Athletics and sports programs were dominated by males in colleges. Many colleges had very few if any athletic programs for females before Title IX got put into effect. In 1972 before Title IX was put into action the estimated amount of athletes were divided as such. There were just about 172,000 males participating in athletics in college whereas there was just about 30,000 females participating in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is also known as the NCAA.
The nation had seen these numbers and figured there needs to be a way to make these numbers more equal. The NCAA had to figure out a way to make the male and female athletes have roughly the same amount of athletes. Title IX was not just for collegian athletes, but also for high school students also. Title IX only gave women athletics the same opportunity, where they would have the same amount of athletic programs for their school, but the funding did not have to be the same. This being said, many of women’s programs did not get funded as much as the men’s programs, limiting the amount of scholarships being distributed.
According to History. com, Title IX enhanced that “women’s participation in sports has grown exponentially. In high school, the number of girl athletes has increased from just 295,000 in 1972 to more than 2. 6 million. In college, the number has grown from 30,000 to more than 150,000. In addition, Title IX is credited with decreasing the dropout rate of girls from high school and increasing the number of women who pursue higher education and complete college degrees (History. com, 2016). ”
Title IX created such a wonderful opportunity for females to have an equal chance to participate in athletics, it made women around the world more comfortable with their athletic talents making them participate more. As the statistics show Title IX did exactly what it was supposed to do and that is to create equal opportunity for female athletes around the nation. Title IX was signed on June 23, 1972 by President Richard Nixon. Ever since Title IX has been put into effect there have been several benefits that came out of this law.
Of course, with everything in the world, there are also negatives that had come from Title IX passing. With Title IX passing it made the budgets of the programs relatively closer to each other. Rather than all the money going towards the men’s programs, this law made it where the men’s programs cut down and let the women’s programs get more finances, but still not equal. Another great statistic comes from http://titleixhistoryfair. weebly. com/ stating that “2012 olympics is said to be the Title IX olympics because this year, the USA sent more women than men to the olympics.
We got several gold metals in women’s swimming, soccer, and gymnastics. Title IX also allowed boys to join cheerleading squads, figure skating and volleyball, proving that Title IX not only opened up the playing field for women, but for men also (titleixhistoryfair. weebly. com, 2014)”. By this being the first year ever in the Olympics that the United States has sent more females than males in the events shows the progress of Title IX and how far it had come along. This being said, Title IX still has some ways to go, because in a recent study according to http:// titleixhistoryfair. eebly. com/”Title IX hasn’t evened everything for women. In colleges, women get about 40% of the athletics money even though they make up about 53% of the college population (titleixhistoryfair. weebly. com, 2014). ” Although in high school football is the most profitable sport and gives the school the finances that are required to keep running, some schools only have men’s football. While women’s sporting events may have swimming, diving, gymnastics, soccer, and softball, the men only have football. By having this, it is a disadvantage to the men’s programs.
This happens because football is a very expensive sport and due to Title IX the finances are supposed to be close to each other, some schools can only afford football for the men but several sports for women’s. There are several controversies with Title IX that will always be ongoing. In this world, you can only satisfy half of the people, while the other half will always complain. Time. com says “Schools have cut back on male teams and created new women’s teams, not because of demand but because they fear federal investigations.
Since football is a money-generating male sport with large rosters, Title IX quotas have all but decimated smaller less lucrative sports such as men’s swimming, diving, gymnastics and wrestling. More than 450 wrestling teams vanished since 1972, with only 328 remaining. (Time. com,2012)” By having Title IX quotas it took away finances for the smaller sports that schools had. This gave schools the option to eliminate the main profitable sport of football for men’s athletics to keep the other small programs or the schools had to cut all the small programs in order to keep there profitable sport up and running.
Many communities have had issues with this, due to the school cutting programs. By doing cutting the programs, it does not allow the student athletes to show their true talents and lose possible chances for a strong collegian future. An actual school to show statics is Howard University in Washington D. C. “The school’s student body is 67% female, but women constitute only 43% of its athletic program. In 2007, the Women’s Sports Foundation, a powerful Title IX advocacy group, gave Howard an “F” grade because of its 24% “proportionality gap. Howard had already cut men’s wrestling and baseball and added women’s bowling, but that did little to narrow the gap. (Time. com, 2012) is what Time. com states in their article. Further into the article written by Time. com it claims that women nowhere near as much as men do about sports or their programs.
Which by stating this; can of course cause controversy in itself. Title IX was not just a law about athletics though. Title IX also was effective towards the educational programs for school districts. Conferring this was aauw. rg and they claim that Title IX affects more than just athletics and the listing goes as such: recruitment, admissions, housing, career and technical education, pregnant, parenting, and/or married students, science, technology, engineering, math education, sexual harassment, assault, comparable facilities, access to course offerings, financial assistance, student health services, insurance benefits, harassment based on gender identity, and athletics. (aauw. org, 2014). There were several reasons that people kept pushing Title IX to get passed and one of the reasons is that females could lose the term “tomboy”.
Also, individuals never thought a woman could have a great attribute such as leadership. In an article written six years ago there was an interview with one of the female star athletes. The interview went as such “You can be sure women have made serious progress when even the language that would have defined an athletic girl as an aberration from her gender just a generation before has disappeared from the lexicon. Emily learned a bevy of leadership skills from the team sport, and has had the sort of experience that boys have been learning as a matter of course forever but only recently have been available to girls. ” (Gloriafeldt. om, 2010).
Seeing a child at such a young age not knowing the term of a tomboy is truly amazing, meaning that the term most likely has been depleted from the language of students in middle school. Men and women should both be able to be athletic without getting called names that are insulting to one another. Just because an individual is talented at sports no matter what sex this individual is, they should be able to express themselves without having a fear of being mocked or verbally abused. Title IX was a very important event to happen and still to this day and always will in the future change the entirety of athletics for women.
One important piece from Title IX that I feel should be recognized is that it truly did not take place to long ago. It was just short of 45 years ago, women were not often accepted in universities or any athletics just because of their gender. It is hard to believe in our generations eyes that there were very limited opportunities for female athletic programs. Our generation grew up with males and females being equal and socially acceptable for all to play sports no matter the gender. This is one of the most important things because I just think it is a beautiful thing to see gender equality. 1)
Another thing that should be known about Title IX is that it just was not for women’s athletic programs for all ages. This also made the education for women to be more acceptable if and when they went to college. Other things Title IX is known for is “acc ccess to higher education, career education, education for pregnant and parenting students, employment, learning environment, math and science, sexual harassment, standardized testing, and technology. “(www. gilderlehrman. org, 2009-2016). (2) Another thing that should also be remembered about Title IX should be it also had some negative effects for majority of school districts.
Due to Title IX trying to create a balanced financial status towards men and womens athletics this cut the budget for the men’s athletics. This resulted in schools having to lose their absolute best programs and would actually lose money due to the lack of income from the most profitable program. Some schools would cut the men’s athletics dget in half, even more, and then develop weaker programs for their schools creating lack of interest. Schools would lose fans for their events because they would be constantly losing in these events they lost money for. 3) During the period before Title IX women usually were only able to be in classes that were going towards what the school believed there profession would be. Examples of this would be classes that would help them be a household wife. In neatoday. org, it states “Before Title IX, many schools only allowed women to train for careers they found suitable for women – namely, housekeeping.
Now, school administrators can’t legally dictate which students can take which classes based on gender. ” (neatoday. org, 2016) Also before Title IX the school districts had the right to suspend or even expel a female student if she became pregnant. 4) Like state above in the paper women were given insulting names due to their talents in sports or something that is unique for a female to be talented in. Men were thought to be intelligent in mathematics meaning there could not be an intelligent female student in that class. “It was once widely accepted that boys were good at math and science, while girls were good at domestic activities. ” (neatoday. org, 2016) Now in today’s society it is completely acceptable that a female student is outstanding in mathematics and science and also acceptable if a male is talented in domestic actives.
