   On Thursday March 3 a crowd eagerly gathered in Gannet Auditorium to hear Nancy Hogshead-Makar discuss how Title IX has changed high school and collegiate sports as well as what it means for both men and women in the future. In addition to being a three time Olympic gold medalist swimmer, Ms. Hogshead-Makar is also a Professor of Law at the Florida Coastal School of Law, the Senior Director of Advocacy for the Women’s Sports Foundation and one of the nation’s leading experts on Title IX legislation. For those of you who don’t know, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 states that “no person in the United States shall on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” It has no direct correlation to high school or collegiate sports, yet most people associate Title IX with this realm. So now you might be wondering why you should care about Title IX and how it affects your life?
   Well whether or not you’re a sports fan and believe sports are important, there’s something you need to consider: sports are the only realm of society that are formerly sex segregated. Think about it, where else is it permissible to categorize people based on their gender? Title IX is critical for women because it has changed people’s perceptions about what women are capable of. In 1972 before Title IX there were almost no women participating in high school or collegiate athletics. After Title IX was passed, the number skyrocketed. In a conversation she had with my American Studies class the morning of the lecture, Ms. Hogshead-Makar cited the work of Betsey Stevenson, an economist at Wharton. Stevenson found that women who participated in sports were more likely to obtain higher education, make more money, and hold more untraditional jobs.
   That being said, women still lag behind men in every measurable criteria. The national participation of women in sports is roughly 42%. Every year high school boys have 1.3 million more sports opportunities than girls. Women also receive $130 million less in sports scholarship at a time when sports scholarships are the largest forms of academic scholarships currently offered. Studies show that kids who participate in high school athletics get more out of their education and go on to earn higher wages. Think about how this is affecting our nation’s women. Studies show women who participated in high school sports have a 40% reduced chance of breast cancer than those who did not. Additionally, the chance of pregnancy for girls aged 15-20 is 11-14%; however, the chance is only 1% for female athletes in the same age bracket. Thus, sports do have a profound affect on young women.
   However, there is not only unmet sport demand for women. Men’s sports are suffering as well. At the big Division I (DI) FBS schools the percentage of students participating in athletics is shrinking. This is because Title IX can be met in one of three ways: proportionality, history of improvement, or interest and ability. Proportionality is pretty self-explanatory. At Skidmore 60% of athletes should be female because that reflects our gender ratio. History of improvement means that a school needs to be able to prove they have been working on trying to correct their athletics program so that both men and women have equal athletic opportunities. And this is strange because as Hogshead-Makar pointed out that there is no other area of Civil Rights legislation where this would be a valid argument. The third way, interest and ability, basically means that if there is no unmet demand, then the school has nothing to fix. At the DI FBS schools, so few students participate in athletics because this way the school is able to meet Title IX based on proportionality. If fewer students participate, the school does not need to spend additional money expanding its athletic program and instead can spend that money on their star athletes. To give you an idea of how much money these schools spend annually, the University of Texas spends a quarter of a million dollars on each top athletes (so football players mostly) per year. Yes, you read that correctly, a quarter of a million per athlete. Sixty percent of DI athletic funds go towards football, which means less profitable male sports are suffering. The unmet demand for both men and women’s sports is huge as demonstrated by the plethora of club sports.
   Yet despite the importance of Title IX, it is rarely enforced. Although Nancy Hogshead-Makar deals with Title IX lawsuits every day, she mentioned in her lecture that even she is surprised these types of cases are still being filed. As a nation we have come so far, yet gender inequality still prevails. Perhaps one day Title IX will no longer be an issue, but for now we have Nancy Hogshead-Makar to defend both men and women’s rights to equal opportunity.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Skidmore chapter.