Title IX is 50 years old
Law calling for gender equality in sports has had a major impact—but it hasn’t been perfect
On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law a measure that has had far reaching impact on gender equality in the United States.
Known as Title IX, the law prohibits sexual discrimination in all public school and university programs and activities, from admissions to financial aid—and even includes academic programs.
The impact of Title IX has been significant, and can be “measured” in small part by events that have taken place in my own backyard—Salem, Oregon.
Less than four years after the law went into effect, South Salem High School won the first-ever Oregon State 3A Girls Basketball Championship, a 41-32 victory over Wilson of Portland at Lewis and Clark College. South finished with a stellar 20-2 record. Players from that 76 title squad still speak with great pride of being the first championship team.
Just 25 years ago in my hometown of Salem, Oregon, Liz Heaston (October 18, 1997) was the first woman to score in a college football game, kicking two extra points in the Willamette Bearcats’ 27-0 win over rival Linfield. The Willamette soccer player remained on the football roster for the entire season, and went back to just soccer for her senior year. Video link:
Not all of the changes were positive as the law look effect. My wife, Theresa, was a pretty good basketball player for her school in Paramount, California in the late 1970s. She said the schools there put boys and girls games on the same nights at the opposite locations from each other. She almost seethes her complaint about this. The argument was that folks who couldn’t come to an away boys game would make it to the girls games instead.
“NO—that isn’t what happened,” my bride said to me with gritted teeth and measured tones.
“Nobody was coming to the girls games, and a lot of girls simply quit playing basketball and other sports because they couldn’t go to the boys games, either.”
Title IX also made practice scheduling much tougher at the beginning. “There was a public gym several blocks away that we had to use because the boys generally got the school gyms first,” recalls my bride.
“We didn’t have a third gym like other schools.”
Major colleges also had major financial headaches to deal with as equal access suggested equal numbers of sports for both genders. As a result, some long-standing sports on the men’s side were put on the chopping block. Case in point: wrestling at the University of Oregon. The administrators on the Eugene campus cut wrestling in 2007 as they attempted to balance athletic offerings between genders. They had added sports such as acrobatics and tumbling, and women’s lacrosse. And when a wrestling restoration group was seeking funds in 2015 to return the sport to the Duck campus, they received an unsolicited email from the Duck Athletic Fund suggesting $75 million would be needed to bring back wrestling. The unsolicited email left wrestling backers dumbfounded. They had estimated a need for 10 million dollars, not 75 million. In the meantime, Oregon State continues to offer wrestling, with a budget that hovers near one million dollars—factoring for inflation, of course.
And when it comes to equity of funding, even the mighty NCAA can’t get out of its own way. Such was the case in 2021, when Oregon Ducks basketball star Sedona Prince pointed out that the weight rooms for the mens vs. womens NCAA basketball tournaments were markedly different. Videos told the true story—and it was ugly.
The men’s weights had row upon row of top-of-the-line weight machinery. For the women? It was a stack of yoga mats and pitiful rack of dumb bells. NCAA excuses were met with skepticism, and eventually officials ended up apologizing. They had blown it, and were caught in the act.
None of these individual cases add up to much. So how about some numbers? The Women’s Sports Foundation did a study about the impact of Title IX, and the reviews are mixed. Key findings:
1 girl for every 3 boys (ages 6-12) participates in sports
40 percent of teen girls are not actively participating in sports
Boys get 1.13 million sports opportunities than girls
Female sports opportunities nationally are at an all-time high, but the WSF says there are still fewer opportunities for women now than men had already in 1972.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are lies, damn lies and statistics, so not all numbers are a clear indicator of inequality. There are schools in my local area that have had traditionally low girls sports turnout, Title IX or not. Gender equality does not have to mean equal statistics when it comes to sports interest. I have three daughters, and they all enjoyed sports—but they all decided to give them up sometime in high school to pursue other interests. Victims of fewer opportunities? Highly doubtful. But this is where the issue turns very political. Coming soon is the Biden Administration’s efforts to shift Title IX to include the very small LGBTQ community in the mix. Stay tuned.
Title IX was a sweeping law when it was proposed in 1972, and it has taken decades to move the sexes closer together in their athletic and related opportunities, much like Civil Rights laws have pushed racial equality closer to the middle. Laws can only take a society so far. The rest of the change comes from an altered mindset, which simply takes time to happen.
Count me as among the generally satisfied with where Title IX has taken us in fifty years. There will always be some resistance to cultural change—and nobody should be surprised.