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The Title IX 100

Last year at this time, I made a New Year’s resolution. I vowed to write about Title IX this entire year, the 50th anniversary of the gender equality law. And I kept my resolution! Here it is, one year and one hundred blog posts later. Yay me!

You can browse through the posts here at my website. In total, the 100 posts add up to around 70,000 words — about the length of a book!

I started last January simply, with the wording of Title IX. “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.”

Before I knew it, I was drawn into the drama of this law that I once knew nothing about. It has its humorous moments and its heartbreaking moments. It changed a centuries-old male-centric world while remaining relevant to the current day. In short, it was groundbreaking.

Words become deeds

Until you have the time to read my fractured 100-chapter book, today I’ll share with you in brief bullet points what I learned about the landmark 1972 law this year.

So, hold onto your seats. Here we go!

* It took the eagle eye of one woman — Bernice Sandler — to spot how an existing law could be turned into a gender equality law.

* We needed Title IX! The two authors of the law, Rep. Edith Green and Rep. Patsy Mink, had both been excluded from the education and jobs they wanted.

* Title IX was part of sweeping changes in the way Americans thought about women, their place in society and what they could accomplish.

* But a lot was happening in 1972, so the law passed with a whisper instead of a bang.

* At first, no one recognized the bill’s potential to revolutionize the sports world.

* But the athletic fields needed a revolution! Women were excluded there just as in educational programs.

* Once people did make the Title IX sports connection, men didn’t like it. They tried to take the teeth out of the law.

* Women got creative (and sometimes naked) to force entities to comply with the law.

* Title IX’s enemies weren’t always men. And its defenders weren’t always women.

* Most often, progress came — and still comes — through lawsuits.

* Almost all lawsuits are settled out of court. But one high-profile lawsuit might finally go the distance.

* Title IX claims some astonishing victories. Equal pay in some professional women’s sports is one of them.

* Title IX paved the way to the Olympics for women. In 1976, the first women’s basketball team went to the Olympics, and when women dominated team sports in the 1996 Olympics, it became known as the Title IX Olympics.

* It opened a path for athletic careers off the playing field, too. Coaching , broadcasting and sports management, to name just a few.

* Women found success in whatever field they chose because of their athletic experience.

* Title IX’s reach is constantly expanding. It addresses athletic scholarships, sexual harassment, age discrimination, gender issues, COVID-19, school lunches, fraternity hazing, even hair.

* The success stories stemming from Title IX are thrilling! The stories of women “firsts” are inspiring.

* But there’s still more work to be done. Title IX gets a failing grade in many realms. It’ll take a lot more work on our part to reach Title IX’s goal of parity.

It got personal

For me, personally, writing about Title IX taught me a lot about women’s history. I knew vaguely that women had always been discriminated against — I’d written a book about the woman suffrage movement — but I had no idea of the extent of society’s damning of women.

But to be more specific, I learned about my own ignorance of the pervasive societal view of women. So often, when I interviewed women for the blog, they shared instances of blatant discrimination. Privately, I was thinking that in my own life, I hadn’t suffered from similar dismissals of women’s personhood. But I had!

I grew up in a church ruled by men who silence women from public worship, tell them what to wear and box them in to child care and meal preparation. I chose the career of journalism, which was opening up to women in the newsroom but still excluding them from management positions. I specialized in financial journalism and felt the scorn of men who thought women were barely intelligent enough to balance a checkbook.

Even today, I hear men joking that women are airheads, bad drivers and shopaholics. I bank where the branch manager calls his employees “the girls.” I attend family gatherings where the women cook and clean up while the men watch TV and snore away on the sofa. My husband and I coach our son on how to negotiate his salary and benefits in the job market, which makes me realize that women rarely get this kind of mentorship.

It takes a village, they say. In reality, it takes a nation. And so the fight for gender equality will go on. Title IX is just a starting point.

Lawsuits spread like a virus

In my last post, you met Sage Ohlensehlen, a swimmer for the University of Iowa who brought a lawsuit against the school after it cut four sports teams, including the women’s swim/dive team, claiming hardship from COVID-19.

As it turns out, the UI lawsuit is only one of many that female athletes have brought against their universities for the same reason.

“Under the cover of COVID, folks are trying to drop women’s sports,” charges Donna Lopiano, president and founder of Sports Management Resources.*

Here are just a few universities whose purported COVID-19 cuts female athletes have challenged, along with the resolution:

Stanford — reversed its decision to cut men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, coed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling. Athletes on the five women’s teams challenged the cuts based on Title IX.

Brown — reinstated women’s fencing and equestrian in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Dartmouth — reinstated men’s and women’s swimming and diving and golf, and men’s lightweight rowing after the school received a letter from the women’s lawyer threatening a Title IX lawsuit.

William and Mary — reinstated women’s varsity gymnastics, swimming and volleyball after student athletes threatened a Title IX suit.

East Carolina State University — reinstated women’s swimming, diving and tennis in settling a Title IX lawsuit.

Michigan State — last month, the Supreme court refused to hear MSU’s appeal of a lower-court ruling in favor of the women’s swim/dive team that had been cut due to COVID-19 (the university claimed). The lawsuit can now proceed.

An athlete’s view

Lopiano — as well as many others — believe athletic directors are using the virus as a cover for cutting programs so they can increase the budgets of the juggernaut men’s programs like football and basketball.

“The problem is that at the same time they’re pleading poor, they’re spending up the wazoo to protect their one or two revenue-producing sports,” Lopiano says. “That’s the mentality of the athletic directors. They are not treating it as educational sports, but as a business.”

Lopiano isn’t an ivory tower theorist. She knows the athletic world from experience. She is a six-time National Champion, nine-time All-American, and three-time Softball MVP. She is a member of thirteen halls of fame.

For ten years, she played for the Connecticut Brakettes, a national championship women’s softball team. As a pitcher, she compiled a career record of 183–18. She finished her Brakettes career in the top ten of several categories including hits, RBIs, runs and home runs.

Overall, she participated in 26 national championships in four sports and was a nine-time All-American at four different positions in softball.

Following her athletic career, Lopiano became an assistant athletic director at Brooklyn College, where she also coached basketball, volleyball and softball. In 1975, she became the first director of women’s athletics at the University of Texas, where she worked for seventeen years.

Early on at the University of Texas, though, Lopiano thought she might be fired. She testified against a proposed amendment to Title IX — the Tower Amendment — that would have exempted the powerhouse men’s programs from Title IX regulations. The amendment failed to pass and Lopiano kept her job.

No need to cut teams

Lopiano says there are many ways for schools to cut athletic costs. For example, instead of cutting teams, they can cut expenses across the board.

“Any athletic director worth their oats knows that they don’t have to cut any sports in order to keep their athletic program intact,” she says.

“There is a lot of mythology here — 98.4 percent of all athletic programs are losing money and they are getting subsidized,” Lopiano says. “And it isn’t institutional money, rather it is student tuition dollars and mandatory athletics fees. There is no leadership in higher education that is saying ‘stop this madness’ in terms of expenditures in sports programs.”**

Maybe a few more lawsuits will do the trick.

_____________________

* Carrie N. Baker, “Athletes Win First Round in Title IX Challenge To Cuts To Women’s Sports,” Ms. (January 1, 2021). This quote and the next two come from this article.

** Dom Amore, “As Title IX turns 50, visionary Donna Lopiano still sees much left unfinished in gender equity in sports,” The Hartford Courant (June 21, 2022).

PHOTO: Lisa Helfert/Knight Commission

Title IX meets COVID-19

What do Title IX and COVID-19 have in common? A lawsuit!

In December 2020, the University of Iowa announced it would cut its men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s tennis and men’s gymnastics programs starting with the next school year, claiming the hardship of the virus. The women were devastated.

“When Iowa cut the swim and dive team, that was the worst moment of my life,” said Sage Ohlensehlen, the women’s swim team captain.*

Team member Alexa Puccini agreed. She recalls the meeting at which the women heard the news.

“The coaches were lined up against the wall. The athletes, socially distanced, sat in chairs. Athletic director Gary Barta delivered the stunning news and left,” she said.

“It was very, very emotional. I just couldn’t believe it,” Alexa said. “It was such an awful experience.”**

A widening gap

Something about the cuts didn’t sound right to the women. This was a Title IX issue, not a Covid issue, they decided. Sage, Alexa and two other swimmers brought a Title IX lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, the women charged that UI didn’t have enough athletic opportunities for women even before Covid, and cutting their team created an even greater disparity. Women make up 53.56 percent of the student body, the lawsuit stated, but in the pre-Covid 2018-19 academic year only 50.77 percent of athletic opportunities were for women.

In the 2018-19 year, the lawsuit continued, the university committed $6.7 million to men’s athletic programs and $6.4 million to women’s athletic programs. That’s a ratio of 51 percent to 49 percent in favor of the men. Close but no cigar!

The lawsuit goes on to say that the gap in the number of male to female athletes stood at 47 athletes in the 2018-19 school year, a gap that grew to 92 athletes for the 2019-20 school year, and, with the cuts, an expected gap of 141 athletes.

Further, the women charged, the university failed to meet any of the criteria for Title IX compliance, including financial assistance, equipment and supplies, tutoring, locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities, housing and dining and recruitment.

Gains and losses

For its part, the university said the cuts were necessary to compensate for the $75 million drop in revenue caused by lost ticket sales and other revenue because of COVID-19.

“In 2019, the Office for Civil Rights closed its investigation with no findings of any violation in the thirteen categories of Title IX. The university remains committed to staying in compliance with Title IX.

“In fact, impact on gender equity and Title IX compliance was one of the factors used to determine which sports to eliminate due to the fiscal financial crisis created by COVID-19,” the university said.***

The damage is done

Even so, the University of Iowa eventually settled the lawsuit. In February 2021, it reinstated the women’s swim and dive team and created a women’s wrestling program.

But because of the uncertainty of whether they’d be able to swim, many of the women had already made plans to transfer to other universities. Alexa Puccini, for example, is finishing her collegiate career at the University of Arizona. The lawsuit came in Sage Ohlensehl’s senior year, so she reaped no benefit from the decision, but she is currently studying law at Southern Methodist University Law School.

“The lawsuit literally led to me moving fourteen hours away because I wanted to be someplace where I wasn’t known as the girl who sued Iowa,” she said. “I lost a lot of friends, and I had relatives say rude things to me.”†

Her senior year was heartbreaking, she said, but she’s certain she and her teammates made a difference for other women.

“Because of our efforts , 70 MORE WOMEN will have the opportunity to compete as a division one athlete at the University of Iowa (35 swimmers/divers and 35 wrestlers). This result makes the hell that I’ve been through worth it,” Sage said on social media.

“I’m so happy that Iowa is taking these steps for equality,” she said,†† “and I’m hoping that this case will set a precedent for all other schools.”

_____________________

* Chloe Peterson , “Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement in Title IX lawsuit,” The Daily Iowan (September 23, 2021).

** Erica Hunzinger, “Hawkeye swimmers wondered if Title IX suit was ‘going to work’,” AP (June 15, 2022).

*** Daniel Perreault, “Judge temporarily stops University of Iowa from cutting Women’s Swimming and Diving,” KWWL (December 3, 2020).

† “Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement” and “Judge temporarily stops.”

†† Ohlensehlen, UI reach settlement.”

PHOTO: Sage Ohlensehlen (left) with unidentified teammate. I’m working on it!

Thanks but no thanks

Susan Kaplowitz chose an interesting topic for her doctoral thesis: “Guidelines for Establishing Equitable Interscholastic Athletic Programs for Boys and Girls in Public High Schools.” That’s not surprising. Susan was well aware that women were discriminated against as athletes.

We met Susan in my last blog post. The Bronx native was athletic from an early age, but girls had no organized sports in the 1950s and ‘60s. She couldn’t play for a school until she went to Hunter College, where she majored in physical education. She went on get a masters at Kean University and a doctorate at New York University. Her doctoral studies in physical education coincided with the passage of Title IX.

After writing her dissertation, Susan had a great idea. Why not show it to area athletic directors, so they can assess whether their sports programs were fair to girls? She shared her findings with thirteen public high schools, hoping they would use them to see if their programs complied with Title IX guidelines, and to move them toward compliance if they weren’t.

And then crickets.

Eventually, one of the thirteen athletic directors said he would use her guidelines to audit his sports program. “The other twelve said that their programs were fine as they were,” she said.*

Strikeout after strikeout

Susan went on to marry and have children and continued with her love of sports as a player, coach and referee. She played on adult softball and volleyball teams. She refereed softball and basketball. She even coached college basketball for Stern College, the women’s college of Yeshiva University.

In 1979, Rutgers University was looking for an assistant basketball coach, and she applied.

“Despite my qualifications and my experience, I didn’t get the job, and I always wondered why,” she said.** She suspected her gender factored into the decision.

The years went by, but even post-Title IX, society’s view of women didn’t change overnight. In 1984, when Susan’s son was six, she wanted to coach his t-ball team. She walked into the coaches’ meeting, and a man approached her.

“’Miss, this meeting is for coaches,’” he said, stopping her.

“I responded, ‘I am a coach and wish to coach a team,’” she said. “After all these years, I still remember his look. When I asked for an assistant coach, not one man volunteered to help me. So, I coached the team myself.”

In 1988, she applied for a position as the sports and recreation director at a local Y. Again, her gender was a barrier.

“One of the interviewers said, ‘This job involves coaching and night and weekend games. You have two children. How would you be able to do this?’” she recalls. Three men and Susan were up for the job, and she didn’t get it. She suspects the men weren’t asked about their childcare arrangements.

A flourishing career

But Susan wasn’t deterred by any of this. She went on to teach at Rutgers University as a professor of exercise science until her retirement last year. At Rutgers, she started the Center for Exercise and Aging and taught students to be physical education teachers, physical therapists and recreation specialists, among many other careers. She’s worked with children of all ages, she’s a personal trainer and has been a consultant for gyms and Ys. She’s even coached her grandson’s teams with no opposition from anyone!

In an interesting twist, Susan’s son Andrew married Lisa Stern Kaplowitz, a student athlete at Brown University in the 1990s. Lisa was on the women’s gymnastics team that brought a Title IX lawsuit against the university in 1991 for cutting the team. I’ll be talking to Lisa soon!

Pride as a pioneer

Susan’s lived during a time of tremendous upheaval in society’s view of women and gender equality. Sometimes, she says she regrets being born too soon to benefit from Title IX. But she also understands the unique privilege she’s had of being part of the generation that changed everything.

“I am filled with pride and happiness to see the progress that girls and women in sports have made,” she said. “I know there are miles to go, and examples of inequality still exist, but mothers and fathers are teaching and playing sports with their daughters as well as their sons, just as my dad did with me. Through their parents’ strong influence, children will learn how beneficial athletic participation can be — for boys and girls.”

___________________

* From my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

** Susan Kaplowitz, “My Title IX Story: The Personal Perspective of a Female Athlete and Coach,” Shape America (May 24, 2022). All remaining quotes are from this article.

“We do not accept girls”

Susan Kaplowitz grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s and ‘60s. But her baseball loyalty didn’t lie with the Bronx Bombers. Instead, her grandmother turned her into a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

When she was 10 years old, Susan learned that before each Dodgers game, a child was chosen to play catch with a player.

“I said to my Grandma and Dad, ‘Wow, I want to do that!’ she recalled. “So they sent in my application.”*

A form letter came back.

“We do not accept girls.”

“I was heartbroken,” Susan recalled. “I thought, ‘Why can’t I?’ But the idea of equality, or fighting for equality, wasn’t on our radar yet.”

Cleanliness before competition

Susan loved sports of all kinds. But she had few opportunities to play. Girls had no recreational teams or school teams. Gym classes were separated by sex, and while the boys had a full array of sports, in the younger grades, girls classes were mainly exercise, jumping rope and marching. She says they were graded on the cleanliness and color of their sneakers and gym uniforms!

In high school, Susan finally got to play sports in gym class. In addition, the school had play days for girls. We’ve talked about “play days” before — after-school inter-scholastic events for girls. The teams were mixed between the schools and afterward the girls were made to socialize with each other. The structure of play days discouraged competition, which was thought to be unfeminine and detrimental to women’s health.

Most women I’ve talked to remember play days scornfully, but Susan welcomed them.

“I finally got to meet girls who were interested in sports,” she recalled. “We’d take buses to each other’s homes to play tennis or whatnot. It had a positive impact on me.”

When she could, Susan played with her father, a male cousin, and her brother, although he wasn’t that interested in sports. She would play anything — basketball, baseball, tennis, touch football.

But again, when she’d walk around her neighborhood and see boys playing Little League, she’d think, “Why can’t I do this?”

In the summer, Susan’s family would go to the Catskills. It was there at the Windsor Hotel that she finally got to play on a team. She practiced with the hotel’s summer softball team every day. At 11-years-old, she was five-foot-ten and strong. Everyone agreed, “She can play if she wants to play!”

Playing, kind of

The first time Susan got to play for her school was in 1962 at Hunter College, where she was on the women’s basketball, softball, tennis and field hockey teams. She was ecstatic to finally play! But the inequities weren’t erased. The women’s basketball team, for example, had to practice at 7:30 a.m., while the men got the gym in the more reasonable afternoon hours.

And although she got to play basketball, the game was ultimately unsatisfying. The college played the ancient “girls” game that had been started by Smith College’s Senda Berenson in 1892. The rules were intended to prevent “nervous exhaustion” from a game that was too strenuous for girls.

In this game, the team had just six players, and the court was divided into three sections. Players couldn’t leave their section. They couldn’t dribble more than three times before passing or shooting the ball, and they couldn’t hold the ball for more than three seconds. Guarding was forbidden and falling down was a foul. Players couldn’t grab the ball from another player.

Susan chafed under the rules.

“I loved to shoot and I couldn’t shoot!” she said. “The coach looked at my height and put me on defense, where all you did was rebound.”

Women have to make do

At Hunter, the women’s softball field was poorly maintained, while the men’s baseball team had an immaculate field. The men had varsity locker rooms, while the women used the gym class lockers. The women’s uniforms were hand-me-downs while the men’s teams had new uniforms every year. The women traveled to away games on old school buses while the men went on chartered buses.

Most disappointing of all was that women did not have athletic scholarships. Because of that, college was out of reach financially for many women. Fortunately, Hunter College was doable for Susan’s family. Hunter didn’t even charge tuition until 1963.

In my next blog post, Susan talks about how she made a life in sports with the little opportunity and encouragement she was given.

_________________

* All quotes come from my interview with Susan on November 21, 2022.

PHOTO: Susan Kaplowitz with students from Rutgers University. I’ll explain later!

Ohio hears a “who”

Title IX is getting another spin through the washer on transgender rights. In November, a group of inter-faith parents sued an Ohio school district for allowing transgender students to use gendered bathrooms.

The parents are suing the Bethel Local School District of Dayton, Ohio, for using students’ stated gender identity rather than their biological sex to determine which bathroom they can use. In the lawsuit, filed on their behalf by America First Legal, the parents accuse the district of violating Title IX and state gender protections. They claim the district is forcing families to conform to its policy favoring transgender students, which infringes on their parental rights.

“Boys are boys, girls are girls, and every student has the right to privacy in intimate spaces that has been enjoyed by every single generation of students before them,” said lead counsel Gene Hamilton. “We are proud to fight for our clients in this important area.”*

Silent switcheroo

Specifically, the parents claim damage because the policy is causing health problems — rather than use bathrooms that allow access to students of the opposite biological sex, students have tried to avoid using bathrooms during school hours, holding their urine for uncomfortable and unhealthy amounts of time. If they do use the restroom, the lawsuit says, it causes anxiety and emotional distress. Girls go to the restroom in pairs or groups in order to make sure they are safe and their modesty protected.

The parents are equally upset that the school district actually has gender-neutral bathrooms for transgender students to use. In one case, a group of Muslim families donated money to have a gender-neutral bathroom built. But after the new policy went into effect in January 2022, the district stopped requiring transgender students to use the gender-neutral bathrooms. Even worse, the parents say, is that the district didn’t even inform them of the policy change.

Before filing the lawsuit, the parents aired their concerns to school officials. His clients, Hamilton said, “tried to find solutions that would value and respect all members of the community,” but they were ignored.

Anybody home?

Not only does the lawsuit claim Title IX infringement, it also targets the state of Ohio, whose officials have been equally as obtuse, the parents say. The state says it can’t help.

“Over the past several years, we have received many questions from local school districts on the topic of accommodating transgender students and whether specific accommodations are required, given the guidance in place at the time,” said Sara Clark, chief legal counsel for the Ohio School Boards Association.“We encourage districts to work with students requesting accommodations on a case-by-case basis.”**

Guidance at the federal level is also MIA. In June 2021, the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission applied the 1964 Civil Rights Act to gay, lesbian and transgender people in schools and workplaces. The guidance would apply to schools that accept federal financial aid, extending transgender protections to include use of restrooms and locker rooms.

But twenty states, including Ohio, sued the federal government in 2020 over transgender rights policies. A federal judge blocked the administration’s new rules until these lawsuits are resolved. This ruling brings the whole issue of transgender rights to a standstill. Lacking federal legal protection makes it unlikely that individual states can set and enforce their laws.

Title IX tug-of-war

So, Ohio has kicked the can back to the schools while the issue of transgender rights chugs its way through the agonizingly slow legal process. In the absence of guidance, individual school districts are being forced to form their own policies — and, not surprisingly, are running into legal backlashes like this one.

And the group of parents whose children are in the Bethel school district are happy to push back. “The parental right to direct the education, safety, and upbringing of their children is the oldest fundamental right recognized by the Supreme Court,” they say.

For its part, the Bethel School Board is using Title IX to support its claim that it had no choice but to open the restrooms to transgender students. The move was made to comply with Title IX, it says, because “the federal government was threatening school funding, and potential litigation was imminent.”

I guess we’ll just have to hold our… breaths… waiting for the final outcome.

___________________

* Jeremiah Poff, “Ohio school district sued for transgender bathroom policy that caused students to ‘hold their urine,” Washington Examiner (November 22, 2022). This quote and the next come from this article.

** Jim Gaines, “Transgender rights in Ohio: Protections at stake with challenges underway,” Springfield News-Sun (July 4, 2022).

A walk-on wonder

It’s almost December, that dreary time between the World Series and spring training, and I’m so happy to have a baseball story for you!

Last week, Olivia Pichardo made college baseball history. The 18-year-old freshman at Brown University became the first female athlete in NCAA Division 1 history to be named to a varsity baseball roster.

Here’s how she describes finding out that she’d made the team.

“It was definitely a surreal moment for me because it’s something that I’ve wanted since eighth grade,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy to know that I’m living out my dream right now and my ideal college experience that I’ve always wanted.”*

Softball? Nope!

Olivia grew up in Queens, New York, and has been playing baseball since she was 5 years old. Her father, Max, had played street and sandlot ball in the Dominican Republic, and was equally in love with the game. He teamed up with his daughter to make her goal a reality.

She played varsity ball for Garden School in Queens and travel baseball on Long Island. She played club ball for the New York Crush and Next Level Baseball and made the Olympic Women’s National Baseball Team. She went on to intern in the New York Mets’ amateur scouting department.

Over the years, coaches and mentors pressured her to play softball, where she would undoubtedly succeed and have a secure athletic future. But Olivia pushed back.

“Each year, I would be told that the game I love would leave me behind,” Olivia said. “I just kept playing and working harder.”**

Olivia was determined to play baseball, even if it wasn’t at the D1 level. She had several offers to play college ball, but Olivia chose Brown, having no guarantee of playing. She participated in a walk-on tryout followed by an intense assessment process. Head coach Grant Achilles was impressed with her athleticism, versatility and strength as a middle infielder, outfielder and pitcher.

“Olivia put together the most complete walk-on tryout I have seen from a player since becoming a head coach,” said Achilles.***

Team spirit

Olivia’s teammates have been equally as supportive. When Achilles introduced her to the team, they gave her a round of applause.

“I’m getting an overwhelming amount of support and it definitely feels very good to feel supported like this,” she said.†

Baseball For All, an organization that advocates for girls and women in baseball, keeps a list of colleges and universities that consider talented players, regardless of gender. Eight women, including Olivia, are on varsity college baseball rosters for the spring of 2023. That makes Olivia happy.

“I’m just really glad that we’re having more and more female baseball players at the collegiate level. No matter what division, it’s just really good to see this progression,” she said.†† “It’s paving the way for other girls in the next generation to also have these goals that they want to achieve and dream big and know that they can do it.”

_________________

* “At Brown, Olivia Pichardo makes history as first woman on an NCAA Division I varsity baseball team,” Brown University press release (November 21, 2022). Read about other female baseball firsts here.

** https://oliviabaseball.com

*** “At Brown.”

† Julian McWilliams, “A lofty plan by a dad and his daughter 14 years ago produced Brown’s Olivia Pichardo, the first woman on a Division 1 baseball roster,” The Boston Globe (November 22, 2022).

†† “A lofty plan.”

Stemming the bias

Title IX’s most visible impact has been in athletics, but the law dramatically changed the academic universe for women, too. Evelynn Hammonds was in the first wave of women to break through the barriers women interested in science had faced.

Born in 1953 in Atlanta, Evelynn was intrigued with science and the physical world from the very beginning.

“As a young child, I was always very interested in science,” she said. “I had all these different kinds of science kits — I had a chemistry set, I had a microscope, I had all kinds of building kits, and it just spurred in me an interest in wanting to understand how the world worked.”*

In high school, Evelynn’s interest in physics emerged. A National Merit Scholar, Hammonds attended Spelman College, where she entered a joint engineering program with Georgia Institute of Technology. She also took physics courses at Morehouse College. She graduated in 1976 with degrees in physics and electrical engineering.

Evelynn got her first chance to work in a physics lab in Bell Labs’ Summer Research Program for Women and Minorities. After graduation, she began a PhD program at MIT, but instead of finishing, went to work as a software engineer for five years. She completed her PhD at Harvard in the history of science.

Making inroads

Today, she is Professor of the History of Science and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard. She was a dean at Harvard for five years, but returned to teaching in 2021.

Women like Evelynn are paving the way for women in the sciences. Many of the degrees women seek today are in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. In 1970, two years before Title IX was passed, women comprised just 8 percent of STEM workers. Today, that number is 27 percent.

But men still dominate: men make up half of all U.S. workers, but 73 percent of the STEM workforce. Engineering and computer science — two of the most lucrative STEM fields — remain heavily male. Only 21 percent of college engineering majors and 19 percent of computer science majors are women.

It’s the culture, stupid

Part of the problem is a culture that is unwelcoming, and even hostile, to women. Evelynn found that to be true as early as her college years.

“You’re in a culture where, on any given day, somebody might think you were a secretary, or a janitor, or anything but a graduate student in physics,” she said. “It was made very clear to us by some people that we didn’t fit, that we didn’t belong, that we were only there because of affirmative action, that we could never be successful. We were constantly finding those attitudes.”**

Because of that, Evelynn authored her first published paper as E.M. Hammond, so people couldn’t tell she was a woman or African American. She was following in a long line of female scientists who have had to fight for recognition. Women in earlier generations had always been victims of the culture.

“I still remember asking my high school guidance teacher to take a second year of algebra instead of a fifth year of Latin,” said Nancy Grace Roman, the first female executive at NASA. “She looked down her nose at me and sneered, ‘What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?’”***

What’s to be done

Evelynn and others are working to erase the hurdles that still exist for women in STEM fields. Some possible fixes: universities should diversify their faculty and courses should teach social issues, journals should reject research that doesn’t consider gender and sex, and Title IX should be used as a lever to force institutions to comply.

“We’ve fought our fight as my generation, but we’re going to have to keep fighting for a while,” she said.† “We have a lot of work to do. The attitudes and the culture haven’t changed as much as they absolutely have to.”

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* Jennifer Berglund, “Challenges and Change for Women of Color in Science – A Conversation with Evelyn Hammonds, Chair and Professor of the History of Science,” Harvard Museum of Sciences and Culture (August 20, 2020).

** Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, “Women in STEM need more than a law,” Harvard Gazette (June 20, 2022).

*** Report: “The STEM Gap: Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics,” American Association of University Women. Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018) is known as the “Mother of the Hubble Telescope” for her role in planning the telescope.

† “Challenges and Change” and “Women in STEM.”

Hurdles, what hurdles?

Title IX’s impact on college campuses is well known, but what about life afterward? You only need to look at the life of Benita Fitzgerald Mosley to see that opportunity and success doesn’t stop at the college level.

Benita was born in 1961, making her 11 years old when Title IX was enacted. Growing up in Dale City, Virginia, her talent in track surfaced early. She says she never experienced any discrimination in her athletic pursuits. As a standout hurdler, she won three state 110-yard hurdle titles.

After graduating high school, she attended the University of Tennessee on a full athletic scholarship, a school renowned for its track and field program. At UT, she was a 14-time All-American and won four NCAA titles, including three 100-meter outdoor hurdles championships.

She made her first Olympic team at the age of 18. Unfortunately, the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics held in Russia that year. But at the 1984 Summer Olympics, she won Olympic gold in the 100-meter hurdles. She was only the second American woman (after Babe Didrikson) and the first African-American woman to win gold in that event. She was also an alternate for the 1988 Olympic team.

A Title IX success

Off the field, Benita earned her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. She is fully aware that her athletic and academic successes stem from Title IX.

“[The law] was instrumental in allowing me, as a real fresh Title IX baby at 11, 12 years old, to have all these opportunities that led to a college scholarship and an Olympic gold medal and (being a) 14-time all American,” Mosley said. “It’s unbelievable to think how different my life would have been, if not for that law.”*

A family tradition

Benita was born into a family that had already made its mark. In 1964, Benita’s mother, Fannie W. Fitzgerald, was one of four African American teachers to integrate the public schools in the Prince William County, Virginia, school district.

Virginia had vigorously fought school integration after the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that segregation was unconstitutional. Rather than integrate, some counties closed their public schools, and white families opened private white-only schools. Other white families fled the cities for the suburbs.

Benita attended Gar-Field High School, a pioneer in the successful integration of Virginia public schools. A girl named Joyce Russell Terrell, daughter of the president of the local chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), was the first African American student to attend the high school. She started there in 1961, under police protection, the year Benita was born.

Benita is proud of the legacy of the women who led the way for racial equality.

“They all represent many unsung heroes who have quietly enacted change behind the scenes — not calling a lot of attention to themselves, just quietly doing the right thing,” Benita said.**

A grateful beneficiary

Today, Benita is the director of all U.S. Olympic training centers, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation and CEO of Laureus Sport for Good Foundation USA. She is a board member for the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum. In addition, she is vice president of LeagueApps, a technology platform for youth sports organizers that aims to create positive youth sports cultures.

Widening out Title IX’s reach, Benita credits the gender equality law with her ability to fashion a post-college career in sports marketing and administration that includes these leadership positions.

“Women didn’t have the opportunity to pursue degrees in law, medicine, engineering. Women didn’t have the opportunity to be sports executives,” Mosley said.*** “I’ve had opportunities throughout my career that were only made possible because of Title IX, and I’m forever grateful.”

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* Cora Hill, “Title IX pioneers: Benita Fitzgerald Mosley turned women’s opportunities to Olympic gold,” Knoxville News Sentinel (June 20, 2022).

** “Historical Marker Unveiled for the Courageous Four,” Prince William County Communications Office (September 13, 2022).

*** “Title IX pioneers.”

Can Title IX curb hazing?

In a lawsuit wending its way through the courts, a college student’s grieving parents are testing Title IX as it applies to hazing deaths on college campuses.

In 2017, Max Gruver entered Louisiana State University, declaring a communications major. The 18-year-old from Roswell, Georgia, wanted to be a sports journalist. He had published almost 400 sports articles while in high school.

Max decided to rush Phi Delta Theta. It was a small fraternity Max thought might give him the opportunity to move into a leadership role.

Alcohol-fueled night

On the night of September 13, 2017, Max participated in a hazing ritual called “Bible study.” In this ritual, pledges must chug 190-proof liquor for giving wrong answers to questions about the fraternity or incorrectly reciting the Greek alphabet. Max died the next morning from alcohol poisoning.

At the time of Max’s death, he had a 0.495 percent blood alcohol level. That’s more than six times the legal limit in Louisiana. He also had THC in his system, a chemical found in marijuana.

The Gruvers filed a lawsuit in 2018 against LSU, Phi Delta Theta and several members of the fraternity, seeking $25 million in damages.

Gender bias in reverse

Here’s where Title IX comes in. The suit claimed that LSU discriminates against men by policing sorority hazing more strictly than fraternity hazing. Specifically, the suit claimed that LSU imposed greater sanctions on sororities than those imposed on fraternities, even though the women’s rituals are non-life-threatening.

Max’s parents claim that fraternities’ practice of hazing is based on outdated stereotypes of men, exposing them to a greater risk of hazing death. They point out that the school distributes glossy brochures promoting the benefits of Greek life without mentioning any risks.

The fraternity and five fraternity members settled with the Gruvers. One fraternity member, Matthew Naquin, was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to five years in jail. Witnesses testified at Naquin’s trial that he didn’t like Max, wanted him cut from the fraternity and played a central role in the hazing. He went to jail in January 2020. But 2.5 years of his sentence were suspended, and due to good behavior, he was released in April 2020, after less than three months in jail.

Phi Delta Theta has been banned from LSU’s campus until at least 2033, but the university is a holdout. It pressed a countersuit up the legal chain, but an appeals court ruled that because the university accepts federal funding, it isn’t immune from hazing lawsuits. And in December 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected LSU’s request to hear arguments.

“This ruling means that a school can face liability for violating Title IX if it disregards or minimizes reports of Greek male hazing,” said Jon Fazzola, an attorney for the family. “In doing so, it creates a greater risk of danger for males compared to females in Greek life.”*

Stopping the rituals

A trial has not yet been scheduled. But in 2018, Louisiana’s governor signed into law the Max Gruver Act and other anti-hazing bills.

The Gruvers created a foundation in Max’s name and are working to stop murderous hazing rituals. Since 1838, they say, more than 200 American university students have died from hazing. Max was one of four young men to die from fraternity hazing in 2017 alone.

“We don’t want to live in what happened to Max at the end, but at the same time, we want to change things for other young kids,” his parents have said. We don’t want this happening to another family.”**

I hope the Gruver family is successful in its pursuit. I remember clearly the death of Timothy Piazza that same year, a Penn State student who died from alcohol-fueled fraternity hazing. Whether redress comes through Title IX or some other path, we all want to know that we can safely send our students to college.

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* Betsy Butler, “What This Title IX Case about Hazing Means for Women on Campus,” Ms. Magazine (August 19, 2019).

** Natalie Anderson, “The Hazing Edition: Remembering Max Gruver,” the LSU Reveille (September 11, 2018).