Title IX at 40: More work needs to be done
Americans overwhelmingly approve of the purpose and enforcement of Title IX, the 1972 federal law requiring women to be given equal opportunity in education, including sports. What happens in reality, in the sports world anyway, is quite different.
Most people miss the deeper implications of Title IX and the dueling that goes on inside of high school and college athletic departments for scarce resources to fund a growing number of sports.
Reflecting on personal experiences with Title IX, most women are grateful for the opportunities it created: the chance simply to compete. And as scholars Vivian Acosta and Linda Carpenter have documented across the 40 years since Title IX’s passage, the number of girls and young women competing in sports has grown exponentially. That’s progress.
Minority women left out
While gender equity is at the core of Title IX, the law has no requirement to address other forms of inequality such as race, class or sexuality. Sport sociologists often remark that sports are a mirror into the larger society; Title IX is no exception. Just as white women have been the major beneficiaries of affirmative action policies, white women athletes have been the primary beneficiaries of Title IX.
Girls and women of all racial and ethnic identities have participated in high school and college sports as a direct result of Title IX. However, once they leave college, there are few professional opportunities for women of any race as either coaches or athletic administrators. Since 1972, the percentage of women’s teams coached by women is down 57 percentage points (from 90% to 43%). Despite the fact that men coach 57% of women’s teams, there are hardly any women coaching men’s college teams, and none coaching basketball or baseball.
Opportunities for AfricanAmerican women are even rarer. Analyzing NCAA data for two papers my colleagues and I published on Title IX revealed some key findings.
First, although many minority women have participated in high school and college athletics, once they leave college there are few professional opportunities for them in athletics as either coaches or athletic administrators. You only needed to watch the NCAA women’s basketball tournament last March to see for yourself. The eight top teams (seeded 1 and 2 in the tournament) all had white coaches (two men and six women), despite the fact that 60% to 70% of the players were African-American.
Scholarship discrimination
And when we turn to the allocation of the ever valuable college scholarship, female athletes in general get the short end of the stick. Women’s basketball is one of the only sports that is able to provide full scholarships (15) compared with the 98 full scholarships available for men (13 basketball and 85 football).
Of the 228 scholarships available for female athletes, most of which are split up into fractional grants, only 33 are dedicated to sports dominated by AfricanAmericans: 15 for basketball and 18 for track and field. In contrast, 195 are designated for sports dominated by whites, including soccer, ice and field hockey, volleyball, golf and tennis.
The vast majority of young women who are able to finance at least part of their college education through an athletic scholarship are white.
On the 40th anniversary of Title IX, it is important to celebrate all the law has done, but we must not lose sight of the work that remains. We should seize the opportunity and use this important piece of civil rights legislation to bring equality to all girls and women.
Angela Hattery is a professor and associate director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University.