Title IX

"The National Women's Law Center filed complaints against 12 school districts Wednesday alleging they failed to offer equal opportunities for female athletes. The center said data from 2006 indicated the districts violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in federally funded education programs.
The schools can satisfy Title IX in one of three ways: if the percentage of athletes who are girls is about the same as the student body; if the school has continually expanded athletic opportunities for girls; or if the school meets its female students' interest in participating in sports.

In the 12 districts, the percentage of girls playing sports was lower than that of the student body. The gaps ranged from 8 percentage points in New York to 33 in Chicago. The center found the gap increased in most of the districts from 2004 to '06, indicating that opportunities had not been expanding. It also said the districts didn't field teams in all girls sports sanctioned by their state, suggesting that interest was not being met.

The complaints will be investigated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. The center selected one school in each of the 12 OCR regions based on the 2006 data."

"A federal judge's ruling  last week that a Connecticut university cannot use competitive cheerleading to meet its federal Title IX requirements has only indirect immediate implications for the other 10 or so colleges that now sponsor cheerleading as a varsity sport, since none of them include the teams in their calculations to meet gender equity standards.  But while the court's decision could discourage other colleges from establishing competitive cheerleading teams, advocates for the sport said it could ironically hasten the development of a collcollege sports infrastructure for cheerleading aimed at legitimizing the sport for gender equity purposes.

Quinnipiac University was found to have violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 by cutting its women’s volleyball team and replacing it with a competitive cheerleading squad. The ruling spares the university’s volleyball team from the chopping block for the time being. Further, its determination that competitive cheerleading, or at least the version offered at Quinnipiac last season, is not a varsity sport has possible repercussions for an ongoing court case in Delaware.

“The biggest misunderstanding is that people judge based on the name of the sport rather than going out there and watching these athletes perform,” Eaton said. “That’s what aggravates me, especially about some of these decision makers. At least watch some film of what’s going on.”

Renee Baumgartner, senior associate athletic director at the University of Oregon, said she considers the competitive cheerleading squad at her institution — which calls the sport “stunts and gymnastics” — a varsity squad. Like Maryland, however, Oregon’s government filings do not count it as such for Title IX purposes. Though its cheer squad had to compete against some club teams and was not always judged by the same scoring system all last season — two things that the judge held against Quinnipiac’s team — she argued that the sport has to be given a chance to start somewhere."

"Today marks the 38th anniversary of Title IX, a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in all levels of education. The legislation, which was originally passed in 1972, reads: "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." While most widely known for increasing women's participation in high school and college athletics, women�s rights advocates now hope to use Title IX to increase gender equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, among other areas.

Currently, there are two bills in Congress that would enable stronger enforcement of Title IX in athletics. The High School Athletics Accountability Act (H.R. 2882) and its Senate counterpart the High School Sports Information Collection Act (S. 471), would require the information and statistics on gender equity in school athletic programs be made available to the public."

"The College Sports Council (CSC) released a study last week claiming that Title IX has hurt men’s soccer.  Sadly, the study is just another version of the same old attacks that the CSC and similar groups have launched against Title IX in the courts and in the media for many years—attacks that have been unanimously rejected. 

In their latest study, the CSC compares the participation numbers and scholarship limits for males and females in Division I and erroneously claims that the somewhat smaller number of men playing soccer in Division I is the result of a "gender quota." If you’re confused, you’re not alone. There are many pieces of the puzzle that the CSC study conveniently omits.

The elephant in the room that CSC ignores is football and basketball, which together consume three-fourths of the entire men's athletic budget at Division I-A institutions. In addition, men alone are eligible for 85 football scholarships, the highest by far for any sport. So claiming that men are somehow getting the short end of the stick is simply false. Moreover, if certain men’s sports do not believe they are getting sufficient opportunities or resources, they should approach their schools to talk about how sports are prioritized in the men’s program"