Copyright 2002 The Washington Post


The Washington Post
June 22, 2002 Saturday
Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A19

LENGTH: 766 words

HEADLINE: As Title IX Hits 30

BYLINE: Ellen Goodman

BODY:


BOSTON -- Now that school is out, it's time to sit down, kids, for another of those wonderful lectures about the bad old days:

When we were your age, Ashley and Michael, boys were taught shop and girls were taught home economics.

When we were your age, Matthew and Brittany, the boys played varsity sports and girls were their cheerleaders.

When we were your age, Megan and Christopher, the boys ruled the ballparks, the girls held bake sales to pay for their own uniforms, and we walked four miles in the snow to school.

Okay, scratch the part about walking in the snow -- we just wanted to see if you were listening.

The reason for this lecture is the 30th anniversary of Title IX. On June 23, 1972, a law banning sex discrimination in all schools that received federal funds was signed by Richard Nixon. (He's a lecture for another day.)

The intention of the law was to level the playing field between men and women. Only in this case, it wasn't just a sports metaphor.

Title IX became most well known for its impact on sports. Before the law, there were only 32,000 women on intercollegiate teams. Today, there are 150,000. Before the law, there were 300,000 girls on competitive high school teams. Now there are 2.78 million. As a new report from the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) shows, girls are still second-class (or second-locker-room) citizens in a lot of places. But that's still a whole lot of soccer moms, lacrosse dads and basketball daughters.

Nevertheless, if the success of the law is most apparent in the sports arena, so is the opposing team. Right from the get-go, opponents of Title IX have disparaged the goal of equality in sports as (1) a feminist fantasy or (2) a radical plot to destroy football.

As a 30th anniversary gift, a group of college wrestlers and coaches has gone to court, blaming Title IX enforcement rules for squeezing out (their) male sports to make room for women. At the same time, their political fans are chanting "quotas, quotas" from the stands.

No one has yet labeled the Mia Hamms of the world "quota queens," but you get the idea.

The concept of a zero-sum game -- as girls' sports rise, boys' sports fall -- doesn't fit reality. Since the law was passed, the number of men's teams has gone up, not down. So has the number of men in intercollegiate play. More than 70 percent of the schools that added women's teams did it without cutting men's teams.

Title IX is simply not the cause of wrestling's decline. After all, every school has a right to decide how to allocate the sports budget. It's just easier to tackle -- if that's the right word -- women than, say, the football team.

Football? Did I say football, boys and girls? There is an unshakable belief that football pays the bills for more than huge salaries, titanium face masks and a mahogany-paneled coach's office. But whose football fantasies are we talking about when 58 percent of the big college teams don't even break even?

As for rigid rules, regulations and quotas, Title IX is one of the most lenient civil rights laws. In fact, one of the three ways for a school to stay within the law is to prove only that it is making progress. It gets a most-improved campus award and a pass.

Those who attack the law don't just say that the men who want to play sports are being cut out. They also insist that women who don't want to play are being corralled off the street to fill up the slots.

Colleges spend less money recruiting women, less money on their teams, less money on their scholarships. Then some of the same schools complain that they simply can't find enough girls to play.

"What's behind all these attacks," says Marcia Greenberger of the NWLC, "is the basic view that despite the increase in women's participation, despite the benefits for girls, despite the country's pride in women's teams, despite all the signs of how important teamwork and winning are for women, playing sports is still acting like boys." It's still male turf.

It's unlikely the wrestlers will win in court. Eight courts of appeal have rejected similar reasoning already. But the real threat is that the Bush administration will change the guidelines or relax enforcement. Neither the president nor his attorney general nor his party has been more than a half-hearted fan of Title IX.

Here's one last story, boys and girls. Once upon a time, when women were only 10 percent of the team players, opponents of Title IX argued that women just weren't as interested in sports. Now women are 42 percent, and they make the same argument.

Hmm. Maybe these are the bad old days.

LOAD-DATE: June 22, 2002