Hypocrisy: How Title IX Discriminates Based On Gender

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An Accidental Hypocrisy: How Title IX Discriminates Based On Gender In the year 1972 a law that was part of the education amendments to the U.S. constitution took place with the enactment of Title IX. This piece of legislation stated, “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 education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance” (United States Department of Labor, 1972). Originally the law was intended to equalize educational opportunities for women. Since Title IX was passed it has grown more complex because of several issues at universities concerning the interpretation of the law. Athletics, money…show more content…
Clearly the problem is that the law is not being enforced for its true and simple meaning. No person can be excluded from participation in a program receiving federal aid (United States Department of Labor, 1972). Much debate over title IX is about the first test in the three prongs of equality. The first test also attempts to finesse budgeting for facilities and scholarships. Overall money spent must be substantially proportional to the makeup of the student body (Darnell, 2009). One of the reasons this poses a problem is because of football. Every university in the nation on average gives out 90 full scholarships for football players every year (Suggs, 2005 p.188). There is not a single women’s sport that can come close to that number of scholarships. So the question becomes how do colleges keep the football team, which generates much needed income, while still providing an equal the number of women’s scholarships? Many colleges took the path of eliminating opportunities for men by cutting programs that are not high profile such as swimming, wrestling and gymnastics. Another university which faced the decision was James Madison University (JMU). On “September 29, 2006 JMU decided to eliminate seven men's sports and three women's sports in an attempt to bring the university's…show more content…
However if title IX is examined from the original perspective, a different (original view) can be seen. The law has no difficulties being enforced for academic opportunities because that is what it is worded for. This is established by the fact that 55% of all students in college are now women and in the year 1970 only 41% of students were women (National Center for Education Statistics). Furthermore the effect of title IX is seen in only ten years with the total female population nearly doubling from 3,537000 in 1970 to 6,223000 in 1980. This trend only continued to the current statistics we have today where more than eleven million women are enrolled in institutions of higher education and only eight million men are enrolled at higher education institutions. (National Center for Education Statistics). When viewed in this manner women have essentially become the overrepresented sex now so to speak and Title IX has reached its goal when concerning academics. So why the disagreement over athletics? Because Title IX has not yet evolved to encompass what the real situation is for athletics. It is an overriding fact that men generally have more interest in athletics than women and the demographics alone cannot be the deciding factor for compliance. Biased
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