Title IX Anniversary

Thirty-five years ago, in June, 1972 (about the time of the Watergate break-in), Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C § 1681 et seq.) into law. The US Department of Justice web site still describes Title IX as “…a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. The principal objective of Title IX is to avoid the use of federal money to support sexually discriminatory practices in education programs such as sexual harassment and employment discrimination, and to provide individual citizens effective protection against those practices.”

Notwithstanding the DOJ’s description, Title IX mostly is known as the law that made sports, particularly college sports, more accessible to women. Some say that Title IX achieved this goal at the expense of men’s sports. Others say that without Title IX, women’s sports would be forced back to the bad old days (i.e., the time when I was at university) when our athletic opportunities were limited to such events as the intramural field hockey tournament.

I have always considered Title IX a good thing. Never having had the capability to play big time sports (far from it!), I was just an intellectual cheerleader for girl jocks like Mia Hamm and the US Olympic women’s soccer team. In my circle of acquaintances, though, I have found that Title IX is a topic that equals abortion rights in the intensity, emotion and sometimes rage exhibited by its supporters and detractors. Over the last few months, I’ve had some serious, thoughtful discussions with people whose intelligence and ideas I admire, and from these discussions I’ve determined that there are no easy answers. In fact, I’m not sure anyone even knows what the questions are. The fight over Title IX, like the fight over a woman’s right to choose, has taken on a life of its own.