Title IX: The Law That Changed Girls’ Futures
from the book, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, the Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America by Karen Blumenthal
Thirty-three years after its passage, Title IX, the landmark legislation that forbids sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds, faces new challenges. Earlier this year, the Bush administration quietly changed the rules. To prove they are complying with Title IX, schools now need only conduct an email survey asking what additional sports programs women would like. A lack of response from students would signal that they weren’t interested in sports programs. Previously, a survey was only one factor in measuring whether women’s athletic interests were being met.
While the debate has focused on athletics, Title IX originally wasn’t about sports at all. In the late 1960’s, U.S. Rep. Edith Green, a Democrat from Oregon, was shocked as she heard a panel of school superintendents speak at a hearing about a special program for potential high school dropouts. The program included only classes for disadvantaged boys because, according to the superintendents, they are going to be the breadwinners.” Rep. Green was stunned to learn that under existing U.S. laws, it was perfectly legal to discriminate on the basis of sex in any education program.
The superintendent’s comments made Rep. Green determined to change the law, and in 1970 she held the first hearings on sex discrimination in education. Despite the evidence presented (including quotas at many public universities that limited the number of women accepted to 5% or 10%), her male colleagues were not interested in changing the law.
Then in 1972, Rep. Green waited to even mention sex discrimination until the education bill was before the entire House Education and Labor Committee. There, she had key supporters, including Rep. Shirley Chisolm of New York, the first African-American Congresswoman, and Rep. Patsy Mink, of Hawaii, the first woman of color elected to Congress. When the full committee gathered, Rep. Green proposed adding a little section to the bill that would ban sex discrimination in programs at schools receiving federal funds.
Some committee members thought the changes unnecessary, even silly. But after battles in both the House and the Senate, Title IX was included in the education bill that President Nixon signed in 1972.
Interpreting the law fell to the Health, Education, and Welfare Department, headed by Secretary Caspar Weinberger. HEW moved slowly to implement the law, in part because it had never before dealt with a sex-discrimination law.
As Weinberger was wrestling with whether the new law would apply to gym classes and competitive sports, one event would help transform the way men and women looked at girls athletics.
Billie Jean King was one of the best tennis players of the day and her forceful battles to win respect for women’s tennis caught the attention of Bobby Riggs, a longtime tennis pro and publicity seeker who had won Wimbledon and the US Open years before. A self-described male chauvinist pig,” Riggs was a blunt critic of feminism in general and women in sports in particular. The 55-year-old Riggs challenged 29-year-old King to a match. In a way, the September 1973 match was a giant publicity stunt. But to many people, much more was on the line: If King won, women might finally earn credibility as athletes. In the end, King didn’t just beat Riggs, she thrashed him, winning three straight sets, 6-4, 6-3,
6-3.
In the midst of the excitement, Washington regulators were wrestling with implementing this new Title IX. The crucial call as to whether the law applied to sports teams ultimately fell to Secretary Weinberger, a political conservative who had long opposed big government and heavy-handed meddling in people’s business.
As Weinberger listened to arguments on both sides, he found the disparities glaring and unacceptable. It wasn’t right that schools provided facilities, coaches, uniforms, and locker rooms for boys and men but if girls and women wanted teams, they were expected to raise the money themselves. An estimated 50,000 men went to college on athletic scholarships, compared with perhaps 500 women. He concluded that sports teams were school activities covered under Title IX. If boys got to play, then girls should get to play, too. That single decision would change the course of the new law — and of American sports.
Title IX would face more challenges, from the NCAA, the Reagan administration, and others. But a real breakthrough came in Atlanta in 1996.
The female athletes of the mid-1990s were a different breed than those who competed before them. Most were born in the early 1970s and grew up with access to leagues and teams that their mothers only dreamed about. Dubbed Title IX babies,” many of the team sports players had attended college on athletic scholarships, or at least had gotten to play on college teams. And in this Olympic year, the US, the host country, was committed to their success. The US Olympic Committee supported women’s sports financially like never before.
All the women’s teams promised to be competitive but NBC television figured viewers wanted to see the glamour sports, like men’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, swimming, diving, and track during primetime. Women’s soccer and basketball would be shown in the off-hours or late at night. Women’s softball wasn’t on the schedule at all.
Even without the cameras, the women brought fans in record numbers. US women’s basketball, softball, and soccer filled stadiums as they each captured the gold medal. Their heart-pounding success refocused attention on the incredible gains women had made in sports.
Once the doors to opportunity were opened, women surged through them. In the early 1980s, the number of women getting undergraduate degrees passed the number of men and kept going. Ironically, the rush of women into colleges and universities has made it challenging for schools to provide equal opportunities on the playing field. Some complain that they have had to cut some men’s programs in order to afford new sports for women. This prompted the Bush administration to assess the impact of Title IX rules on athletics and to allow only a web-based survey to show whether women’s interests were being met.
By its 30th anniversary, Title IX had become so much a part of the landscape that many students took it for granted. When asked about her reaction to President Bush’s proposed change to Title IX, tennis star Jennifer Capriati replied, “I have no idea what Title IX is. Sorry.”
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