HEADLINE: Critics' scare tactics
obscure Title IX's advances
BODY: Today's debate: Equal opportunities
Our view: False claims of mandatory quotas ignore other compliance
options.
In 1972 women were routinely discriminated
against in college admissions -- and barred altogether from some of the best
schools. Medical and law schools imposed quotas to keep women out of classes.
Outside of departments such as home economics and nursing, few professors were
female.
Thanks to a landmark
anti-discrimination law enacted 30 years ago Sunday, women now outnumber men in
higher education. Even enrollment in medicine and law is nearly 50-50. Female
professors are no longer an oddity.
Yet a
narrow area of the law's coverage, athletics, has become a battlefield for
misinformed fans and those seeking to undermine federal enforcement of
equal opportunity. They've created a myth that the law, known as Title IX, discriminates against men. The truth: If men are
suffering, it's because of a school's choices, not the law.
Before Title IX, no NCAA women's sports programs existed.
On many campuses women could compete only at the intramural or club level, with
little or no financial support. In high schools, just one of every 14 varsity
athletes were female.
Today, females are
42% of all competitive athletes at the college and high school levels. That
should be considered at least a qualified success story, but it's not.
Even some of the nation's best-known
institutions have had to be dragged into accommodating women's sports through
lawsuits and threats of sanctions. In an era of budget squeezes, women's sports
are being blamed for limits placed on some men's teams and the abandonment of
others such as wrestling, gymnastics or track.
Aggrieved athletes and their supporters, including ideologues with
other agendas, spread the falsehood that universities are required to enact a
quota system that forces schools to field equal numbers of male and female
athletes regardless of whether women want them.
The argument resonates with a public that's deeply divided over quotas.
But critics are telling only one-third of the story. Yes, colleges can avoid
losing federal aid by ensuring that the number of male and female athletes is
proportional to enrollment figures. But critics don't advertise the two other
ways schools can satisfy the law:
* Show a
history of regularly adding women's competitive sports.
* Demonstrate that the athletic interests and abilities of
women on campus are satisfactorily accommodated.
Monmouth University in New Jersey increased opportunities for women and
added football -- the biggest and costliest sport on any campus -- while
retaining other men's sports. Ball State University in Indiana spent the money
to add more women's sports without eliminating men's teams.
After 30 years, any school that has been doing the right
thing should easily be in compliance without worrying about strict quotas or
cheap and dirty fixes that hurt men's sports. Only the athletic scofflaws are
reduced to nose counting because they haven't added women's sports regularly and
can't show that they're meeting the demands of their female students.
Title IX is a qualified success because it
requires basic fairness for all. The dubious excuses being made for
equal-opportunity backsliders are no reason to abandon enforcement of the
law.
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC, B/W, Marcy
E. Mullins, USA TODAY, Source: National Coalition for Women and Girls in
Education (BAR GRAPH)
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