What Every Woman Should Know About Title IX
August 16, 2009
by Anna Belle Pfau
|What Every Woman Should Know is a column on American Women’s History.
Most people like to think of history as a nice, neat, linear progression. That’s hardly how it goes, however, and that little fact is why we have aphorisms like “two steps forward, one step back,” and “history is doomed to repeat itself.” In reality, history is a reflection of humanity, and humanity is chaotic and messy. Earlier this year I re-read the first chapter of The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan’s seminal work, which I had not picked up since I was a girl too young to understand it. I was amazed to re-learn how much women had lost in the years between passage of the 19thAmendment and publication of that ground-breaking work. I was, of course, compelled to make the analogy that we’re here again, repeating ourselves, falling victim myself to the fantasy that history is neat and linear.
What jolted me back from my delusion was basketball season, and the presence of so many women on the court. It’s true, as a Louisville girl, I perhaps got swept up in the hometown fervor as Angel McCoughtry tried to bring the championship home to the University of Louisville (full disclosure: I am a graduate student in U of L’s English program), but I also remembered that this is the impact of Title IX, or The Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, and that it is the perfect example of feminism scoring a win.
Title IX stipulates that:
No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid.
Title IX was designed to protect women and girls from discrimination in education, but it also protects boys and men. 37 years after its passage, Title IX has had an impact for women in several previously male-dominated fields, most notably perhaps in sports and in careers associated with math and science. It also made possible the stunning statistic that today there are more women in college than men—to the tune of 57%. Turn the statistics on their heads. Can you imagine if this statistic applied to number of women in elected positions? If we can do it with Title IX, we can certainly do it with other goals.
To understand the full impact of Title IX, perhaps some statistics are in order. In 1972, women earned just 9% of medical degrees and 7% of law degrees. Most medical and law schools limited the enrollment of women to 15 or fewer, regardless of student body size. Today we are nearing parity in both of those fields. When Title IX was passed, most schools would not allow women to take certain courses, such as Auto Mechanics or Criminal Justice, and men were prohibited from taking Home Economics. Entry standards and tests were different for men and women as well. In 1972 most universities assigned a curfew of midnight for women; men had no curfew.
Sports scholarships for women barely existed before Title IX. In fact, just 7.5%, or less than 300,000 of all high school athletes were girls in 1971. Today those numbers stand at 39% or 2.4 million. Of the athletic scholarships available, 50,000 went to men and fewer than 50 went to women in 1971. Yes, fewer than 50. Today 80% of female managers at Fortune 500 companies have an athletic background.
Watching the University of Louisville Women’s Basketball team this last March was an eye-opening experience for me. For the first time in my life I found myself yelling at the T.V. I cheered with all my might when my team scored or took the lead. I never understood this behavior before, though I recall watching men do it routinely throughout my life. It was a “guy thing.” But during that play off season I got my first taste of what that was like. By the time the final game was half over I didn’t care who won, I just wept because I had never experienced anything like it. I never would have if it were not for Title IX.
Since its inception, the law known as Title IX of the Education Amendments has been under attack, subjected to amendments and court challenges, and still it has stood and women have made progress under it. Here is a list of the attempts to amend the document, and when they occurred. The lengthy list is breathtaking in scope, and makes clear where our elected officials have stood with regard to women’s rights. They have fought them tooth and nail, with very few exceptions.
So many women today, who are free to declare whatever major they want in college, and later pursue whatever career they choose, have forgotten that it wasn’t until 1972 that they were granted that right. If you have the opportunity, remind them. Remind them that every ambition they currently have was largely verboten just a few decades ago. When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique less than fifty years ago, women were awakened to what they’d lost in the preceding fifty years. We do not want to find ourselves there again. Sharing our own history with each other is currently our only option in preventing this loss of knowledge. It is up to us to ensure we are not doomed to repeat this important step in the progress for Civil Rights.
Additional Sources:
Wonderful, Anna Belle.
This also brings so much light to the struggles of accomplished women who are older than me. And gives me an extra pang of sadness and anger when I recall how that Catholic priest friend of O’s and Reverend Wright admonished Hillary for her white privileged and as someone who “never had to wait in line” – or something like that.
So I’m going to run out and read Feminine Mystique – for the first time.
Great post! I’m glad to know another womens’ basketball fan!
Way to go Anna Belle. Great piece!
Problem is, we are repeating history
I’m not sure if you have much contact with the schools, or have done much research into Title IX, but there’s a lot you’re missing
You see, people are still being denied equal access to athletics, and even more so academics. The only difference is, these days it’s the boys that are discriminated against. Look to see how many sports are cut or never allowed to exist because of Title IX. The Feminists never want schools to release how many boys are cut or forced to club sports. One of my students did a survey and found that boys were nearly 11 times more likely to be denied participation in sports. Doesn’t sound exactly fair does it?
It’s just as bad in the classroom. We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars fixing a year grade gap in STEM subjects for the girls, but less than half a million on the two year gap in English for boys. Instead, we strip elementary teachers of any techniques that help boys learn (namely activity and competition) in favor of verbal collaboration. It’s what helps the girls. When schools tried splitting the class along gender lines to allow both to learn by the best typical methodologies, the Feminists threatened to sue and forced the boys to go back into the female centric classrooms. Then those same schools run STEM projects and specifically ban boys from participating.
Oh, and remember, very little is done to make English classrooms more male centric. Adventure and competition are squashed.
So the schools under educate the boys and deny them an equal opportunity for athletic scholarships (Title IX requires a proportional split of scholarships among all athletes that are allowed to participate, if there are 30% more males athletes, that means they have 30% more competition for the same number of scholarships)
The good news is, the more affluent families simply pay for their sons to play club sports and the more affluent girls are at the schools that provide the most variety of sports and gender specific STEM projects. The bad news is that less affluent families can’t afford to pay for club sports or other STEM enrichment classes. Those boys are simply left behind because of their gender.
Oh, and incidentally they happen to be mostly African American and Hispanic. So that means not only has Title IX not ignores most discrimination against boys in the classroom and requires it on the playing field, it unfairly benefits rich white girls over poor minority boys.
If you really want to fight discrimination, you’d be educating women on the failings of Title IX, not it’s lofty goals. Unfortunately the goals have been sacrificed to the fragile Feminist ego and it has become a de jure vindictive sexist law and de facto racist policy
Fight for equal rights and opportunities for all children – Fight Title IX
Mr. Matthews,
There is no requirement in Title IX that boys sports be cut to accomodate girls sports, though some, including MRAs, often try to make that case. I have heard your complaints before and I have researched them. You stand on pretty weak ground as far as I am concerned.
As far as your anecdotal case of gender segregation in your schools, I can answer with a similar anecdotal story from my daughter’s school. They did divide classes by gender at her public middle school, and no one sued btw. The girls positively thrived in this environment; the boys failed miserably. Their classes disintegrated into Lord of the Flies-type scenarios very fast and teachers had a very difficult time controlling the classroom. At the end of the day, gender segregation does no service to boys. It provides them with less effective classroom instruction.
Your comment voices the same sentiments of many others who have sought to attack and dismantle Title IX. Thank goodness these forces have been unsuccessful so far. This is why we fight.
Aaron,
I’d start playing the violin for you, but the school orchestra was cut to pay for the football team. Check out the English class reading lists in your local schools and you will see that most of the books are written by male authors and feature male protagonists. Most classroom teachers use a mix of collaborative and competitive activities in the course of the day. Both kinds of learning are essential for both sexes. Unfortunately, many young boys refuse to participate in anything they consider “for girls”, while the girls happily participate in both. And where did you get the idea that 30% more boys want to participate in athletics than girls? In my many years of teaching just as many girls participated as boys when the opportunities presented themselves. Title IX was necessary when it was first passed, and it needs to be strengthened, not repealed. Increasing opportunities for boys is easy under Title IX – just increase them at the same rate for the girls. It doesn’t have to be “either or”.
Apparently Mr. Matthews has a crusade against Title IX. Here’s his blog:
http://andequalityforall.blogspot.com/
And some other sites he’s commented on:
http://becauseiplayedsports.co.....-programs/
(first comment)
http://media.www.dailycampus.c.....06.shtml#5
(third comment)
http://www.heractivelife.com/w.....n-working/
(first comment)
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=525
(second comment)
http://clairemysko.com/?p=93
(first comment)
That’s where I stopped. Those are the first six links when I goggle Aaron Matthews and Title IX. In the blogosphere, we call that a slime trail. Mr. Matthews is no mere commenter on Title IX–he crusades against it.
I invite readers to see what he has to say elsewhere before deciding if he is a reasonable, rational person who can offer a sound opinion on this topic here in this forum. Considering how he trashes feminism in those links, I think it’s fair to say we have an MRA (men’s rights activist) on our hands.
Title IX functions to limit the athletic opportunities of one group to the extent the less participatory group is willing to participate. In most cases this happens to be women limiting men. Socially, theres no impetus other than raw natural ability and self confidence that would drive women to compete in sports, so there is going to be less demand on their side. Men, however, achieve a great degree of social capital for being good at particular sports and so at at least one stage of their psycho-social development all men are behooved by peer pressure to be good at athletics.
For better or worse, society has decided its better to provide equal funding based on sex rather than sanction any real or perceived differences between the sexes regarding athletic interests.
Also, this is off-topic but is definitely brought up in the comments. Is an MRA a bad thing necessarily? Aside from the gender each wants to protect, aren’t the ideological components exactly the same?
Andrew,
If it would be OK for a white supremacist to argue why he has a right to have a bigger piece of the economic pie because society expects him to on a blog that is working to eradicate racism, then of course, a male rights activist should be welcomed on a feminist blog.
You do realize, Andrew, that your argument basically boils down to, “Bu…bu….bu….girls aren’t all that interested in sports! Unless, they’re, like, manly, dude.” First of all, that’s insulting; secondly, it’s categorically untrue. The statistics I quote in this article pretty much speak for themselves, but since you can’t see it, let me spell it out for you.
Since they have been allowed the opportunity, girls have gotten increasingly more and more involved in sports. That’s the difference between 7.5% and 39%. I trust you can do the math.
Regarding your comment about MRAs, no, I don’t think they are exactly the same thing. The men’s rights activist I know seek to preserve men’s privilege. Feminists subscribe to the simple notion that women are people and ought to have equal rights. The difference is, we don’t want to withhold anything from MRAs; they want to withhold anything they can from us. Including, apparently, the right to play baseball on a Saturday afternoon.
Finally, those same feminists also speak for the men who don’t particularly want to be subject to that peer pressure you insist is applied to all men. They also support men seeing themselves through something more than their accomplishments on the field. In other words, we encourage them to be fully functioning, three dimensional human beings, not the stereotype you presented.
Hi Anna,
First of all I didn’t stutter. Secondly, you admit to my main point, which is that if resources are going to be divided “equally” rather than “proportionally” the group with less interest is going to control that division. It wasn’t “bu..bu…bu anything, moreover thats insulting. I trust that you can also do the math that 39%, no matter how much of a proportional increase in last 20 or 30 years, is not 50%. That means that 61% of boys have to make do with 50% of the resources. The equality you strive for is clearly not there. Feel free to use scratch paper and work this out.
Secondly, w/ regards to MRA’s, its to much of a straw man to argue that feminists are the good angels and MRA’s are the bad angels because men “enjoy privilege”. For every man who arguably got somewhere because a woman was kept down there is a woman who got somewhere because she married into it or pimped out her sexuality. See the article the other day on here about Shelia Johnson.
The simple truth is that some feminists on this blog want it both ways. They want half of congress to be female because females are about half of the population. They say this is equality but its simple proportionality. But in instances like Title IX, they want 50% of the resources to go to 39% of the students. That is not proportionality and is only theoretically equal. I applaud you all for fighting for however much of the pie you are able to take, but please recognize this a human right, not a woman’s right, and attacking men who do the same is an attack that can be easily turned right back on yourselves.
You’re right, Andrew, because that 39% can’t possibly budge. It’s going to top out there and stay there and men will continue to be cheated out of 10% of the resources they used to have access to 93% of! The Matriarchy! Kill it! (Hope I did the math right. I am just a wimminz after all)
But seriously… If you feel insulted it is because I am insulting you. You give yourself away in so much of what you say, including the idea that women can “pimp” themselves out in a patriarchy. Why don’t you just admit you are addressing the wrong audience and rethink expressing your hostile rhetoric in this forum?
I never said it should top out at 39%, you just made it clear that is hasn’t yet, when it does then of course the resources should be dispersed. And women all over the world choose to resort to the lowest common denominator, their sexuality, to secure favors or some sort of security, financial or otherwise. This isn’t limited to human slavery or street prostitution, it can be as simple as flirting to get a job or get out of a ticket. It says a lot more about you than it does me that you would ask me to post somewhere else, especially since I haven’t said anything rude, offensive, inflammatory or untrue, you can not say about yourself.
I come to this forum because I am interested in discussing ideas of equality with respect to gender, where the lines should be drawn, whats necessary to achieve true equality, etc. Discussions should not be limited to blind adherence to the well intentioned articles every author who posts on here. I sincerely appreciate your willingness to respond to my posts and I am sure you put a great amount of effort into your posts, but the fact you accuse of me of blatant sexism when I’ve tried to be respectful and stick to the subject matter is sincerely unprofessional.
Andrew’s comment is a good example of entitlement. It boils down to: “I should have more because I have always had more and society wants/expects me to have more”. It is a narcissistic and morally bankrupt argument.
Well since you’re stalking me, can you tell me one time where I advocated for girls to receive less than proportionally equal funding or support? Go ahead.. look.. keep looking, Oh wait, I never said any such thing. If anyone tried telling my daughter or female students they can’t do anything because of her gender I’d be arguing with them. I do the same for my son and my male students.
On sports…
As for Title IX requiring boys sports to be cut, it doesn’t as long as a) the interest level is exactly the same between both boys and girls or b) the schools lack fiscal and environmental responsibility.
If A is true – as many of you have ripped Andrew for, then the cut/club rate would be the same. That means that just as many girls get cut or forced to club teams as boys. I’m not willing to do that because porportionaly that would affect disadvantage girls more.. but you go ahead and argue for that. Tell the girls if 100 boys get cut then the schools will cut 100 girls, no matter how many show up, but just to keep discrimination equal. The other option is to fully accommodate girls’ interests – so if this years’ girls want to play lacrosse, they need to supply them with all of the equipment, a school owned field (if the boys’ is), coaches etc. even in the middle of Chicago. Then in 4 years if the next group of girls wants to row crew, they have to support them.. including gear, shells and a lake if needed, even in the middle of the desert in a drought. If not they have to cut boys. It must be wonderful for you to know that either girls are going to get every wish their little heart desires.. and if they don’t desire… then they take away the boys opportunities. So it doesn’t require schools to eliminate boys’ sports, it just doesn’t give them a realistic choice. It’s like a pirate pushing someone off the plank and then saying “Oh it wasn’t me that killed them, it was the shark” It wasn’t Title IX that killed boys sports, it’s when the sports were eaten by the economy and girls were protected.
On education..
Have you checked out the AAUW’s guidelines for teaching girls? Do you know how many districts embrace those ideas? Have you checked out the reading for elementary school kids? By the time they get to high school where male authors dominate, so do the girls… it’s mostly too late..
Heck, many schools are banning running and tag at recess- Sounds very male centric to me. The girls aren’t even required to be active when they were allowed, but that wasn’t good enough. The boys are required to walk and talk.. like the girls
By the way, we’ve done the research before our school implemented a gender separated system. The boys scores went up and so did the girls. We had no Lord of the Flies system because we allowed the boys to be competitive and exploratory but still controlled the situation. It’s amazing what can happen if you have teachers that care about such things and take the time to train properly.
As for orchestra ..
Why didn’t they start a pay to play program? Many schools are doing it for sports. I’m sure if every child pays for everything including a teacher they’d keep it. Or, just view it as the fact that your interest just got cut because there wasn’t enough interest or too heavily female. That’s what you’d tell the boys wouldn’t you? (Oh, but if the boys pay for every thing, they still can’t play because according to Title IX they don’t get to keep the money they raise because it proportionally must go to girls too, even if the girls don’t work for it. You can however completely endow a girls’ choir and Title IX says nothing about it. Funny how that works no?
I don’t want to destroy Title IX, I want to wrestle it from the sexist and racist piece of crap it has been turned into. It WAS a great law and a great idea… protect ALL children from discrimination based on gender. Somewhere along the line (Cohen v Brown 1996) it became a vindictive tool of Feminists. If you can find where I said girls should be treated differently than boys then show me. Lots of Feminists say they should be. Look at everything I’ve ever said. You seem to be the ones that put on the blinders and keep punishing young boys for nothing more than being born male. Find one time where I said the same should be done to the girls – that girls should be punished because of their gender. Knowing that you can’t means that I know I have a more moral and logical position than you do. If not, prove me wrong usinglogic or research, not just feelings and antidotes, but actual logic and research. If I’m wrong about something I’ll change my position. I can learn, can you?
First step.. Two choices.. a) if as you say girls have the same interest in sports, then the cut and club rate should be the same. If 100 boys get cut, then 100 girls should be also. If you REALLY believe in what you say, your next post will call for the standard to be based on who isn’t allowed to play, not on who gets to play. Or, b) suggest that all clubs and general education be based on the same formula. If only 15 boys go out for choir and dance, then only 15-16 girls get to participate. If there are 3000 boys at a university, then there should be 3000 girls. (+/- 1.5%) Universities are nearly 60% female, that means according to your standards we need to start cutting girls. It doesn’t matter how much they want to be there or how hard they worked, your standards would say there are too many.
Do either of these and I’ll respect that you do believe in equally hindering both genders. I’ll argue with you for taking either of those positions for the same reason I argue about the boys, but at least you wouldn’t be sexist.
Discrimination is wrong at anytime, and especially when it targets young children.
(Oh and if you need me to have some of my female students write in to tell you what an idiot you are trying to portray me as a sexist, I’ll talk to their parents to have them do that. I teach math and science and no one gets off easy in my classes because of their gender – I expect the best from every child.)
By the way, you never did explain why you think rich white girls deserve a better chance at education than less affluent black boys…
I cannot believe you two. You go on and on about feminism when you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. You are ignorant and sexist. As soon as anyone says anything to you, you start calling names to discredit them. You’re the wominz that give us bad names. Just shut up. I don’t want your vindictiveness and stupidity being the model for my daughter. I’d take Mr Matthews over you anyday. He was my daughter’s 7th grade math and science teacher. She hated him because he refused to let her take a c in math. He had her in the hall crying and finally figured out she didn’t want the boys to think she was too smart. He told her if a boy thought she was too smart then he didn’t deserve to date her. If she did bad in math just for a boy then she deserved the jerks she would get. Then he gave up his lunches for a month to get her up to an a. Now Anne is finishing her biology degree at OSU and going into med school. She still says it’s all because of him. And you know what? I’m not even writing because of her. When I couldn’t help her with geometry I called and told him elem ed degrees didn’t require it when I went through school so he said, “well now’s a good time to learn” and he spent 2 hours with ME teaching the basics of proofs. Before you start branding people who question you with your cutesy little MRA stamp you better take the time to read about them just like he said. He’s fighting for ERA and if you’re a real feminist you’d shut the he’ll up and get behind him!
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