TITLE IX CHANGED AMERICA FOR THE BETTER
Fifty years ago today, President Richard M. Nixon signed an omnibus measure tidying up various federal education policies. The otherwise routine law is now remembered for only one thing: its Title IX provision: “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.” This was akin to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but based on sex instead of race. It started a journey that has left this nation a much better place.
What’s most quickly remembered about Title IX’s requirement that educational institutions receiving federal funding must treat men and women equally is that it led to an explosion in participation in high school and collegiate women sports, which is now as much as 10 times the levels seen in 1972.
But Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post did the best job in framing the long-term impacts of the law. Contrary to its critics, she wrote, “Title IX didn’t lay waste to men’s athletic programs. Title IX laid waste to everything. It laid waste to ideas — men’s ideas of what women were capable of, but most importantly, women’s ideas about themselves.”
As academic researchers have shown, far beyond athletics, Title IX’s most profound effect was in getting women to change their expectations for higher education. This led to huge increases in female law and medical students and in dozens of other fields that had been seen as closed male fiefdoms. Fifty years later, women now make up the clear majority of U.S. college students.
Title IX’s long-term effects also were profound when it came to employment and to requirements that sexual discrimination and harassment be monitored and vigorously addressed. For decades, activists have used the law to expose the failure of colleges to protect female students from unfair, callous administrators and from predatory professors and fellow students. This helped inspire the courts, Congress and future presidential administrations to demand and require profound change from institutions far beyond academia.
Yes, circumstances remain far from ideal. Use of Title IX on behalf of transgender individuals is opposed by some social and religious conservatives, leading to ugly new chapters in the culture wars. Even before the events of the past two years — in which some Republican governors have increasingly expressed open contempt for those who don’t fit the tidy boxes of the 1950s — too many people still faced the sort of treatment Title IX is meant to stop. The protections that may seem the norm in white-collar jobs don’t feel relevant to many women working in service and blue-color jobs, where harassment can be a daily phenomenon.
Nevertheless, as a symbol of American ideals and of the federal government’s commitment to use its power to combat gender discrimination, Title IX represents both a noble moment in U.S. history and a needed break from the past. May it inspire more positive change. And may the principles it represents be reflected in ever more of American life.