Title IX actually has another name these days. In 2002, the law was renamed The Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. And in 2014, forty-two years after Title IX was signed into law, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rep. Mink the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contributions to gender equality.
“Every girl in Little League, every woman playing college sports, and every parent, including Michelle and myself, who watches their daughter on a field or in the classroom, is forever grateful to the late Patsy Takemoto Mink,” President Obama said. “Patsy was a passionate advocate for opportunity and equality and realizing the full promise of the American Dream.”*
Wait… what? Why did Rep. Mink get all the glory? What happened to Rep. Edith Green? Wasn’t Title IX equally her triumph? Why isn’t her name on the legislation? Given her advocacy for education, you’d think it would be. But when Green died in 1987, her New York Times obituary didn’t even mention Title IX.
Here’s what happened.
Who wins the bread?
As a new member of the House in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Rep. Green (D-OR) began her tenure concerned about educational inequality. She had once attended a workshop for high school administrators who were alarmed about their schools’ dropout rates. One school superintendent boasted that because of a program he had instigated, many more boys were finishing high school in his district. Rep. Green thought she heard wrong.
“Did you choose your words carefully?” she asked him. “Was there not a need to have classes for disadvantaged girls?”**
No, the superintendent said, only boys need a good education. After all, they’re going to be the breadwinners, he told her. Yet statistics at the time showed that eight out of 10 girls would be employed at some time in their lives. Without an education, they’d be at a serious disadvantage for finding jobs and for competing for the best-paying jobs.
Rep. Green wanted to snuff out the superintendent’s way of thinking. First, in 1963, she muscled through the Equal Pay Act, legislation that mandated companies pay hourly workers doing similar jobs the same pay, regardless of whether they were men or women.
For years after that, Rep. Green worked to get Title IX drafted and on through the Senate. But as the bill neared the finish line, Rep. Green began to have second thoughts. Why?
The cost of conviction
Title IX was part of a larger education bill that later became known as the Education Amendments of 1972. Rep. Green had pushed hard for her part of the bill that would equalize gender opportunity for any schools or programs that accepted federal funds (Title IX).
What didn’t ring true to her were two other parts of the bill — financial aid and busing requirements. She believed the Senate version of the bill differed so significantly that these two mandates would be too expensive for schools to comply with.
In an all-night session of the committee that was ironing out differences between the House and Senate versions, Rep. Green fought relentlessly for her original version. But it was no use. The differences weren’t erased.
When the vote went down in the House, Rep. Green voted against her own bill.
“I now find myself in the most regrettable position of opposing the legislation I originally co-sponsored,” she said. “The bill is too costly and it makes promises it cannot keep.”***
And so, her colleague and co-sponsor, Rep. Patsy Mink, saw the bill through to passage, and that’s how she became the public face of Title IX.
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* “Remarks by the President at Presentation of the Medal of Freedom.” Press release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, November 24, 2104.
** Karen Blumenthal, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, The Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America (New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005), p. 23.
*** Let Me Play, p. 50.
Photo: President Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rep. Patsy Mink’s daughter, Wendy Mink.