Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 is now 30 years old. Three decades have passed since Title 20 of U.S. Code Section 1681(a) was written to say: “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.”
Though Title IX is most commonly associated with intercollegiate athletics, its sphere of influence also includes educational and academic facets.
Institutions of higher education that once did not think twice about arbitrarily denying women entrance into certain programs were suddenly federally obligated to include them; otherwise, they ran the risk of seeing their federal monies cut or withdrawn altogether.
In this academic realm, tangible results are there. According to the University of Iowa’s Gender Equity in Sports Project (of 1997), by ’94, women received 38 percent of all medical degrees (up from 9 percent in ’72), 43 percent of law degrees (7 percent in ’72), and 44 percent of doctoral degrees (25 percent in ’77).
Meaning that while there are still significant strides to be made (considering that at the U’s own College of Engineering, the ratio of women to men is about 1:6), there has been substantive progress.
Does the same hold true for sports, though?
Has Title IX equally fulfilled the obligations inherent in its athletics arm? Has it maintained its promise to rid the world of collegiate sports of sexually based discrimination?
It depends largely on context.
U women’s basketball coach Elaine Elliott doesn’t know about the nation as a whole, but at Utah, she feels the right attitude regarding women’s athletics has fostered the right actions to make compliance with Title IX a reality.
“A commitment has always been made to?in the most possible ways?be very cognizant of equality between men and women, especially as it relates to athletics,” Elliott said.
In regard to intercollegiate sports, there are three primary areas to monitor a school’s compliance with Title IX:
?Athletic financial assistance, which stipulates that the total amounts of athletics aid must be substantially proportionate to the ratio of male and female athletes.
?Accommodation of athletic interests and abilities, which says that athletic opportunities for men and women must roughly equal the proportion of undergraduate students enrolled at the university, and that a school must take steps to expand such opportunities if they are found to be lacking for one sex.
?Other program areas, which includes, according to the Iowa study, a wide range of “benefits, opportunities and treatments” afforded to sports participants, ranging from adequate practice time to availability of locker rooms to publicity from sports information personnel.
The U.S. News and World Report viewed the U’s athletics department as supportive enough of gender equity in women’s sports to rank the school on its top-20 Honor Roll, and Utah athletics director Chris Hill certainly feels that it’s warranted.
“We continue to expand scholarship opportunities for women, we’re looking at new facilities for soccer and volleyball, and growing opportunities for women in other sports, including maybe adding another sport,” Hill said. “I’m really happy for the hard work of our staff, our coaches and our athletes. We’re very proud of this type of ranking.”
So, it’s worked fairly well at the U, but has Title IX similarly impacted publicly funded universities nation-wide?
“It’s made a big statement,” Hill said. “Now, each school must do the best it can on its own campus.”
So, how do all these other campuses stack up?
There certainly have been increased opportunities for women to compete in sports. According to a study from the National Collegiate Athletic Association from Feb. 16, 1994, female participants in NCAA sports were to jump from 91,669 in 1984-85 to 123,832 by 1995-96?an increase of 35 percent. During that same time, men’s participants went from 201,063 to 199,556?a decrease of 0.75 percent.
Some would hail this as a victory for women, as there are 30,000 some-odd more competing in NCAA varsity sports than were just a decade prior. Then again, there are still more than 65,000 fewer female college athletes than males.
As for the second area, that of accommodation of interests and abilities, there has also been some improvement, and looking at the U specifically chronicles that.
When a U Gender Equity Task Force was commissioned in 1995, the university was not yet fully in compliance with Title IX, specifically in regard to the male-female athletics ratio mirroring the undergraduate population (which, back then was 55-45 for males, and now is 54-46).
Though the report issued by that task force stated that “a time of enrollment/budget crunch” made it unfeasible and “counterproductive to divert other scholarship money into athletics just to achieve parity,” it also outlined a list of steps to be taken to bring the U closer to the federal mandates.
Among those were the formation of the women’s soccer team, splitting membership of the ski team 50-50 between men and women, and an increased number of scholarships for women on the swimming, skiing and track and field teams.
Today, there are 10 varsity women’s sports at the U?one more than the men have?and the school is “within 5 percent of the [male-female undergrad ratio?a rule of thumb that we’re making a good effort,” according to Hill.
“Whether it’s altruism or because they’re legally bound, I don’t care?women are treated equally here,” Elliott said. “They have the same travel experiences, the same practice opportunities, the same chance to compete. Their experience is an equal experience.
“There has truly been an effort to see what’s real, evaluate it, and change what needs to be changed,” she added. “There’s been a commitment to doing the things that are necessary, and it’s been genuine and ongoing.”
What constitutes less of an ongoing commitment however, is the money and expenditures devoted to women’s athletics, and female coaching in particular.
The third area of compliance, the “other program areas,” includes “compensation of full time coaches, assistants and graduate assistants” and says that related benefits “are to be equivalent, but not necessarily identical.”
Well, according to statistics from the Iowa study, earnings between men’s and women’s coaches are nowhere near identical, and not much closer to equivalent.
In 10 head or assistant coaching positions examined where there are equivalents of both men’s and women’s teams, men’s coaches received the highest compensation in all of NCAA Division I seven times, and had greater median compensation nine out of 10 times (volleyball being the one exception).
With some positions, it’s almost to be expected. For instance, with media exposure and marketing opportunities, it was not surprising that in ’96 97, the highest compensation for a men’s head basketball coach was $900,000, while the highest women’s was $344,000. The medians for the two were $290,000 and $98,400, respectively.
In other sports, though, the disparity is nonsensical. In swimming, the highest men’s is $115,000?or nearly double the women’s high of $57,684.
Meanwhile, the median personnel expenditure for men’s sports was $1.9 million. For women, it was $431,282?or less than half of what was spent on football alone ($890,330).
The U has not been exempt from this particular problem. The university’s ’95 Gender Equity Task Force found that “men’s coaches account for 76 percent ($1.4 million) of total compensation by the program, compared to 24 percent ($453,518) for women. The average men’s head coach received $95,711, compared to $41,149 for a women’s head coach.”
Even taking into account the caveat that the men’s figures were boosted substantially by the respective salaries of men’s hoops coach Rick Majerus and football coach Ron McBride (in football, the median compensation for the head coach is $268,000), that indicates a gross difference.
One so gross that the same U Task Force recommended “significant” increases in salary for the U’s gymnastics, women’s basketball, volleyball and softball.
Not that time has not healed these wounds. An article published by USA Today on Aug. 23, 2001 detailed that there are now 39 NCAA coaches?including the U’s Majerus?making at least $1 million per year. None of them are women.
Elliott is making more now than she was then, but says pay for women’s coaches still has a long way to go.
“It wasn’t equal in ’95 and it’s not equal now,” she said. “There are many things that are equal in college sports?salary is not one of them.”
In the meantime, female athletes continue to move towards equality with their male counterparts, obstructed all the way by persisting misconceptions and stereotypes. It is, after all, still considered an insult for a boy to be told by his peers that he throws like a girl.
And while some of these walls of the testosterone psyche are coming down, with some women’s sports seeing popularity growing, far too many still are undone by the playing of the sex card and the negative perceptions it engenders.
The U’s gymnastics team is an anomaly?having averaged 9,920 fans in its six home meets this year?good enough to garner its 19th attendance title in the last 21 years. Ranked fourth in the country, the team’s success rate warrants such fan support.
Success is not always an apt indicator which teams draw people in, however.
Far more consistent with the standard is an examination of the U’s respective basketball teams. During the 2000-01 season, the men finished 22nd in the nation in attendance, averaging 12,236 fans in 16 home games, despite going 19 12 overall and losing in the first round of the NIT. The women, by contrast, went 28 4 and advanced to the NCAA’s Sweet 16, but brought in a paltry 1,409 people per its 18 home contests.
“It used to just be hard personally, because I wanted to have a neat environment for the kids to play in, where they’d have a lot of people who appreciate seeing them play,” Elliott said. “Now, it’s gone beyond that?it’s a detriment to the girls of the program. When we can’t offer community support, there’s less to offer to potential recruits. And that affects the quality of the team.”
Hill says that the U is trying to change the situation.
“We’ve put a lot more marketing dollars into the women’s programs?we just haven’t seen the fruits of that yet,” he said.
In the meantime, Elliott knows that, even with a federal provision mandating equality for women in schools, you can’t mandate equality in the minds of random people.
Not that she’ll stop trying.
“We haven’t changed everybody’s mind, but we have changed some,” she added. “Hopefully, that will continue.”