Title IX (sexual equality in college sports) -- "Great Success" or "Train Wreck&quot

Great Debates
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Answer A. It’s not really equal, but it is moving in that direction.

Answer B. If they got rid of “men’s” or “women’s” and just had a team X basketball team (for example), any female making the team on merit alone would be very rare. Men have inherent size and strength advantages.

Answer C. There is (some) crossover but (AFIK) it is only one way: Women in Football. I can’t imagine a male even being able to try out for a women’s softball team (a sport in which men do not have a separate NCAA league–baseball is different).

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You didn’t answer my first question, Threadkiller and I put them together for a reason.

Well there you go. They aren’t as important as athletes. That’s a fundamental and unavoidable aspect of competitive sports. Any would-be athlete, male or female, who lacks size and strength will not be allowed to participate. Women have this bubble of exclusion around them arbitrarily based on gender which protects them from having to truly compete. A womens team that wins a tournament can call themselves champions without being the best team.

43

And no one except the highest weight classes should be considered champions in boxing, wrestling, judo, etc. Why bother even having them, just one unlimited class?

44

Good point, of course. But don’t the varsity squads get more funding and support than the lesser teams?

Anyway, I’m not serious about making women compete directly with men. My main point is that the funding should reflect the true ratio of interest in sports between colleg men and women, and my guess is that this is somewhere between what was accomodated before Title IX and 1:1. And the discrepancy should be made up by funding EC activities more likely to appeal to women.

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sqweels, Sorry for not answering your first question above but frankly I don’t know enough on the issue to give a relevant answer.

To tell the truth there really aren’t that many JV squads around anymore. Funding cuts have basically made them a thing of the past.

I’m not touching the last sentence but I would like to see it discussed here. The popularity of men’s/women’s sports is very heavily on the side of the men. This goes both for attendance and revenue generation. The crown jewel for the NCAA in $ terms is a new $6 Billion contract for 11 years to broadcast the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

The NCAA also inked an eleven year deal with ESPN for coverage of the women’s basketball tournament. This cost ESPN $200 million. As part of the deal ESPN also receives rights to broadcast tournament game and Division I championships for:

Neglecting the other sports (both men’s and women’s) tacked on to the ESPN contract, men’s basketball brings in over $545 million in one year while women’s basketball only gets $200 million in 11 years. This does not count regular season games which would surely factor heavily in favor of the men as well. I am also not counting football, which is more of a cash cow for the individual teams and conferences than the NCAA.

Let’s go back to sqweels statement: “My main point is that the funding should reflect the true ratio of interest in sports between colleg[e] men and women…”. This truly is not the case. If you were to ration the funding based on interest levels (or at least interest levels based on television broadcast rights) women’s sports ( and all of the second tier men’s sports) would virtually (if not actually) cease to exist.

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december: *“What I’m objecting to, and what constitutes the discrimination that I do blame the schools for, is that the minority of students who preferred the other class [in the shop vs. home ec choice] were not allowed to enroll in it.”

Sure, but perfect equality is impossible, and seeking it results in silliness.*

What is “silly” or unrealistically perfectionist about allowing girls to enroll in shop classes and boys to enroll in home ec classes? Nowadays, high school student are allowed to enroll in the classes of their choice regardless of their gender, thanks in part to Title IX legislation. That’s not “silly”, that’s progress towards greater equality.

*Sorry, I was there. What should I believe? Chafe or my own eyes? *

When it comes to your own personal experience in one particular place at one particular time, you are of course the best judge of that, and I have never disputed that. When it comes to general trends at institutions throughout an entire nation over a longer period, however, I think a professional historian who has published detailed research on the subject is probably a more trustworthy source.

Well, I can tell you that the women in my U. of Chicago class were far below the men (on average), in the truly competitive areas of math and science.

Once again, you persist in claiming that your own limited individual experience justifies discounting any evidence about general trends that doesn’t happen to jibe with your experience. That’s simply not a defensible argument.

*“What are the “unintended consequences”—diminished funding for men’s teams?”

1.Diminshed funding for athletics overall; that is fewer sports available to students. *

?? Where do you get the idea that overall athletics funding at colleges has diminished? AFAIK it has steadily increased.

2.Weaker education, due to bureaucrfatic interference.

Where? In what way? Based on what evidence? Do you have actual data supporting this claim, or are you just arguing from your market-fundamentalist presumption that any federal legislation automatically makes anything worse?

*3.Greater cost, due the burden of coping with the feds. *

Where? In what way? Based on what evidence? Do you have actual data supporting this claim, or are you just arguing from your market-fundamentalist presumption that any federal legislation automatically makes anything worse?

*4.Slippery Slope – sets a precedent for other federal and state actions, that will weaken education even farther. *

Where? In what way? Based on what evidence? Do you have actual data supporting this claim, or are you just arguing from your market-fundamentalist presumption that any federal legislation automatically makes anything worse?

See, I was there, and I know were discrimination was taking place and where it wasn’t.

Once again, you persist in claiming that your own limited individual experience justifies discounting any evidence about general trends that doesn’t happen to jibe with your experience. That’s simply not a defensible argument.

sqweels: *My main point is that the funding should reflect the true ratio of interest in sports between colleg men and women, and my guess is that this is somewhere between what was accomodated before Title IX and 1:1. *

I’m getting the feeling that nobody has read my above post about the “three-prong test” for Title IX compliance. As that post shows, Title IX doesn’t require an institution to fund men’s and women’s sports 1:1, or even proportionately to male/female enrollment. It only requires that

  • either the institution provides participation opportunities for men and women “substantially proportionate” to their enrollment,

  • OR it can provide disproportionately greater opportunities for one group as long as it is effectively meeting the needs of those in the underrepresented group who do want to participate,

  • OR it can simply be doing its best to increase opportunities for the underrepresented group.

So indeed, the whole point of Title IX legislation is that sports funding should “reflect the true ratio of interest in sports.” (See this table for a detailed history of the legislation.)

Threadkiller: If you were to ration the funding based on interest levels (or at least interest levels based on television broadcast rights) women’s sports ( and all of the second tier men’s sports) would virtually (if not actually) cease to exist.

But participation interest levels are not supposed to be based on television broadcast rights or other indicators of spectator preference; they’re supposed to be based on the preferences of the students who actually want to play the sports.

sqweels: *Why are athletics looked at seperately from other extra-curricular activities? *

In the Title IX legislation, they are not. As I noted above, in another post that nobody seems to have read, Title IX simply forbids “practicing gender discrimination in educational programs or activities.” The reason many legal challenges based on Title IX deal only with sports is that, as you note, it’s much harder to figure out what is discrimination and what isn’t when the two sexes are kept in separate groups, as they are in most sports teams.

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I never said they were.

If you reread my post you can see that I was replying to sqweels’s comment that funding should be reflective of funding levels.

48

Tk: If you reread my post you can see that I was replying to sqweels’s comment that funding should be reflective of funding levels.

? This I don’t get: do you mean, “reflective of interest levels”?

Looking back at your previous post:
Let’s go back to sqweels statement: “My main point is that the funding should reflect the true ratio of interest in sports between colleg[e] men and women…”. This truly is not the case. If you were to ration the funding based on interest levels (or at least interest levels based on television broadcast rights) women’s sports ( and all of the second tier men’s sports) would virtually (if not actually) cease to exist.

Sorry if I misread you, but you seem to be claiming that funding levels aren’t reflective of interest levels, as based on television broadcast rights.

But my point is, why should we gauge interest levels by broadcast rights? If, on the other hand, we consider interest levels as defined by what the student athletes are actually interested in, we see that Title IX does in fact promote the idea that “funding should reflect the true ratio of interest in sports between colleg[e] men and women.”

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Nothing. But, would you be satisfied if Title IX merely said that all classes and all sports activities had to be open to both sexes? Of course not. You (and Title IX) want more than equaltiy of opportunity; you want equality of participation.

Let’s go back to your (and wring’s) example. Suppose shop could only be offered if the % of boys enrolled were no greater than the % of girls enrolled. Relatively few girls want to take shop, so it could only be offered to a few boys. Most of the boys who wanted shop would be turned away.

This is just what happens with athletics. A relatively low percentage of college women want athletics, so athletics can only be offered to a low percentage of college men.

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I’m sure TK did mean interest levels, and yes, while spectator might figure into the equation somewhere, I was emphasising student interest in participating.

But I still want to know why sports are figures separately from other EC activities.

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december: *Nothing. But, would you be satisfied if Title IX merely said that all classes and all sports activities had to be open to both sexes? Of course not. You (and Title IX) want more than equaltiy of opportunity; you want equality of participation. *

No, that is not what Title IX says. Please re-read one of my previously posted descriptions of Title IX’s “three-prong test”. They make it very clear that compliance with Title IX does not require numerical “equality of participation” of men and women in sports.

*Let’s go back to your (and wring’s) example. Suppose shop could only be offered if the % of boys enrolled were no greater than the % of girls enrolled. Relatively few girls want to take shop, so it could only be offered to a few boys. Most of the boys who wanted shop would be turned away. *

But this is, as I’ve pointed out several times now, not the principle on which Title IX operates. The “three-prong test” requires that a school’s athletic funding meet one of the following three conditions:

  • Participation opportunties are offered to men and women “substantially proportionately” to their enrollment. (Note that this doesn’t require offering numerically equal opportunities, just proportionate ones.) For example (since the simple abstract statement of the condition is obviously not getting through): if a college has 5000 male students and 2000 female ones, if it provides 500 spots on men’s sports teams, it should provide 200 spots on women’s teams.

  • Participation opportunities can be disproportionately offered as long as the school is “effectively meeting the needs and interests” of the underrepresented group. To return to our example: if a school with 5000 male students and 2000 female students offers 500 spots on men’s teams, but it doesn’t have 200 female students interested in filling the proportionate number of spots on women’s teams, it can offer fewer spots for women and still be in compliance with Title IX.

  • If the school doesn’t offer proportionate numbers of opportunities for participation, and doesn’t adequately meet the needs of the underrepresented group, as long as it is trying to better meet the needs of the underrepresented group, it is still in compliance with Title IX. In our example, if the school with 500 men’s spots can only afford 100 women’s spots, but more than 100 women want to play team sports, then if the school can convincingly show that it has been successfully increasing sports opportunities for women and plans to continue doing so, it is compliant with Title IX.

This is just what happens with athletics. A relatively low percentage of college women want athletics, so athletics can only be offered to a low percentage of college men.

According to the descriptions of the Title IX “three-prong test” I posted above, that assertion is simply flat-out wrong. Do you now understand why it is wrong, or do I have to explain it again? Perhaps I am just not explaining it clearly enough somehow, so maybe you should look at a different explanation at this site.

Moreover, if you look at the majority of the actual lawsuits filed under Title IX, you’ll find that they have nothing to do with attempts to mandate “equality of participation.” Rather, they are responses to disproportionate funding cuts for women’s teams, or to inequities in scholarship aid to male and female athletes, or to women’s teams getting inferior equipment or facilities or staff compensation. In other words, what Title IX means in practice is that coeducational institutions can no longer get away with skimping on women’s athletics. I think that’s a good thing.

sqweels: But I still want to know why sports are figures [? figured?] separately from other EC activities.

Figured by whom? As I noted, the legislation itself only requires that “No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid.” No distinction is made between sports and other activities.

As for the reason most Title IX lawsuits about gender discrimination concern sports, as I said, sports are the only major activity where the two sexes are kept separate. All other “educational programs or activities”—classes, clubs, committees, etc.—are AFAIK officially accessible to males and females equally.

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College sports are different than other college student activities simply because college sports in some situations grosses huge amounts of money. It takes money to make money though, so some amount of that money has to get re-invested, in the form of athletic scholarships and facilities costs, to keep the revenue flowing in. Money changes a lot of things, as you probably know.

This revenue is from customers not necessarily affiliated with the school, except to the extent they buy tickets to the games, buy shirts with the school logo on it, and watch television when the school’s game is on. In case you haven’t noticed, the school’s other extracurricular activities don’t have that same financial impact. The other activities - like the drama club, Latin department and the men’s gymnastics team - cost more money to operate than they take in.

That’s not to say that non-revenue generating activities - like the Latin Department - are not worthwhile in and of themselves to the participants because certainly they are, its just that there’s no outside constituency supporting them or as we’re talking about here, no Federal statute mandating that they exist.

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Before kimstu gets hoarse from repeating herself, one of the three criteria is:

Part Three: Effectively Accommodating Interests and Abilities. This part of the test is satisfied when an institution is meeting the interests and abilities of its female students even where there are disproportionately fewer females than males participating in sports.

Which can clearly be met by opening the registration for shop class on a first come first served basis with no stipulation for gender. (Or whatever system the university uses to decide who gets to register first, as long as that’s not based on gender).

Sports is a tougher egg, as sqweels points out. But the important word is participation. Open registration for a class is sufficient to have participation reflect interest levels. Open tryouts for the basketball team, on the other hand, almost guarantee disproportionate participation. The focus on participation is what makes application of Title IX to sports look slightly different from some other activities.

If a school can show that it encourages women’s athletics with the same effort that it encourages men’s athletics, but often has empty roster spots in women’s sports, it should be safe from Title IX lawsuits for having met the interest level. (Individual lawsuits may vary, depending on the jury)

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Because the people who wrote Title IX were feminists who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the men.

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december you’re looking at it the wrong way. Any class/ program will likely have more persons interested in it than spaces available (this is/has been always true of collegiate atheletics - tryouts are held, people are cut from the team etc.). So, there will always be students who expressed an interest and were not able to participate.

Of course, in years prior to TItle IX, in addition to the many men who were not able to participate, nearly all of the women weren’t able to either. How is that defensible?

56

Sigh. december, why don’t you just come right out and say that you like believing that Title IX demands that educational institutions be unfair to men and screw up their programs, and you have no intention of letting logic, reason, or facts convince you otherwise? It would save the rest of us a lot of time and effort.

(BTW, I’m sure that former US Senator Birch Bayh, one of the sponsors of Title IX in the Educational Amendments of 1972, would be quite surprised to learn that he was a “feminist who didn’t give a rat’s ass about men.” :rolleyes: )

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**
CITE **

and give back all of the accolades you’ve received for remaining polite. :mad:

58

**“Clearly” eh? The requirement can clearly be met when some government administrator agrees that it’s met. Who knows what legal understanding or what agenda the administor has? It’s a lot safer to just cut back on men’s athletics. That’s why 3.4 men’s slots have been eliminated for every 1 women’s slot created. You can argue with my logic, but the results of Title IX speak for themselves.

True enough, but who wants a lawsuit? Most college administrators would rather reduce men’s sports, than risk a lawsuit, with its unpleasantness and bad publicity. Furthermorem, when a school is dealing with lawsuits, there’s that much less energy to work for the good of their students.

wring How we know that the writers of Title IX didn’t give a rat’s ass about men is that Title IX did nothing for men. It equalized sports, an area where women got less than men, but ignored other areas, where men got less than women.

In fact, Title IX was based on envy against men. It doesn’t require that women receive any mnimum amount of sports – only that men can’t get more. This requirement has been most frequently met by reducing the sports available to men.

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sorry wrong answer. YOu made an assertion, prove it.

not w/more of your ‘assumptions’. facts please or retract the statement as unsupportable.

60

Also, look at the reaction of the drafters now that Title IX has been shown to deprive men of athletics 3.4 times as much as it helped women (which should have been predictable.)

Are they recommending a modification because Title IX harmed male students? Of course not. They simply don’t give a you-know-what.