“Pressure is a privilege,” tennis legend Billie Jean King observed. And now that the University of Iowa Hawkeyes’ generational superstar Caitlin Clark has become the NCAA Division-I all-time leading scorer in basketball – male or female – it’s fitting to highlight the transformative impact of Title IX on America’s sporting landscape; a landmark law opening doors for untold young female athletes to experience that unique privilege of athletic pressure.
For most of the 20th century, high schools and colleges commonly segregated vocational and physical education classes by gender: girls took home economics while boys enrolled in industrial arts (or shop). Physical education courses for female students focused on health, hygiene, and wellness. Males competed in organized team sports or fitness activities. Extra-curricular athletics and intercollegiate team sports were, almost by definition, for boys.
Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 prohibited this sort of gender-based educational discrimination. When President Nixon signed Title IX in June 1972 – without much fanfare actually – the federal law broadened the 1964 Civil Rights Act (on which its modeled) to include educational institutions. Its terms removed outdated barriers that traditionally prevented students from sharing equally in educational opportunities.
Clearly animated by the women’s liberation movement – what historians call second-wave feminism – and primarily written by its sponsor, the late Patsy Takemoto Mink, a twelve-term Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, Title IX states plainly that:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation, or be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
And since both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Higher Education Acts of 1965 had shifted the financial obligation of educating children to Washington, Title IX covers most American universities, colleges, high schools, and elementaries.
Title IX is one of the first institutional provisions for gender equality and today we associate it specifically with school sports; and with good reason. Athletics immediately became – almost inadvertently - the most visible change, with spectacular increases in athletic participation amongst women. In 1971 – prior to Title IX – 3.7 million boys and 296,000 girls participated in high school sports. By 2000, those figures were closer to four million boys and three million girls. Today, while the total number of high school athletes remains around six million, males account for 57% and females 43%. College and university statistics trended dramatically upward too. Female athletic participation has grown 456% since 1972 with mandated intramural leagues, school-sponsored intercollegiate teams, scholarships, championships, and records for men and women.
That said, Title IX – officially renamed the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act – has never been just about sports. The law has always applied to admissions and virtually every function at all educational institutions that receive federal money – public and private – from pre-school through graduate school. All government funded job training, workshops, and vo-tech are covered too. And it continues to level the economic playing field – so to speak – expanded now to mandate equal access for students with some physical disabilities and strengthening the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
