Kolby Kanetake
Bed Paudyal
ENG 100
Informative Essay (1st Draft)
22 Oct. 2012
Title IX: Win or Loss?
Discrimination has been an immense issue in the past and still is to this day. Often times
discrimination is happening without people even realizing. It’s an extremely frightening thought
that discrimination has become just a daily part of life. There were many forms of
discrimination taking place all over. One example is that until the early 1970’s women did not
even have the opportunity to play high school and collegiate sports, while men had countless
numbers of opportunities for participation in sports. There needed to be a change, discrimination
is unethical and unjust. In 1972 Patsy Mink introduced the Educational Amendments, greatly
known as Title IX. Title IX has impacted women and men’s sports tremendously in both
positive and negative ways by creating many opportunities for women as well as men and by
giving fewer scholarships to men and even cutting their programs.
Patsy Mink was the first Asian American and woman of color to serve on the United
States Congress. She heavily focused on making change in gender discrimination and racism.
Mink was a native Hawaiian and played basketball for Maui High School; however, she was
never allowed to play full court because it was considered too arduous for girls. Following her
graduation from the University of Hawaii, she applied to medical school but was rejected twelve
times due to what she thought was gender discrimination. In 1971, she worked closely with
Edith Green, a congresswoman from Oregon, to help women pursue their goals and dreams
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without gender discrimination. Mink continued to work hard with Green and other gender equity
advocates trying to pass Title IX. It was a long and hard fought battle but nevertheless, they won
when congress passed a final version of the bill and President Nixon signed it into law on June
23rd, 1972. She passed one of the most important acts in gender equity and the act was renamed
to the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, in result of her death in 2002 (Chan).
Title IX is a portion of the Educational Amendments of 1972 and 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 education program or activity receiving
federal financial assistance.” Since it was enacted, it has made an enormous impact on the
opportunity for women to participate in athletics mostly at the high school and collegiate level.
For instance, in 1981 the average number of women competing in college athletics was 98.7 per
institution. Then in 2003 the average numbered increased immensely by nearly 58% to 155.5
women competing in college athletics for each institution (“Positive Effects of Title IX”).
Another eye-catching number is that before Title IX was passed, women were 7% of the students
participating in high school sports, but in 2001 that percentage increased to 41%. An article
from Feminist.org states “In raw numbers it went from 300,000 participating women to 2.7
million.” That’s a gain of over 800 percent! (“Gender Equity in Athletics and Sports”)
Title IX also has other positive impacts on the women’s side of athletics competition.
The act has assisted in increasing the revenue that institutions bring in such as the Sun Belt
conference in 2002, which showed a 92% increase in net profits from women’s sporting events.
Not only has it impacted high school and collegiate women’s sports but it has also impacted
professional women’s sports such as U.S. Olympic soccer and basketball teams. Prior to the
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1996 summer Olympics, Americans would only get to cheer on women’s gymnastics, now fans
get to watch more diverse sports and even got to witness The U.S. women’s soccer,
softball, and basketball teams earn a gold medal! Title IX even impacted women athletes outside
of athletics in that it gave them leadership and teamwork skills that they could take advantage of
in the work field. Proof of this is that 80% of female executives in 500 companies have a
background in sports. It is evident that Title IX has had a colossal impact for women in athletics
and even in everyday life (“Positive Effects of Title IX”).
It is evident that Title IX is an excellent act and has made great contributions to women’s
athletics; however, it also brings up huge controversy. Many view Title IX as unconstitutional
and nearly discriminatory towards men’s athletics. Because the act puts great emphasis on the
equal amount of money institutions must spend on male and female programs, institutions have
no choice but to cut several men’s programs to meet their budgets. A specific example of a
victim of Title IX is men’s wrestling programs. “Over the past twenty years, the number of
college wrestling programs has decreased from over 600 to 225,” states Trevor Marca in an
article on Yahoo voices. Even programs that have had great success over the years have been
getting cut just for institutions to stay compliant with Title IX. The University of Miami was
forced to cut its men’s swimming and diving teams which have produced a astounding number
of 26 Olympians!
Many people are probably wondering how Title IX can be causing so much damage to
these men’s programs. The reason is that the act did not factor in the number of football players
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on its roster and the fact that the football team is given 85 full scholarships. Because equal
amount of money must be spent on men and women’s programs and there is no women’s
football team, the rest of the men’s programs suffer because the institution is forced to even out
the money given to other programs. This results in teams decreasing sizes of rosters, or even
getting cut entirely. The affects don’t just stop at opportunities for male college athletes but
even the opportunities for male high school prospects. Many talented athletes who could make
huge contributions to a team or program are not even being looked at because there is simply not
enough room for them. These athletes are not even given a chance to prove themselves. How
constitutional is that? (Marca). An indication of this is the large gap in scholarships in sports
such as volleyball and gymnastics. Men’s volleyball and gymnastics have 4.5 and 6.3
scholarships respectively, while women’s volleyball and gymnastics have 12 scholarships each
(“Scholarships by Sport”).
The passing of Title IX has made history and will always be remembered as one of the
greatest acts in gender equity. Women now have numerous amounts of opportunities
everywhere to partake in athletics at all levels. It has given them the chances they deserve to
prove that if they work hard and set goals for themselves they can be just as successful in
athletics as men. Although the act gave such a boost for women it seems to have taken a turn for
the worse for the men. This initiative has made male athletes feel discriminated against. It was
meant for gender equity yet males are suffering, which isn’t fair and hopefully a solution can be
found soon. Title IX has impacted women’s and men’s sports tremendously in both positive and
negative ways; however, it is safe to conclude that Title IX has made a lot more positive effects
on women’s athletics than it has negative in men’s.
Works Cited
Chan, Kristina. "Patsy Mink." Women's Sports Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/home/she-network/education/patsy-mink>.
"Gender Equality in Athletics and Sports." Feminist Majority Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 22
Oct. 2012. <http://www.feminist.org/sports/titleIXfactsheet.asp>
Marca, Trevor. "Title IX and Its Negative Impact on Male Collegiate Sports in the United
States." Yahoo! Voices. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012. <http://voices.yahoo.com/title-ixits-negative-impact-male-collegiate- 7167712.html?cat=9>.
"Scholarships By Sport." High School Baseball Web. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.hsbaseballweb.com/scholarships_by_sport.htm>.
"Positive Effects of Title IX." University of Xavier Files Website. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
<http://site.xavier.edu/paulusdj/Positive%20Effects%20of%20Title%20IX.html>.