Title IX: A good thing gone bad
Dear Mr. Dad: In one of your columns a month or so ago, you took a swipe at Title IX, which most people think has done a great job of bringing equity to college sports. You even called it “dangerous.” I don’t see what there is to complain about. Please explain.
A: Thank you for asking. You’re right: I did complain about Title IX and I did, indeed, refer to it as “dangerous.” And I stand by that. Here’s why.
Title IX passed in 1972, in an era when males outnumbered females on college campuses and when women’s collegiate sports barely existed. The idea was to ensure that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in … or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” You’ll notice that the text doesn’t mention sports; more on that in a minute.
As you suggest, Title IX produced some dramatic and very positive results in increasing opportunities for female athletes. Before Title IX, about 1 in 27 girls played sports; today, it’s about 10 times that many. Over the same period, the sex ratio of college students has also changed, going from more than 50 percent male in the early 1970s to nearly 60 percent female today. However, since a greater percentage of males than females participate in athletics, Title IX’s insistence on “proportionality” (the idea that the percentage of male and female student athletes must be the same as the percentages of male and female students in the institution as a whole), has required institutions to cut men’s sports teams in order to achieve compliance. More than 400 college teams have been eliminated, according to athleticscholarships.net.
So here are my questions: Why is it that only sports, where males outnumber females, are being cut? Remember, Title IX’s original language didn’t mention sports, only “education programs” and “activities.” What about programs and activities where girls outnumber boys?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than twice as many high school senior girls as boys (13 percent vs. 6 percent) are on newspaper or yearbook; 62.5 percent more girls than boys (13 percent vs. 8 percent) are involved in student council or government; 63 percent more girls than boys (31 percent vs 19 percent) participate in music or performing arts; and 58 percent more girls than boys (19 percent vs. 12 percent) are involved in academic clubs.
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that we reduce the number of girls who can participate in yearbook, student government, orchestra, or academic clubs. Instead, we need to look at student participation in ALL extracurricular activities together. If we do that—and we take into account what students have shown that they want to do instead of trying to socially engineer “equality”—I think we’ll find that there’s a lot less discrimination than we’ve been led to believe.
Ultimately, I think it’s time to either repeal Title IX or at the very least, drag it into the 21st century and make sure it reflects the needs of today’s men, women, boys, girls, and institutions. As Michael Lancaster wrote on https://www. athleticscholarships.net, “The law has achieved what it set out to do and is now only hurting the opportunities for male athletes.”
For more info on Title IX and boys’ and men’s participation in sports, you may want to check out the American Sports Council (https://www.facebook.com/ American Sports Council) and Men’s Health Network (http:// menshealthnetwork.org).
We can—and must—do better.