by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
Sunday’s edition of the New York Times Magazine featured an extensive piece on the sports injuries, particularly knee injuries, that many girls have experienced and the need for injury-prevention training.
For more, check out Sudha Setty’s excellent post on the article over at Title IX Blog.
by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
A new report by the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport reveals how far we still have to go to help girls become and stay physically active. The health and well-being of future generations of girls depends on it.
The report shows that girls’ participation in all types of physical activities consistently lags behind that of boys. While girls’ participation in organized sports is at a record high, we know that they still receive only 41 percent of the opportunities to play high school sports and do not receive equal benefits when they do play. And according to the report, girls’ participation outside of organized sports is declining, especially for black girls. One-third of girls are barely meeting minimum physical activity standards and another third are completely sedentary.
Perhaps what is most troubling, though, is that despite the increase in the number of amazing female role models, gender stereotypes and norms persist in limiting girls’ participation in sports and physical activity. Research shows that boys’ popularity depends directly on their physical ability but girls’ participation in sports is somehow at odds with their femininity. The media doesn’t help, with its excessive focus on female athletes’ appearance and sexuality. Girls, who are already struggling with their self-esteem and body image, get the message loud and clear that their outward appearance is what is really important, instead of the multitude of physical and mental health benefits that physical activity provides. And overweight and obese girls face particularly harsh discrimination and ridicule, which is awful and only compounds the problem.
We must do something to improve this dire situation, and the report suggests a requirement for daily, quality K-12 physical education in schools, among other policy recommendations. Greater enforcement of Title IX is also sorely needed and would help encourage more girls to play school-sponsored sports. Finally, leading by example can go a long way towards erasing the gender stereotypes that limit such behavior. So let’s all get moving!
by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
Two recent pieces in school newspapers bemoaning Title IX caught my eye because of the hostility towards women and stereotypical views that they reflect. In “The Tyranny of Title IX,” Greg Yatarola states that boys and society at large are more interested in boys’ sports, and that athletic scholarships are justifiably awarded to football players because they come from families that might otherwise struggle to afford college (whereas female athletes never do). And in “Inequality Driven From Equality,” Alex Rubin generously concedes that women’s sports should exist in college but that they shouldn’t be treated equally to say, football, because they don’t generate as much money and are not as popular. With so many offensive statements to address, it’s hard to know where to begin.
Let’s start with the authors’ ignorance of what Title IX actually requires, which is not statistical proportionality. Title IX gives schools three independent ways to show that they are providing equal participation opportunities to male and female students. Proportionality is one way and simply measures whether schools are allocating participation opportunities in a nondiscriminatory manner. The other two ways allow a school to be in compliance even if it is not providing female students with opportunities proportional to their enrollment. And evidence shows that less than one-third of schools choose to comply by meeting statistical proportionality.
by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
The women of Texas A&M’s basketball team, who advanced to the Elite Eight this past weekend, are a Title IX success story. But like any story, there is a history. As the New York Times reported, Texas A&M did not always support its female students, let alone its female athletes. Women had to sue to be admitted to this formerly all-male military institution, and even after they were allowed to join the Corps of Cadets, they faced severe sexual harassment. One student who faced such harassment in the late 1970s filed a successful lawsuit against the university demanding equal treatment, and when she graduated in 1980, the president of the university refused to shake her hand.
While we'd like to think otherwise, discrimination against women in sports and in the military persists today, despite the advances we have seen. Interestingly, there has always been a connection between sport and war, with the ancient Olympics being seen as a way of preparing men for battle. Of course, women were considered too delicate to fight wars and hence to play sports. Fortunately, we have moved beyond such extreme barriers, but we are not yet at a point where we can pronounce discrimination against women ancient history.
by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
Three years ago today, effectively in the dark of night, the U.S. Department of Education weakened Title IX’s requirement that schools provide women and girls with equal opportunities to play sports. Why would the agency deal such a blow to the very law it is charged with enforcing? Understanding that requires us to go back to 2002, when the Department established, with a name of which George Orwell would have been proud, a “Commission on Opportunity in Athletics” in response to claims that Title IX was hurting men’s teams. Its purpose was to determine whether current standards for measuring equal participation opportunities should be revised, and - lo and behold – it made recommendations for extensive changes that would have gutted the law. But after witnessing a massive outcry in defense of the law, the Department decided not to change any of the standards (oh, and there was that pesky issue of an upcoming election and polls showing how popular Title IX is) and instead promised to enforce the law.
But this promise was short-lived. On March 17, 2005, without any notice or opportunity for public input, the Department issued an “Additional Clarification” of the Title IX participation requirements and changed the standards that had been on the books for decades. The Clarification allows schools to show that they are fully meeting their female students’ interests in sports—one avenue for compliance—simply by sending an email survey to all female students and then claiming that a failure to respond indicates a lack of interest in playing sports. Prior standards made clear that schools had to look at other indicators of interest – such as participation rates in high schools in the relevant area – in order to demonstrate compliance.
by Jessica Lauredan, Outreach Intern
National Women’s Law Center
This post is part of a weekly series profiling our blog authors.
Neena Chaudhry works to enforce and protect Title IX as a Senior Counsel for Education and Employment at NWLC.
Q. Some argue that Title IX ignores fundamental differences between men and women and will never succeed in fully leveling the playing field. What do you say to these claims?
Neena: These are precisely the kind of stereotypes that Title IX was enacted to combat. To say that boys are more interested in sports or that girls don’t like math is to limit their educational opportunities based on sex. In addition to being legally impermissible, these arguments are factually incorrect. For example, since Title IX was enacted 35 years ago, women’s participation in sports has increased exponentially. Yet each time women reached a new level of participation, opponents of the law claimed it was enough and schools should not add more opportunities for women because they weren’t interested. And each time, these critics were proven wrong as women’s participation continued to increase.
by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
For the first time in 35 years, girls’ basketball teams in Michigan get to participate in this thrilling time of year for basketball players and fans known as March Madness. Until this season, the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) scheduled girls’ basketball in the nontraditional fall season while they scheduled boys’ teams in the traditional winter season. The winter, of course, is when high schools and colleges across the country play basketball, culminating in March tournaments.
Unfortunately, it took a decade-long legal battle by Communities for Equity and multiple court decisions declaring the scheduling of girls’ sports discriminatory to force MHSAA to do the right thing. And the changes will not benefit the countless numbers of girls who, prior to this year, suffered limited opportunities to be recruited for college teams, receive athletic scholarships, play club basketball, and receive national recognition, all of which are geared around the traditional winter season. But future generations of girls will receive the opportunities they deserve, and hopefully they will know that they matter just as much as the boys.
The girls of Michigan have much to celebrate this March.
by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center
As Title IX Blog pointed out the other day, a complaint against the West Perry School District in Pennsylvania that the girls’ softball field is inferior to the boys’ baseball field is unfortunately nothing new. It is but one obvious manifestation of the second-class treatment that girls and women today still receive in high school and college athletics programs.
A report we released last June on the 35th anniversary of Title IX shows just how far we still have to go to fulfill the law’s promise. The report analyzes the athletics complaints filed with, and compliance reviews conducted by, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) over the five year period between 2001 and 2006. During that period, 416 athletics complaints were filed with OCR, over 90 percent of which claimed discrimination against females. About 30 percent of the allegations made on behalf of girls challenged schools’ failure to provide enough opportunities for girls and women to play sports, and about 60 percent challenged inequitable treatment of girls’ and women’s teams.
Continue reading "Softball Fields – The Canary in the Mine" »
by Neena Chaudhry
Thirty five years after Title IX was passed, women’s participation in college sports still lags far behind men’s, and contrary to what some Title IX opponents would have you believe, men’s overall participation has not suffered but rather has continued to increase. These are two of the key findings of a comprehensive study of colleges over the past 10 years released yesterday by the Women’s Sports Foundation.
The study finds that even though women are close to 55% of the undergraduate students at colleges, they receive only about 41% of the opportunities to play sports. In addition, while the number of women’s teams grew substantially in the late 1990s, this growth slowed quite a bit in the early 2000s, with only about one quarter of schools adding a women’s team between 2001 and 2005, as compared to 66% of schools adding a women’s team between 1995 and 2001.
Men’s overall participation has also increased: between 2001 and 2005, male participation grew by about 10,000 athletes, roughly the same amount as female participation grew during this time (11,000 athletes). Some men’s sports experienced substantial declines in participation (volleyball, tennis, wrestling), as did some women’s sports, but other men’s sports grew by much larger amounts (football, baseball, lacrosse and soccer).
So what’s the bottom line?
by Neena Chaudhry
The WNBA began its 11th season this past weekend, which should delight die-hard basketball fans who can now watch the sport virtually all year long. The league features amazing female athletes such as Deanna Nolan of the defending WNBA Champion Detroit Shock and Diana Taurasi of the Phoenix Mercury, affordable family entertainment, and players who take pride in being role models for girls. Yet the media seems determined to focus on dwindling attendance, the folding of a few teams, and the fact that the league is not making a profit.
What many may not know, however, or choose not to focus on, is the fact that the NBA, which began in the 1946-47 season, drew fewer than 4,000 fans a game in its 10th season. Even in 1984-85, Michael Jordan's rookie season, the NBA only averaged about 11,000 fans a game. There were also many fewer teams back then and therefore much less competition for fans and media attention. Comparatively, the inaugural game of the WNBA in 1997 drew over 11,000 fans.
What’s more, everyone knows that the name of the game in marketing is exposure, yet women’s sports receive on average less than 8% of print and 6.3% of television coverage. Adding insult to injury, the number of WNBA games being televised has been steadily declining over the past five years, from 31 games in 2001 to only 21 this year.
While the response by some may be that people are not as interested in women’s sports, the classic chicken and egg situation comes to mind. In addition, we cannot discount the role of sexism, as demonstrated by a survey of 285 newspapers, which found that about one-quarter of editors agreed with the statement “Women are naturally less athletic than are men.” Women’s teams should be promoted to the same extent men’s teams are, and the media should provide equal coverage for women’s sports. Only then does a Deanna Nolan or Diana Taurasi have a fighting chance of becoming a household name like Michael Jordan.
