October 11, 2022 • 27 mins
When President Nixon signed Title IX into law in 1972, the goal was achieving gender equality and fairness in education. But it led to a women's revolution in sports, with high school and collegiate participation for women soaring in the 1970s-1990s. Matt Andrews explains the complicated story of Title IX, including a famous naked protest and the debate over its impact.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place,
world history examined and science explained. This is one day
university Welcome, and we're back on the untold History of
(00:28):
Sports in America. I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we're
continuing our conversation about feminism in sports as we examine
one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history,
Title nine. I'll be honest with you here, there's a
lot of legal conversation happening here, so I'm just gonna
flip it right to Matt for the whole story. Bail
(00:50):
me out, Matt. Today, I want to dig deep. I
want to explore what Title nine says. I want to
explore what it does not say. I think there are
some misconceptions about Title nine, and then I want to
explore some of the controversies surrounding Title nine. Now, I
want to go deep on Title nine because, like I said,
it is easily the most significant piece of legislation in
(01:12):
American history, at least with regards to sports. But even
more than that, rarely is a law passed in any
realm that changes more lives than Title nine did. But
before we examine Title nine and its effects. Let me
just briefly take you back to high school and college
campuses in the era before Title nine. Before Title nine,
(01:36):
very few high schools fielded girls sports teams of any
kind and and very few colleges had women's sports programs.
And we've talked about the reasons for this. Before sports
were thought of something that boys and men did not
girls and women. Now that said, there were a few
places where girls and young women were playing sports. A
(01:57):
couple of notable examples. You might see girls sports at
the elite all female boarding schools on the East Coast
work were sports like field hockey were popular. We've talked
about how track and field was popular at the black
colleges like Tennessee State where Wilma Rudolph and the Tiger
Bells burned up the track. But these were exceptions and
(02:20):
not the rule. In fact, they were notable outliers for
the vast majority of American girls and young women before
Title nine, they just did not have the opportunity to
play sports. Now, this is not to say the girls
and women did not want to participate in sports, they
just weren't allowed to. They were excluded from sports and
(02:40):
here's an example of this exclusion in one a female
high school student in Connecticut. She wanted to run cross country,
but cross country was only for boys at her school.
In her school district, all the sports were only for boys.
She sued her school district for the right to run,
and the male judge who heard her case, he ruled
(03:03):
against her, and he said, following athletic competition build strength
and character in our boys. We do not need that
type of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow. Well,
think about what this judge is saying. Sports build strength, confidence,
(03:24):
and determination, and we don't want those traits in girls
and women. Girls and women, I suppose, are supposed to
be weak and unconfident and and lacking in character. This
was the mindset any women's sports that existed at universities
in the early nineteen seventies. These were usually informal club teams.
(03:47):
A team might receive a few hundred dollars from the
athletic director. This was man's gift to a woman. But
members of women's sports teams they had to sell candy
bars and hold bake sales in order to raise the
funds to buy uniforms and get gas money for your travel. Meanwhile,
all the players on the men's team, they received scholarships,
(04:08):
they were outfitted and traveled at the university's expense. And
so think about what's going on here. The tax dollars
of a state citizens and the registration fees of the students,
male and female students. They paid for men to play sports,
women got almost nothing. Three centuries of attitudes about women
(04:33):
and sports in America begin to change in nineteen seventy
two with the passage of Title nine. But the first
thing you need to know about Title nine is that
it's not about sports. Title nine is about fairness in education.
It's about equality in education. In nineteen seventy two, Edith
(04:54):
Green from Oregon. She was one of the few female
members of Congress, and she drafted a broad, multifaceted piece
of legislation called the Education Amendments Act. And the Education
Amendments Act was created to combat the fact that women
were being excluded from positions as students, as professors, as
(05:16):
administrators because of their sex. Yeah, sorry, you can't come
to medical school because medical school is for men. Or
we're not interested in hiring you as a history professor
because history professors are supposed to be men. Title nine
of the Education Amendments Act was created to combat that
type of discrimination. Well, the Act sailed through Congress and
(05:41):
it was signed into law by President Richard Nixon, and
there was almost no opposition to it at all. And
this was for a couple of reasons. One reason was
that by two the second wave feminist movement was in
full swing. Entitle nine was just one of many pieces
of legislation that sought to undo gender inequality, and it
(06:02):
was getting harder and harder to argue. Again, it's the
idea that women should be allowed to go to medical school.
But the other reason that no one in Congress opposed
it is that they had no idea. They did not
realize the impact it would have on sports. If they
had known, there would have been opposition, major opposition there.
(06:25):
And let me put this more bluntly, if the men
in Congress had understood the Title nine was going to
apply to sports, they never would have passed it. I
am absolutely certain of this. Okay, here's what Title nine
of the Education Amendments Act states. It's only thirty seven words,
so I will read it. No person in the United
(06:48):
States shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected
to discrimination under any educational program or activities receiving federal
financial assist stance. So no person because of their sex
(07:09):
will be denied opportunities in any educational program that receives
federal funds. Now, at first, nobody really understood how this
law would affect sports, because high school and college sports
programs they do not directly receive federal funding. But as
the law was later interpreted and then ruled on in
(07:31):
the courts, Title nine applied to the entirety of any
institution that received any federal funds, So any college or
university or high school that received federal money, and that
was basically all of them. As all schools, even private schools,
they take federal money in the form of pell grants
for their students, they now had to comply with Title
(07:54):
nine in all areas equality in all areas, including sports. Okay,
here's what it means to complete lie with Title nine
with regard to sports. Let's break this down. It's it's
pretty straightforward when it comes to sports. Title nine says
that there needs to be equality of opportunity for men
(08:16):
and women and that's the first big idea, equality of opportunity.
Schools need to provide male and female students with equal
opportunities in sports. But when it comes to this idea
of opportunity, Title nine is actually a very flexible law.
Schools are in compliance with Title nine if they do
(08:37):
one of three things that they don't have to do
all three. They just have to do one of these
three things. Schools are in compliance if they offer athletic
opportunities in rough proportion to the general enrollment at that school.
This is what's known as the proportionality standard. It's very simple.
(08:57):
If a school is forty female, then roughly forty of
the athletic opportunities need to be in women's sports. Okay,
But here's another way they can be in compliance. A
school was in compliance if it can demonstrate a history
and continuing practice of program expansion for the underrepresented sex.
(09:18):
So is the school trying to expand the athletic opportunities
for its female students. You don't really even need proportionality,
You just have to be able to demonstrate that you
are working toward proportionality. Or Third, finally, there's what's known
as the general interest standard. Can you demonstrate that you
(09:40):
are providing opportunities that match the interest in playing sports
among the underrepresented athletes. This idea of having enough positions
that reflect general interests it's so vague that the government
rarely accuses any school of violating Title nine when it
comes to sports, because really, what's required here is a
(10:02):
student speaking up and saying that they're interest and the
interest of others is not being matched by opportunities. So
let me emphasize the following. Title nine is about gender
equality in education and and and sports physical education, And
it's not really about increasing opportunities for women. It's about
(10:26):
increasing opportunities for the underrepresented sex. You know, if male
students ever find themselves with unequal opportunities, they can sue
under Title nine as well. So Title nine is not
one sidedly pro woman. Title nine is much more broadly
pro gender equality. And again, there are many ways to
(10:50):
demonstrate Title nine compliance. You don't need an equal number
of male and female athletes. For example, I've said this before.
I teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The u n C student body is fifty nine percent
female and forty one percent mail that that gender disparity
is not uncommon at colleges and universities. So fifty percent
(11:13):
female and forty one percent mail, but fifty five percent
of the athletic opportunities at u n C are for
men currently and forty percent are for women. But u
n C is Title nine compliant because it claims it
meets the general interest standard. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
(11:34):
But unless a female student speaks up and says she
is not receiving equal athletic opportunity, this will be the
status quo. Finally, one last thing to say about Title nine.
Title nine mandates with regard to sports. It also mandates
equal treatment for the genders, which is very straightforward. It
just means this when it comes to sports, schools have
(11:56):
to provide roughly comparable facilities for men and women, comparable uniforms,
comparable travel arrangements, So you can't fly male athletes and
planes and put female athletes on a bus. You can't
give male athletes sleek, new Nike uniforms and make women
wear hand me downs and stuff like that. And importantly,
(12:17):
schools have to treat male and female athletes equally with
regard to scholarships. The number of athletics scholarships has to
be roughly comparable. And let me dispel a myth. Title
nine does not mandate that schools spend equal amounts of
money on men's and women's sports. Doesn't say that. Title
nine recognizes that some sports, like football, it requires more
(12:40):
gear than others, so spending equal money is not a requirement.
Last year my school u n C. We spent thirty
million dollars on men's sports. We spent eleven million dollars
on women's sports. After the break, is Title nine unfair
(13:01):
to men's sports. Let's go back to nineteen seventy two
when Title nine went into effect. We've laid out what
(13:22):
it says and what it doesn't say, but how was
it implemented. Well, it took a few years for schools
to figure out what it all meant, you know, how
it related to sports. But then the attorneys for universities
in the high school districts, they told school administrators, you
need to start providing athletic opportunities and facilities for girls
and for women, otherwise we might lose federal funding. And
(13:45):
so it begins. In the mid to late nineteen seventies,
athletic directors had to adjust their budgets. Schools had to
build locker rooms for women. They created teams, they hired coaches,
they paid for uniforms. The list goes on, and the
American sporting landscape was utterly trans formed. Title nine ushered
(14:07):
in a women's athletic revolution. In the first twenty years
of the Title nine eras in nineteen seventy two to
nineteen ninety two, the number of women playing collegiate sports
it's sword. It went from thirty thousand to one hundred
and fifty thousand. In high school the jump was even
more remarkable, going from three hundred thousand to two point
(14:30):
eight million high school participation rates. Sword. They went from
one out of every twenty high school girls playing sports
in nineteen seventy one to one out of every three
playing sports in nineteen seventy nine. Just eight years later,
opportunities were presented and lo and behold, girls and women
(14:51):
they took them that they wanted to play sports. And
I think, looking back at it, but is so remarkable
is that it just took one generation. My mother went
to high school in Oakland, California, in the early nineteen sixties.
She had no sporting opportunities available to her, zero zilch none.
(15:11):
Twenty years later, my sister played high school soccer and
softball and was on the high school ski team. Beyond
the numbers, with Title nine came the idea that sports
were something that girls did too. With Title nine begins
a change and attitude about men, women and sports. Now.
(15:33):
I don't think this attitude has completely changed, but no
longer our strength and speed and skill. No longer are
these things seen as holy male traits. No longer are
women who play sports seen as freaks or or muscle malls,
if you remember that term for Babe did Rickson. I
(15:53):
always liked how merrily Dean Baker put it. Merrily Baker
was the first female athletic director at Princeton University, and
she once described the seismic shift like this. She said,
I was called a tomboy. My daughters are called athletes. Okay,
so far this has mostly been a happy and conflict
(16:16):
free story of change and in rising gender equity in sports.
But that would be an inaccurate portrayal of the situation
because Title nine has been a controversial piece of legislation,
and let's explore some of the critics and their critiques.
And I have critics and critiques on both sides of
the argument. When Title nine was passed by Congress, and
(16:37):
when the n c a A and college athletic directors,
who were all men, when they figured out what it meant,
they howled in protest. When Walter Buyers, the head of
the n c a A in the ninet seventies, when
he realized what the law mandated, you know, essentially an
equal number of female athletes to male athletes or or
(16:57):
something like that, Walter Buyers called Title nine a crisis
of unprecedented magnet. To never mind that the early version
of the n c A once had to deal with
an epidemic of deaths on the college football field, and
we talked about those. This apparently was the biggest crisis
of them all, equality of opportunity. And Walter Buyers warned
(17:21):
that Title nine meant the doom of intercollegiate sports. And
I am pausing for dramatic effect here. Please consider how
completely and unbelievably wrong the n c A was here.
But that's what they thought. And so initially the n
(17:43):
c a A and individual colleges and universities they dragged
their feet. They did not respond immediately to the demands
of this new federal law. And just because Title nine
was signed into law, that didn't mean that female athletes
were going to all of a sudden be tweated equally
on college campuses. And this could lead to protests from
female athletes. And here's one story or to illuminate this,
(18:07):
let's go back to Yale University. You know, Mighty Yale,
the birthplace of college football, the birthplace really a big
time college sports. Yale is the school that more or
less invented the idea that tough, rugged sports were the
proving grounds for the college man. Yale was an all
(18:28):
male school until nineteen sixty nine. The arrival of women
at Yale in nineteen sixty nine was itself a mark
of the feminist movement, and Entitle nine came and Yale
found itself in the midst of not only the feminist movement,
but the women's athletic revolution, and Yale began to comply.
For example, rowing rowing was big at Yale, so Yale
(18:51):
created a women's crew team, a rowing team. But here's
how it worked. For the male and female rowers at
Yale early in the morning in the winter to train
for the upcoming spring season. The male and fe mail rowers,
they would get on a bus and they would drive
twenty minutes to the river for training. When finished with
(19:11):
their training, the men would go into their locker room
at the boathouse, take warm showers and change into clean,
dry clothes, but the women did not have showers and
locker rooms. The women would get on the bus soaked
in sweat and wait for half an hour while the
men got warm and cleaned up. And these female athletes,
they literally froze on that bus. They got sick, they
(19:35):
got respiratory infections. They complained, and they asked for their
own showers and dressing rooms, equal facilities, but nothing happened. Silence.
So on March three, the female rowers walked into the
office of Johnny Barnett, she held the newly created position
(19:57):
of Director of Women's Athletics at Yale. The female rowers
had a New York Times reporter and photographer with them,
and the rowers took off their sweatsuits. They stood in
this Yale office completely naked, with the words title nine
written in black ink on their bodies. And then the
(20:17):
leader of the team, Christine Ernst, she read the following statement,
these are the bodies Yale is exploiting. We have come
here today to make clear how unprotected we are, to
show graphically what we are being exposed to. No effective
action has been taken, and no matter what we hear,
it doesn't make these bodies warmer or dryer or less
(20:40):
prone to sickness. We are not just healthy young things
in blue and white uniforms who perform feats of strength
for Yale in the nice spring weather. We are not
just statistics on your wind column. We're human and being
treated as less than such. So they're saying, we demand
equal facilities. We demand showers, We demand our right to
(21:03):
physical well being. We a man to be treated equally well.
The next day a photograph of the naked protest. It
appeared in the New York Times, and Yale alums sent
checks to their university, you know, attached warre notes, my God,
build these women a shower. Sometimes you have to protest
(21:24):
to get what you deserve. But now here's a different protest.
The loudest and most persistent critiques about Title nine have
not come from those who say that things are not
moving fast enough like those Yale rowers. They have come
from those who say that things are moving too fast.
(21:45):
They say that too much has changed, and specifically, they
say that Title nine has not been fair to men.
And the critique goes like this, because of Title nine,
fewer men can now play intercollegiate sports. Women got their
spots and men have been disadvantaged. Well, let's look at
(22:06):
that claim that Title nine has meant fewer athletic opportunities
for men. I've looked at the numbers. It's simply not true.
Since nineteen seventy two, the year of Title nine, there
has been an increase in the number of men playing
college sports. Since nineteen seventy two, men's athletic opportunities have
gone up forty percent. Nationwide, men's athletic opportunities have gone
(22:30):
up as colleges have decided to spend more on athletic
opportunities for all. So we might say that everyone wins.
More men are playing sports, way more women are playing sports.
It's win win, but not everyone thinks of themselves as
winners in the Title nine sweepstakes. One of the biggest
(22:52):
controversies about Title nine has been that, in order to
achieve more equality of opportunity between men's and women's sports,
many athletic programs have made the decision to cut some
of the smaller, non revenue men's sports all across the nation.
Many wrestling, men's gymnastics, men's swimming, and diving teams. Many
(23:15):
of these have been cut, and critics of Title nine argue,
what they say, Title nine killed these sports? Is this true? Well,
this is more complicated. The answer is both yes and no. Yes,
these cuts were related to Title nine. Title nine was
the impetus that set these changes in motion. You know,
(23:38):
as schools try to find gender balance in sports, some
of these men's sports programs, they were chopped. And this
is not fair, critics say, But here are two arguments
against that accusation of unfairness, and the first is obvious,
but it just needs to be said again and again.
(23:59):
Title nine is correcting a century of unfairness in college sports.
And I'm amaze is that how often people ignore that
very simple basic fact when bemoaning the cutting of men's sports.
All we're talking about here is equality of opportunity, you know,
And as the debate over Title nine raged in the
nine nineties, I was amazed by the critics of Title
(24:20):
nine who would say it's ridiculous. How these women think
they have a right to be on a rowing team
or a golf team. You know, the issue was never
whether a female student has a right to play golf
or row a boat. The issue is whether a female
student has a right to be treated the same as
a male student. I think way too often we lose
(24:41):
sight of that very basic fact. But here's another argument
against those who say that wrestlers and male divers and
gymnasts that they've been victimized by Title nine. Yes, the
number of wrestling and gymnastics and diving programs male programs
did go down, but one could just as easily say
(25:02):
that these programs were chopped because they're just not culturally
popular anymore. And I say this because look at men's
soccer and lacrosse. You know, in the past decade, over
one and fifty colleges and universities have added men's soccer programs,
and likewise, men's lacrosse teams are popping up everywhere, and
(25:23):
these teams have huge rosters. Where I teach U n C,
the men's soccer team has thirty three players on its roster,
including five goalies. The U n C men's lacrosse roster
it lists forty four players. I am not here to
begrudge anyone a spot on a soccer or lacrosse team,
(25:44):
I I swear, But when you add large men's soccer
and lacrosse teams, you just might have to cut other
men's programs. But telling Lee, no one ever blames these
sports for the cuts in other men's programs. Instead, the
critics blamed Title nine, the federal government and the female athlete.
(26:07):
And of course, if you want to point to a
sport that skews the numbers, you have to point to football.
The other reason that some men's sports have been cut
is that athletic directors refused to cut back on massive
college football programs. College football teams don't have to be
as big as they are. College football programs carry eighty
(26:30):
five scholarship players and eight scholarships for football. It cuts
into the opportunities for other male athletic programs. Football so
greatly skews the Title nine numbers in college sports that
Sports Illustrated has suggested that there are really three sexes
when it comes to college sports. There's male, there's female,
(26:53):
and there's football. You want your football, that's cool with me.
But when men's wrestling or fencing goes away. Maybe it's
better to say, well, that's because we want our foot ball,
rather than say it's the fault of those female volleyball players.
That's all for now. Next time on the Untold History
(27:16):
of Sports in America, presented by One Day University, the
greatest sports movie ever made.
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place,
world history examined and science explained. This is one day
university Welcome, and we're back on the untold History of
(00:28):
Sports in America. I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Today we're
continuing our conversation about feminism in sports as we examine
one of the most important pieces of legislation in American history,
Title nine. I'll be honest with you here, there's a
lot of legal conversation happening here, so I'm just gonna
flip it right to Matt for the whole story. Bail
(00:50):
me out, Matt. Today, I want to dig deep. I
want to explore what Title nine says. I want to
explore what it does not say. I think there are
some misconceptions about Title nine, and then I want to
explore some of the controversies surrounding Title nine. Now, I
want to go deep on Title nine because, like I said,
it is easily the most significant piece of legislation in
(01:12):
American history, at least with regards to sports. But even
more than that, rarely is a law passed in any
realm that changes more lives than Title nine did. But
before we examine Title nine and its effects. Let me
just briefly take you back to high school and college
campuses in the era before Title nine. Before Title nine,
(01:36):
very few high schools fielded girls sports teams of any
kind and and very few colleges had women's sports programs.
And we've talked about the reasons for this. Before sports
were thought of something that boys and men did not
girls and women. Now that said, there were a few
places where girls and young women were playing sports. A
(01:57):
couple of notable examples. You might see girls sports at
the elite all female boarding schools on the East Coast
work were sports like field hockey were popular. We've talked
about how track and field was popular at the black
colleges like Tennessee State where Wilma Rudolph and the Tiger
Bells burned up the track. But these were exceptions and
(02:20):
not the rule. In fact, they were notable outliers for
the vast majority of American girls and young women before
Title nine, they just did not have the opportunity to
play sports. Now, this is not to say the girls
and women did not want to participate in sports, they
just weren't allowed to. They were excluded from sports and
(02:40):
here's an example of this exclusion in one a female
high school student in Connecticut. She wanted to run cross country,
but cross country was only for boys at her school.
In her school district, all the sports were only for boys.
She sued her school district for the right to run,
and the male judge who heard her case, he ruled
(03:03):
against her, and he said, following athletic competition build strength
and character in our boys. We do not need that
type of character in our girls, the women of tomorrow. Well,
think about what this judge is saying. Sports build strength, confidence,
(03:24):
and determination, and we don't want those traits in girls
and women. Girls and women, I suppose, are supposed to
be weak and unconfident and and lacking in character. This
was the mindset any women's sports that existed at universities
in the early nineteen seventies. These were usually informal club teams.
(03:47):
A team might receive a few hundred dollars from the
athletic director. This was man's gift to a woman. But
members of women's sports teams they had to sell candy
bars and hold bake sales in order to raise the
funds to buy uniforms and get gas money for your travel. Meanwhile,
all the players on the men's team, they received scholarships,
(04:08):
they were outfitted and traveled at the university's expense. And
so think about what's going on here. The tax dollars
of a state citizens and the registration fees of the students,
male and female students. They paid for men to play sports,
women got almost nothing. Three centuries of attitudes about women
(04:33):
and sports in America begin to change in nineteen seventy
two with the passage of Title nine. But the first
thing you need to know about Title nine is that
it's not about sports. Title nine is about fairness in education.
It's about equality in education. In nineteen seventy two, Edith
(04:54):
Green from Oregon. She was one of the few female
members of Congress, and she drafted a broad, multifaceted piece
of legislation called the Education Amendments Act. And the Education
Amendments Act was created to combat the fact that women
were being excluded from positions as students, as professors, as
(05:16):
administrators because of their sex. Yeah, sorry, you can't come
to medical school because medical school is for men. Or
we're not interested in hiring you as a history professor
because history professors are supposed to be men. Title nine
of the Education Amendments Act was created to combat that
type of discrimination. Well, the Act sailed through Congress and
(05:41):
it was signed into law by President Richard Nixon, and
there was almost no opposition to it at all. And
this was for a couple of reasons. One reason was
that by two the second wave feminist movement was in
full swing. Entitle nine was just one of many pieces
of legislation that sought to undo gender inequality, and it
(06:02):
was getting harder and harder to argue. Again, it's the
idea that women should be allowed to go to medical school.
But the other reason that no one in Congress opposed
it is that they had no idea. They did not
realize the impact it would have on sports. If they
had known, there would have been opposition, major opposition there.
(06:25):
And let me put this more bluntly, if the men
in Congress had understood the Title nine was going to
apply to sports, they never would have passed it. I
am absolutely certain of this. Okay, here's what Title nine
of the Education Amendments Act states. It's only thirty seven words,
so I will read it. No person in the United
(06:48):
States shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected
to discrimination under any educational program or activities receiving federal
financial assist stance. So no person because of their sex
(07:09):
will be denied opportunities in any educational program that receives
federal funds. Now, at first, nobody really understood how this
law would affect sports, because high school and college sports
programs they do not directly receive federal funding. But as
the law was later interpreted and then ruled on in
(07:31):
the courts, Title nine applied to the entirety of any
institution that received any federal funds, So any college or
university or high school that received federal money, and that
was basically all of them. As all schools, even private schools,
they take federal money in the form of pell grants
for their students, they now had to comply with Title
(07:54):
nine in all areas equality in all areas, including sports. Okay,
here's what it means to complete lie with Title nine
with regard to sports. Let's break this down. It's it's
pretty straightforward when it comes to sports. Title nine says
that there needs to be equality of opportunity for men
(08:16):
and women and that's the first big idea, equality of opportunity.
Schools need to provide male and female students with equal
opportunities in sports. But when it comes to this idea
of opportunity, Title nine is actually a very flexible law.
Schools are in compliance with Title nine if they do
(08:37):
one of three things that they don't have to do
all three. They just have to do one of these
three things. Schools are in compliance if they offer athletic
opportunities in rough proportion to the general enrollment at that school.
This is what's known as the proportionality standard. It's very simple.
(08:57):
If a school is forty female, then roughly forty of
the athletic opportunities need to be in women's sports. Okay,
But here's another way they can be in compliance. A
school was in compliance if it can demonstrate a history
and continuing practice of program expansion for the underrepresented sex.
(09:18):
So is the school trying to expand the athletic opportunities
for its female students. You don't really even need proportionality,
You just have to be able to demonstrate that you
are working toward proportionality. Or Third, finally, there's what's known
as the general interest standard. Can you demonstrate that you
(09:40):
are providing opportunities that match the interest in playing sports
among the underrepresented athletes. This idea of having enough positions
that reflect general interests it's so vague that the government
rarely accuses any school of violating Title nine when it
comes to sports, because really, what's required here is a
(10:02):
student speaking up and saying that they're interest and the
interest of others is not being matched by opportunities. So
let me emphasize the following. Title nine is about gender
equality in education and and and sports physical education, And
it's not really about increasing opportunities for women. It's about
(10:26):
increasing opportunities for the underrepresented sex. You know, if male
students ever find themselves with unequal opportunities, they can sue
under Title nine as well. So Title nine is not
one sidedly pro woman. Title nine is much more broadly
pro gender equality. And again, there are many ways to
(10:50):
demonstrate Title nine compliance. You don't need an equal number
of male and female athletes. For example, I've said this before.
I teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The u n C student body is fifty nine percent
female and forty one percent mail that that gender disparity
is not uncommon at colleges and universities. So fifty percent
(11:13):
female and forty one percent mail, but fifty five percent
of the athletic opportunities at u n C are for
men currently and forty percent are for women. But u
n C is Title nine compliant because it claims it
meets the general interest standard. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
(11:34):
But unless a female student speaks up and says she
is not receiving equal athletic opportunity, this will be the
status quo. Finally, one last thing to say about Title nine.
Title nine mandates with regard to sports. It also mandates
equal treatment for the genders, which is very straightforward. It
just means this when it comes to sports, schools have
(11:56):
to provide roughly comparable facilities for men and women, comparable uniforms,
comparable travel arrangements, So you can't fly male athletes and
planes and put female athletes on a bus. You can't
give male athletes sleek, new Nike uniforms and make women
wear hand me downs and stuff like that. And importantly,
(12:17):
schools have to treat male and female athletes equally with
regard to scholarships. The number of athletics scholarships has to
be roughly comparable. And let me dispel a myth. Title
nine does not mandate that schools spend equal amounts of
money on men's and women's sports. Doesn't say that. Title
nine recognizes that some sports, like football, it requires more
(12:40):
gear than others, so spending equal money is not a requirement.
Last year my school u n C. We spent thirty
million dollars on men's sports. We spent eleven million dollars
on women's sports. After the break, is Title nine unfair
(13:01):
to men's sports. Let's go back to nineteen seventy two
when Title nine went into effect. We've laid out what
(13:22):
it says and what it doesn't say, but how was
it implemented. Well, it took a few years for schools
to figure out what it all meant, you know, how
it related to sports. But then the attorneys for universities
in the high school districts, they told school administrators, you
need to start providing athletic opportunities and facilities for girls
and for women, otherwise we might lose federal funding. And
(13:45):
so it begins. In the mid to late nineteen seventies,
athletic directors had to adjust their budgets. Schools had to
build locker rooms for women. They created teams, they hired coaches,
they paid for uniforms. The list goes on, and the
American sporting landscape was utterly trans formed. Title nine ushered
(14:07):
in a women's athletic revolution. In the first twenty years
of the Title nine eras in nineteen seventy two to
nineteen ninety two, the number of women playing collegiate sports
it's sword. It went from thirty thousand to one hundred
and fifty thousand. In high school the jump was even
more remarkable, going from three hundred thousand to two point
(14:30):
eight million high school participation rates. Sword. They went from
one out of every twenty high school girls playing sports
in nineteen seventy one to one out of every three
playing sports in nineteen seventy nine. Just eight years later,
opportunities were presented and lo and behold, girls and women
(14:51):
they took them that they wanted to play sports. And
I think, looking back at it, but is so remarkable
is that it just took one generation. My mother went
to high school in Oakland, California, in the early nineteen sixties.
She had no sporting opportunities available to her, zero zilch none.
(15:11):
Twenty years later, my sister played high school soccer and
softball and was on the high school ski team. Beyond
the numbers, with Title nine came the idea that sports
were something that girls did too. With Title nine begins
a change and attitude about men, women and sports. Now.
(15:33):
I don't think this attitude has completely changed, but no
longer our strength and speed and skill. No longer are
these things seen as holy male traits. No longer are
women who play sports seen as freaks or or muscle malls,
if you remember that term for Babe did Rickson. I
(15:53):
always liked how merrily Dean Baker put it. Merrily Baker
was the first female athletic director at Princeton University, and
she once described the seismic shift like this. She said,
I was called a tomboy. My daughters are called athletes. Okay,
so far this has mostly been a happy and conflict
(16:16):
free story of change and in rising gender equity in sports.
But that would be an inaccurate portrayal of the situation
because Title nine has been a controversial piece of legislation,
and let's explore some of the critics and their critiques.
And I have critics and critiques on both sides of
the argument. When Title nine was passed by Congress, and
(16:37):
when the n c a A and college athletic directors,
who were all men, when they figured out what it meant,
they howled in protest. When Walter Buyers, the head of
the n c a A in the ninet seventies, when
he realized what the law mandated, you know, essentially an
equal number of female athletes to male athletes or or
(16:57):
something like that, Walter Buyers called Title nine a crisis
of unprecedented magnet. To never mind that the early version
of the n c A once had to deal with
an epidemic of deaths on the college football field, and
we talked about those. This apparently was the biggest crisis
of them all, equality of opportunity. And Walter Buyers warned
(17:21):
that Title nine meant the doom of intercollegiate sports. And
I am pausing for dramatic effect here. Please consider how
completely and unbelievably wrong the n c A was here.
But that's what they thought. And so initially the n
(17:43):
c a A and individual colleges and universities they dragged
their feet. They did not respond immediately to the demands
of this new federal law. And just because Title nine
was signed into law, that didn't mean that female athletes
were going to all of a sudden be tweated equally
on college campuses. And this could lead to protests from
female athletes. And here's one story or to illuminate this,
(18:07):
let's go back to Yale University. You know, Mighty Yale,
the birthplace of college football, the birthplace really a big
time college sports. Yale is the school that more or
less invented the idea that tough, rugged sports were the
proving grounds for the college man. Yale was an all
(18:28):
male school until nineteen sixty nine. The arrival of women
at Yale in nineteen sixty nine was itself a mark
of the feminist movement, and Entitle nine came and Yale
found itself in the midst of not only the feminist movement,
but the women's athletic revolution, and Yale began to comply.
For example, rowing rowing was big at Yale, so Yale
(18:51):
created a women's crew team, a rowing team. But here's
how it worked. For the male and female rowers at
Yale early in the morning in the winter to train
for the upcoming spring season. The male and fe mail rowers,
they would get on a bus and they would drive
twenty minutes to the river for training. When finished with
(19:11):
their training, the men would go into their locker room
at the boathouse, take warm showers and change into clean,
dry clothes, but the women did not have showers and
locker rooms. The women would get on the bus soaked
in sweat and wait for half an hour while the
men got warm and cleaned up. And these female athletes,
they literally froze on that bus. They got sick, they
(19:35):
got respiratory infections. They complained, and they asked for their
own showers and dressing rooms, equal facilities, but nothing happened. Silence.
So on March three, the female rowers walked into the
office of Johnny Barnett, she held the newly created position
(19:57):
of Director of Women's Athletics at Yale. The female rowers
had a New York Times reporter and photographer with them,
and the rowers took off their sweatsuits. They stood in
this Yale office completely naked, with the words title nine
written in black ink on their bodies. And then the
(20:17):
leader of the team, Christine Ernst, she read the following statement,
these are the bodies Yale is exploiting. We have come
here today to make clear how unprotected we are, to
show graphically what we are being exposed to. No effective
action has been taken, and no matter what we hear,
it doesn't make these bodies warmer or dryer or less
(20:40):
prone to sickness. We are not just healthy young things
in blue and white uniforms who perform feats of strength
for Yale in the nice spring weather. We are not
just statistics on your wind column. We're human and being
treated as less than such. So they're saying, we demand
equal facilities. We demand showers, We demand our right to
(21:03):
physical well being. We a man to be treated equally well.
The next day a photograph of the naked protest. It
appeared in the New York Times, and Yale alums sent
checks to their university, you know, attached warre notes, my God,
build these women a shower. Sometimes you have to protest
(21:24):
to get what you deserve. But now here's a different protest.
The loudest and most persistent critiques about Title nine have
not come from those who say that things are not
moving fast enough like those Yale rowers. They have come
from those who say that things are moving too fast.
(21:45):
They say that too much has changed, and specifically, they
say that Title nine has not been fair to men.
And the critique goes like this, because of Title nine,
fewer men can now play intercollegiate sports. Women got their
spots and men have been disadvantaged. Well, let's look at
(22:06):
that claim that Title nine has meant fewer athletic opportunities
for men. I've looked at the numbers. It's simply not true.
Since nineteen seventy two, the year of Title nine, there
has been an increase in the number of men playing
college sports. Since nineteen seventy two, men's athletic opportunities have
gone up forty percent. Nationwide, men's athletic opportunities have gone
(22:30):
up as colleges have decided to spend more on athletic
opportunities for all. So we might say that everyone wins.
More men are playing sports, way more women are playing sports.
It's win win, but not everyone thinks of themselves as
winners in the Title nine sweepstakes. One of the biggest
(22:52):
controversies about Title nine has been that, in order to
achieve more equality of opportunity between men's and women's sports,
many athletic programs have made the decision to cut some
of the smaller, non revenue men's sports all across the nation.
Many wrestling, men's gymnastics, men's swimming, and diving teams. Many
(23:15):
of these have been cut, and critics of Title nine argue,
what they say, Title nine killed these sports? Is this true? Well,
this is more complicated. The answer is both yes and no. Yes,
these cuts were related to Title nine. Title nine was
the impetus that set these changes in motion. You know,
(23:38):
as schools try to find gender balance in sports, some
of these men's sports programs, they were chopped. And this
is not fair, critics say, But here are two arguments
against that accusation of unfairness, and the first is obvious,
but it just needs to be said again and again.
(23:59):
Title nine is correcting a century of unfairness in college sports.
And I'm amaze is that how often people ignore that
very simple basic fact when bemoaning the cutting of men's sports.
All we're talking about here is equality of opportunity, you know,
And as the debate over Title nine raged in the
nine nineties, I was amazed by the critics of Title
(24:20):
nine who would say it's ridiculous. How these women think
they have a right to be on a rowing team
or a golf team. You know, the issue was never
whether a female student has a right to play golf
or row a boat. The issue is whether a female
student has a right to be treated the same as
a male student. I think way too often we lose
(24:41):
sight of that very basic fact. But here's another argument
against those who say that wrestlers and male divers and
gymnasts that they've been victimized by Title nine. Yes, the
number of wrestling and gymnastics and diving programs male programs
did go down, but one could just as easily say
(25:02):
that these programs were chopped because they're just not culturally
popular anymore. And I say this because look at men's
soccer and lacrosse. You know, in the past decade, over
one and fifty colleges and universities have added men's soccer programs,
and likewise, men's lacrosse teams are popping up everywhere, and
(25:23):
these teams have huge rosters. Where I teach U n C,
the men's soccer team has thirty three players on its roster,
including five goalies. The U n C men's lacrosse roster
it lists forty four players. I am not here to
begrudge anyone a spot on a soccer or lacrosse team,
(25:44):
I I swear, But when you add large men's soccer
and lacrosse teams, you just might have to cut other
men's programs. But telling Lee, no one ever blames these
sports for the cuts in other men's programs. Instead, the
critics blamed Title nine, the federal government and the female athlete.
(26:07):
And of course, if you want to point to a
sport that skews the numbers, you have to point to football.
The other reason that some men's sports have been cut
is that athletic directors refused to cut back on massive
college football programs. College football teams don't have to be
as big as they are. College football programs carry eighty
(26:30):
five scholarship players and eight scholarships for football. It cuts
into the opportunities for other male athletic programs. Football so
greatly skews the Title nine numbers in college sports that
Sports Illustrated has suggested that there are really three sexes
when it comes to college sports. There's male, there's female,
(26:53):
and there's football. You want your football, that's cool with me.
But when men's wrestling or fencing goes away. Maybe it's
better to say, well, that's because we want our foot ball,
rather than say it's the fault of those female volleyball players.
That's all for now. Next time on the Untold History
(27:16):
of Sports in America, presented by One Day University, the
greatest sports movie ever made.
Host
Matthew Andrews
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