Learn More About Title IX

How did Title IX apply to collegiate athletics?

As a result of several lawsuits following the inception of Title IX, the courts established that, due to their relationship to federally funded universities, the proviso for Title IX applied to collegiate athletic departments, regardless of whether or not the department directly received financial assistance. Thus, athletic directors nationwide struggle with how to meet Title IX’s non-exclusion standards when the status quo at the time favored support for large men’s athletic departments, and little to no support for women.

What exactly does Title IX require?

Since Title IX called for gender equity without setting out clear standards by which to measure it, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) came out with a policy interpretation for intercollegiate sports in 1979. In order to be Title IX compliant, athletic programs had to meet a three-part standard:

1) Intercollegiate participation opportunities must be available to men and women in numbers proportionate to their enrollments in the institution.

2) The program must show a history and continuing practice of expansion responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

3) The interests and abilities of both genders must be accommodated for by the present program.

(The office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education disagreed with HEW’s interpretation, declaring that comparing the ratio of male to female athletic participants to the male and female enrollments was not a valid measure of equity. Instead, they advocated that institution must "meet the interests and abilities of women to the same degree as men." The Office of Civil Rights flip-flopped their position in 1996, going back to HEW’s ratio measure of compliance.)

Why was this such a controversial issue?

At the time Title XI was passed, intercollegiate athletics was overwhelmingly male. Thus, in order to bring about any sort of parity between male men’s and women’s athletic programs, athletic departments had to aggressively expand their women’s programs, a move that, under limited budgets, many feared would be at the expense of existing men’s programs. Indeed, in the late 70’s, in the midst of a national recession, the idea of having to suddenly add and support enough women’s sports programs to offset the athletic opportunities of 95 male football players was a seemingly insurmountable hurdle to many athletic directors. At the same time, there was considerable resistance among both male and female educators to raising the level of women’s college athletics, for fear it would bring about many of the same problems and scandals related to recruiting and competition that some men’s programs had suffered.

What were the immediate results of Title IX for Stanford?

The decision was made to merge the women’s and men’s athletic departments. This provided female athletes better access to practice facilities, better trained coaches, more office space, better travel budgets (in 1971-72, pre Title IX, the 5 women’s varsity sports: tennis, fencing, field hockey, basketball and swimming, received only $1600 in travel funds–total), and better equipment. Also, over the past 27 years, more sports have achieved varsity status for both women and men, currently balancing out to 17 women’s, 15 men’s and 1 coed.

How did Title IX affect scholarships at Stanford?

In 1975-76, Stanford offered its first scholarships to women. Nine scholarships were given to women that year, as opposed to 140 given to men. In the 1978-79 season, the first women’s basketball scholarships were awarded. That year there were 33 women’s athletic scholarships to the men’s 160. In 1999, 25 years later, 40% of all athletic scholarships went to women.