Poll: Is Title IX Still Necessary?

Dick S. June 25, 2012 at 02:07 am

Title IX should remain, but the single-sex college admission exemption should be eliminated.

Betsy Shaw Weiner June 25, 2012 at 11:24 am

The effects of Title IX, so positive especially on athletic programs for girls and women, began to be evident almost immediately. At the time of its passage, my daughters were in public elementary school, and I was pleased as punch to notice the discomfort felt by the old-school macho gym teacher there as he could no longer give short shrift to his students who were "only girls." Improvements continued through the years, although they needed the lifts provided by professional women athletes (Billie Jean King in tennis, the U/Conn basketball team) to make first the networks and then the public at large appreciate them. However, as we have seen in so many other fields of endeavor where battles for girls and women have been won, we never can take them for granted; especially recently, it seems they can be undone in a flash. Title IX, therefore, still is needed so that we do not fall back but can continue to build on the strides that have been made over these forty years.

KMFDM99 June 27, 2012 at 12:32 am

Title IX was intended to create equal opportunity but now with the proportionality criteria it has turned into a quota system for the sake of creating equal outcomes. Thousand of men's collegiate teams have been cut since the implementation of Title IX. I don't understand how cutting men's teams creates opportunity for women. Some will say men's participation in sports has increased since 1972 but that's not because of Title IX, its due to the fact that the population has increased by many millions over the past 40 years. The Women's Sports Foundation will claim things are still not equal but what they fail to mention is girls out number boys in most after school activities including student council, theatre / drama, and school news papers. The question must be asked: Are girls still being denied opportunity in sports or do they sometimes make different choices than boys? Their seems to be a strong effort to make sure girls participate in athletics at the same rate as boys but very few seem to care that boys are underrepresented in other areas.

Shawn James August 17, 2012 at 11:02 pm

The problem is that there is no female equivalent for football and (gasp!) more men are interested in sports than women.
Not too long ago Rutgers needed to cut, $175K from one of the men’s program to comply with title ix. The institution responded by getting rid of men’s tennis team. Just like that, those men are probably out of a scholarship. Did this really help one single woman by have these men missing out on the experience of college sports? Then, National Women’s Law Center points out, stated that Rutgers has spent exactly $175K on hotel rooms for the football team during their home games. Do these people really need to have it explained to them that cutting this expense for the football team is a bad idea? You see Rutgers obtain a substantial amount of money from football than it does for any other sport, except possibly men’s basketball. In order to keep up its revenue, it has to provide an elite product on the field and they obviously do this by obtaining the top high school graduates. Now, in order to obtain these athletes, the school has go out of its way in providing extra incentives (i.e. hotel rooms) so they do not go to a competing school. The vast majority of the college sports do not bring in the revenue like football so they do not have the privilege of spending the night at a quiet hotel room before games as oppose to a noisy dorm room. Something tells me that the National Women’s Law Center knows this and just doesn’t care.

joshua tanner August 17, 2012 at 11:10 pm

No women's teams make money except several BB teams like Tennessee. Colleges go broke on women's sports and have to gut men's sports. Women are doing great at the Olympics but now the men's Olympic sports are down because colleges cut them (rowing, fencing, swimming etc). I like women's sports like gymnastics, skating (often better than the men's versions), track etc but dont care for the female versions of male contact sports. The culture is upside down in that its encouraging girls to be butch and guys to be tartish