Reconsidering the Status of Title IX
Critics say the mandate shortchanges some men’s teams, while proponents argue women’s sports still remain underfunded.
By Ben Hammer
Tina Sloan-Green exemplifies the kind of far-reaching effects college athletics can have on a person’s life. The Temple University education professor and former women’s lacrosse coach was first exposed to field hockey while attending a Philadelphia magnet school. Sloan-Green went on to play at Westchester College, where she also played lacrosse. After college, she traveled abroad for two years as a U.S. national team member, an experience that led to a long college lacrosse coaching career and a life in academia.
“It changed my life,” Sloan-Green says. “I never would have had the opportunity to be a professor if I hadn’t gone out for a non-traditional sport like lacrosse.” After taking an interest in field hockey, she says she raised her grades, met teachers and made more friends and began to look forward to college.
Sloan-Green’s is the type of story Title IX proponents love to cite. Introduced in 1972, Title IX calls for a proportional number of opportunities for women in college athletics, a mandate that created women’s scholarships and programs that never existed before. Thirty years later, the results can be seen in the vigorous play of women’s high-school teams across the country and the popularity of women’s professional basketball and soccer leagues.
In recent months, however, a politically charged debate about Title IX has reached the executive branch, with interest groups agreeing only that the program is about much more than women’s athletics. Now, the U.S. Department of Education is considering changes to Title IX that many say would result in fewer opportunities for women to play college sports.
Women’s sports provide another way to access college and pay for tuition with scholarships and increased aid. But while much progress has been made, advocates say women still lag behind men in athletics and that the current challenges threaten to roll back the clock on women’s sports. Moreover, Title IX has done far less for minority women than Whites, statistics show, and experts and sports professionals agree.
