How did today’s talented female athletes rise to the top of their sport? Athletes like soccer’s Megan Rapinoe and Brandi Chastain. Basketball’s Maya Moore and Sue Bird. Gymnastics’ Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas. How did they attain their Olympic dreams and garner praise the world over?
These women are household names today because of Title IX (“Title 9”). This groundbreaking 1972 civil rights law created a path for women to train and play at the college level and ultimately compete as Olympic athletes.
This year, our nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the law that ushered in a new era of gender parity for women. Although no one realized it at the time, its biggest impact was in the arena of sports.
Before 1972, girls who wanted to participate in sports found few opportunities and faced entrenched societal attitudes that limited women’s athletic dreams. When they tried to break through the barriers, they were told they were unacceptable as athletes. In the 1960s, for example, one 10-year-old baseball player who later become an gold-medal-winning Olympic athlete was ecstatic when a Little League coach invited her to play on his all-boy team. The catch? She had to cut her hair and call herself Bob.
But in 1972, that all changed with a brief piece of legislation that went almost unnoticed at the time. Rep. Patsy Mink (D-HI) pushed through a gender-parity law that leveled the playing field for female athletes. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school or other education program that received federal funds.
Suddenly, women had to be offered the same athletic opportunity that men had. And schools had a long way to go! In 1971, the year before Title IX, fewer than 300,000 high school girls competed in sports, while only 30,000 women nationwide competed in intercollegiate athletics.*
That same year, women’s sports received only 2 percent of athletic budgets. Athletic scholarships were offered only to male athletes.** When women’s sports were offered, female coaches were paid half the salary of male coaches. Women’s teams held bake sales and sold candy bars to fund their sports. They practiced early in the morning or late at night, when the men’s teams weren’t using the facilities. They got male athletes’ cast-off uniforms when the men got new ones.
The lack of opportunity cut short women’s athletic careers. National and international competitions didn’t exist, and the dream of becoming an Olympic athlete was attainable only in a few individual sports like gymnastics, golf and tennis. Team sports like basketball, softball and soccer weren’t on the Olympic roster.
Title IX opened up a path to the Olympics for women. Programs for team sports cropped up at all levels of play. Colleges began offering scholarships to female student-athletes and hired female coaches at the same level of achievement as male coaches. Women’s team sports were added to the Olympic program.
Throughout the year, I’ll be posting about Title IX, its history and its impact on women’s athletics. The outcome of the legislation only became fully realized a generation later, when the first wave of expertly trained female athletes burst onto the scene at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games. Of the 555 American athletes who participated that year, 292 were women. Female athletes dominated women’s team sports, taking home 19 gold medals, 10 silver and 10 bronze. That year’s Olympics came to be known as the “Title IX Olympics.”
Although I was in school in the early Title IX years, I knew absolutely nothing about the law. I was a drama and music kid who dreaded gym class. But now, I can’t get enough of the stories of gender discrimination and of fighting back and of victory. I can’t wait to share them with you!
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* “High School Sports Participation,” chart from 45 Years of Title IX: The Status of Women in Intercollegiate Sports (Indianapolis, IN: NCAA, 2017), p.16.
** “Title IX and Athletics: Proven Benefits, Unfounded Objections,” report on the 40th anniversary of Title IX (the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, 2012), p. 8.