Title IX celebrates 50 years
A breakdown of the law, its origins and what it means
Title IX of the Equal Education Act, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972, is a 37-word statement that galvanized women’s sports, even though the law had nothing to do with women’s sports when it was enacted.
“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 assistance.”
Here are a few things to know about the law, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary this week:
Title IX was initially not about sports
There is no reference to athletics at all in the 37 words, but over the years, it evolved into a way to gauge equality in men’s and women’s sports.
Initially, according to a report by the Department of Justice written in 2012, Title IX was passed because colleges and universities “set quotas for the admission of women or prohibited them from attending altogether; those that accepted applications from women often required higher test scores and grades,” to be admitted. Women had less access to scholarship money, according to the report, and were excluded from male-dominated programs such as medicine. Female professors were denied tenure more often than men.
In 1970, only 8% of women 19 and older were college graduates, the report stated.
What else does it cover?
Admissions, financial aid, student services and counseling, athletics and physical education. It also covers sexual and genderbased harassment, for both sexes.
Who championed Title IX?
U.S. Representative Patsy Mink authored and sponsored the bill with help from Representative Edith Green and Senator Birch Bayh. Mink had faced racial and sexual discrimination while pursuing an education in college. When she tried to apply to medical school, she was rejected because she was a woman. She ended up going to law school instead and became the first woman from Hawaii — as well as the first woman of color and the first Asian-american woman — elected to Congress in 1964.
Who did not?
U.S. Sen. John Tower, who tried to exempt revenue-producing sports from Title IX in 1974. Sen. Jesse Helms did the same in 1976. Both exemptions were eventually rejected. The NCAA filed a lawsuit in 1976 against Title IX, which was dismissed.
When did it go into effect?
Schools and colleges had a deadline of July 21, 1978, to comply with the law.
What happened in the ’8 0 s?
A judge ruled in a 1984 court case, Grove City vs. Bell, that Title IX did not apply to athletics, only athletic scholarships. The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 once again gave Title IX the power to cover all athletics.
How is it enforced?
Title IX is enforced by the Office of Civil Rights, part of the U.S. Dept. of Education. If someone has a Title IX complaint, they can contact the Office of Civil Rights, and the agency will investigate the complaint.
Compliance and the ‘threeprong’ test
The three-prong test for Title IX participation requirements was developed in 1979 by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and clarified in a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Office of Civil Rights in 1996.
The first prong states that the number of male and female athletes must be of the same proportion as the number of male and female undergraduate students. If the requirements of the first prong are not met, a school may satisfy the requirement via the second prong, which examines the school’s history of development and expansion of opportunities for the underrepresented sex, or the third prong, which deals with the institution’s accommodation of viable interests of the underrepresented sex.
The second prong states that the school must provide equal benefits and treatment in matters such as marketing, locker rooms, recruiting, coaches’ salaries and other aspects of the sport.
The third prong states that the school must treat the athletes equally in financial matters, such as scholarships.
Are most colleges and universities in compliance?
If they offer football, probably not.
There has been an influx of women in college. Over the years, the number of female undergraduates has outpaced the number of male undergraduates. In 2020, there were more than 9 million female undergraduates at colleges and universities in the U.S., compared to 6.65 million men.
Football numbers skew the number of male athletes higher at most schools. No female sport compares to football, although schools have tried to add women’s teams with larger numbers of athletes, such as rowing, and in some cases, have inflated roster sizes to attempt to get closer to the football numbers.
In October 2019, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education stated that, based on numbers from 2017, “of all the 1,085 institutions governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, 815 are probably out of compliance. For many of the institutions at the top of the list, the heavy skew of female enrollment in recent years has made achieving proportionality a near impossibility.”