic director at Duquesne University, said 58 percent of his school's scholarship dollars now go to women, 42 percent to men.

It's not easy to make it work because of the "two-headed monster called football," he said. "But there are ways to solve the problem. It's an institutional decision -- how you strategize to satisfy a federal law. Some have eliminated sports. Others have been a little more creative."

There are 90 football players at Duquesne, which plays in nonscholarship NCAA Division I-AA. To try to bring in equivalent numbers of women, Colleary has done what other schools have done: worked to support high-number participation sports such as rowing and track for women.

But some athletic directors say it's not so simple, and that many schools are facing more and more difficult financial challenges.

One of the proposals being floated by some to address the problem is to take football off the table and calculate proportionality without it. The argument is that because of the high numbers of students football involves, the high profile it can give a school as a recruiting tool and because it is a potential moneymaker for the college overall, it should be treated as a distinct entity.

That doesn't wash with most Title IX proponents.

"Football is sport. Football players are athletes. Football uses resources. I don't see any reason it should be exempt," said Hofacre of Robert Morris.

Another possibility being discussed is capping the numbers of athletes allowed to participate in given sports. Some schools have already done this, but again, in competitive leagues, few coaches are willing to take steps that would weaken them.

"I think the only thing we're left with is instead of having individual roster limits for men's sports, we consider adopting national limits, across all divisions," said Tim Weiser, athletic director at Kansas State University. There would be a limit of how many baseball, track, football players a school would be permitted to have.

"Philosophically, I resist that. I don't like telling young males they can't participate in sport," Weiser said. "But the reality is we've got a situation where schools can't afford to add women's sports, and to me it's preferable to limit rosters than to drop sports altogether."

Yohman said she didn't see roster limits as a complete or permanent solution, but she does view it as a defensible strategy in light of the fact that universities routinely limit the number of students allowed to sign up for particular classes.

Weiser said he doubts resources can be distributed to everyone's satisfaction, though, without radical change. That might involve eliminating athletic scholarships, except those based on need, and using the freed-up money to maximize participation for men and women. Some leagues have done that.

"If I were king for a day, I would totally throw out our model of how we give scholarships to student-athletes and go to need-based aid," he said. "As radical as that may sound, that's our best chance to deal with the Title IX issue."

Such a change would have to be made across the board, he said.

Weiser doesn't expect anyone to snap up his suggestion.

"Do I think it's going to happen anytime soon? No. I think it's going to take us getting to the edge of the cliff and realizing how far we have to fall before we decide to do something."

No going back

Those in the trenches believe that though things may bog down again, there's no going back.

Sandler characterizes the situation at most schools as having gone from "horrendous" to "very bad," but she does not believe that the drive toward equity will be reversed.

"We're not anywhere near where we ought to be, but unquestionably there's been a tremendous amount of progress."

According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, women's participation in college athletics since Title IX's passage grew from 32,000 before Title IX to 163,000 through 1999.

"We're probably two-thirds of the way along and still have one-third of the way to go," said Women's Sports Foundation's Lopiano, citing shortfalls in numbers of women athletes and their funding.

"In 20 more years, who knows what sports we might have?" said Hofacre, who had no school sports available to her in high school. "I do believe women's sports are going to continue to grow. I see a change in mindsets.

"Twenty years ago, when I taught these kinds of things, males in class didn't have a clue that women should have equal opportunity. Now, it never occurs to them that girls can't play sports and at a high level. For my male students, man, this is just ... it's unfathomable to them that women wouldn't have the opportunity to play sports. I talk to them about what happened to me in my school, and they look at me like I'm from another planet. Those young men, as they get older and have daughters, they expect that. It's happened in that one generation."

The movement has gone beyond the letter of the law, said Yohman.

"I foresee that athletic programs are going to continue to evolve without the help of Title IX," she said. "People realize that women's athletics can be successful and bring in spectators and fans."

Sandler said Title IX is what put that change in mindset in motion.

"What Title IX has done, is it gave it a name, it gave us a lens by which we could look at things and say, 'Is this fair? Are they treating women fairly?'" said Sandler. "Once you look at it that way, it's hard to ever go back."