"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..."
—United States Code Section 20, [1]
Recently a group of coaches, players, parents, and former players, has filed a suit AGAINST enforcement of Title IX, the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act As a girls softball coach, I’m sure that to one degree or another, probably to a lesser extent, I’ve been an indirect beneficiary of Title IX. However, according to so many blogs, rumors, and water cooler conversations, it may be possible that Title IX has caused as much damage to scholastic sports as it has benefited same. And as I dig into the subject to make sure I get my facts and fiction straight, I quickly have realized that I cannot cover this subject in one blog post. So I will officially announce that this post is the first in a series of blog posts on the subject. I am dedicating some time and effort into these writings primarily for one reason; A challenge to Title IX, when considered in the context of our overall economic conditions, may be one of the most significant events in its impact of scholastic sports in a long time. As far as softball goes, a Title IX challenge will put the bat safety issues on the back burner, about ten rows back, real fast.
According to an Associated Press article on Yahoo Sports last week, it says before the law, less than 300,000 girls participated in high school sports, compared with 3.5 million boys, according to the department. In 2007-08, the number of girls participating increased to 3 million, compared with 4.4 million boys. On the surface, it seems to have definitely increased opportunities for female athletes. But this current lawsuit is based on the equal protection clause, citing that Title IX is taking away opportunities for male athletes.
Personally, I am against legislating quotas whether in sports or in any other part of life. That’s right; I am one of those “less government” people. I think as much good intention as there might be in placing quotas on various aspects of our lives, placing quotas is just as discriminatory if not more so than not having quotas in the first place. Whether it’s affirmative action programs, immigration legislation, or Title IX, I think it is just as wrong to say to someone who is absolutely qualified to participate in whatever it is they want to participate in, that they cannot participate because we already have too many of your (enter qualification feature here) and not enough of another. I will go one step further: I believe that placing said quotas tends to exacerbate the problems more than it tends to solve the problems. Too many times we have placed legislation to solve one problem that has created a greater number of other problems and only increased the intensity of issues behind the original problem. So back to Title IX.
Did you know that Title IX, when it was written and put into law, had absolutely nothing to do with scholastic sports? I didn’t even realize that until recently. Title IX was an “add on” to much of the civil rights legislation passed in the 1960’s. It was passed in 1972. Without going into all the details, Title IX was originally about discrimination in hiring practices at federally funded institutions (read “colleges and universities”). Click here to go to Wikipedia’s information on Title IX. (I use Wikipedia as a general source since in some cases its validity can be questioned. However in this case I believe the information to be accurate enough to provide a general overview of what Title IX was and how it came about.) There was some effort to diminish the application to collegiate sports but it was pretty much squashed. Depending upon who you talk to Title IX “applied” says either “you have to spend as much money on woman’s sports as you do on men’s sports” or “you have to provide equal opportunity for women athletes as you do for male athletes.” Either one is difficult to measure but I could agree with the second one far easier than the first. How do you compare dollars spent or opportunities presented from one sport to the next? The main criteria to determine if a school is in violation seem to be a proportionality test. This test looks at the proportion of athletes compared to the proportion of student enrollment. If you have a 50-50 split between males and females enrolled at a given school, and your athletic participation is 65% male and 35% female then you are probably going to be hit with a lawsuit.
How do you compare football to any woman’s sport? How do you compare football to any other sport, male or female, period? How do you justify dropping wrestling, a sport that most women have shown little interest in participating? How do you drop track and field or cross country, two similar sports that women were probably as interested in if not more so than just about any other sport? How do you factor in the fact that girls tend to be less likely to participate in competitive sports compared to boys? Do you see the issues building? The purported idea of Title IX was to provide greater opportunities and equality for women primarily in the workplace and mainly in educational institutions. It was expanded to apply to scholastic sports and I believe that there is no doubt that it has helped to create many more opportunities for female athletes without question. The main questions I will be addressing in the next few weeks are: 1) Has Title IX gone too far? 2) Has Title IX been misapplied or used as a “scapegoat” at a number of schools? And 3) Is there a better solution in solving all the issues involved than the legislation we currently have – Title IX?
Please don’t jump on me yet. There are a number of cases where Title IX enforcement has been needed. Here is a link to an article by a Maryland umpire who felt that the safety conditions at the girls’ softball fields were not being considered as much as at the boys’ fields. But even in this case, there are more factors involved than just whether it’s boys’ fields or girls’ fields. I will also break these factors down in a later issue.
Please bookmark this page and come back next week for the next edition. And please, feel free to leave comments (with civility applied of course) especially if you have been involved or impacted directly by Title IX issues over the years. Each week I will add a few links referencing the articles I’ve researched. Next week, I will discuss the casualties of Title IX.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX - Wikipedia
AP Article on Yahoo
2 comments:
Mike, I agree that quotas have no place in our society. I do think that education institutions should make sports programs open to both males and females equally. This doesn't mean that females will show an interest in sports the same way males do. I don't think an educational institution should be penalized if they don't have 50/50 participation as long as they have made an equal effort to offer sports to both male and females.
Actually Dennis, I will have some figures next week. I just used 50-50 as an example. But yes, there have been schools where the athletic participation did not match enrollment and so they were targeted. I will have more details next week. As always there are other factors thrown into the equation, some valid and some not so much.
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