Passed in 1972, Title IX was legislation making it illegal for organizations receiving federal funding to discriminate against people based on gender. The most profound effect of this legislation was the increased number of opportunities for women to participate in sports. Many universities were forced to restructure their athletic programs to equalize the amount of funding given to men’s and women’s sports.
In the late seventies, Colorado College was forced to address the inequity between the funding it gave to men’s and women’s sports. Although all but one of the sports at Colorado College was Division III, meaning they were not able to give athletic scholarships to student athletes, they did have a Division I men’s hockey team. As a Division I sport, the hockey program was able to recruit and give scholarships to students based on athletic ability. There was no comparable women’s sport. CC had to decide whether to downgrade the hockey program to a Division III program or upgrade a women’s sport to a Division I program. They chose to upgrade the women’s soccer team to the Division I level, making it possible to give athletic scholarships to women’s soccer player. Fifteen years later, I was awarded an athletic scholarship to play soccer at CC.
I have told this story many times and have always felt grateful for the chance to play soccer at the highest level and compete with other fantastic women athletes. I am proud of my status as a Title IX baby.
This week, as I was doing research on Affirmative Action programs for my Equal Opportunity in Education class, I came across the Title IX legislation again. Since the initial implementation of the law in the seventies, Title IX has continued to expand its scope, working towards equality for women in a variety of federally funded arenas, including public schools.
One recent interpretation of the law has expanded the definition of discrimination to encompass sexual harassment in schools. The law protects students who experience sexual harassment that “is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies its victims the equal access to education that Title IX is designed to protect.” The expansion of the terms of Title IX has provided an avenue for LGBT students who experience harassment in schools to lodge a complaint and have it addressed.
After reading about the Bush administration’s concerted effort to limit information and opportunities in the realm of sexuality education, revisiting the legacy and continued impact of Title IX was uplifting. It was nice to be reminded that sometimes government policies do function to create opportunities and defend civil liberties.
