Title IX & Unintended Consequences

The NCAA has appointed yet another female athletic director to help oversee the implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments to the federal Civil Rights Act.

Title IX, in order to create more opportunities for female athletes, simply choked off such chances for male athletes, as wrestlers, for example. Karen Morrison, who will serve as the NCAA director of gender initiatives and student-athlete well-being, comes to the job fresh from a posting as associate athletic director of the University of Colorado at Boulder, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“I was one of those ‘Title IX babies’ who had the opportunity to compete in college and pursue a career in collegiate athletics because Title IX opened doors,” she stated. “I’m looking forward to working with the national office and leaders in the membership to further the opportunities for women in athletics,” she promised.

What she finds might surprise her. “It may not always make sense to shortchange talented and committed men to provide underutilized opportunities to women,” Professor Deborah Rhode told Tayler Cox of The Stanford Review. Additionally, the former head of the Women’s Cross Country Program at Stanford made a surprising revelation to Cox.

“Dena Evans also noted that the women’s sports which are created to fill the funding gap, such as archery, rugby, synchronized swimming, and equestrian, have relatively high preparation costs prior to college because of travel and equipment,” Cox reported. “Consequently, she [Evans] says, ‘the new opportunities for scholarships and teams are going to those who are already well-off.’”

And here is another rich irony: While Title IX created more sports opportunities for coeds, whether they want them or not, the law also led to more coaching jobs for men, most frequently, like Rodney Dangerfield in Ladybugs, as coaches of women’s teams.

“Title IX applies to more than just student athletes,” Cox notes. “The bill also unintentionally altered trends in female coaching.”

“Data from a study conducted by the Stanford Center for Ethics shows that between 1970 and 2005, the percentage of female teams being coached by females dropped from 90% to 42%.”

So what do you do with a federal program whose “success” is open to debate? Why, expand it, of course.

“While Title IX may have created unintended barriers for women in the coaching profession, proponents of the bill recently expanded its reach to help women achieve equality from a young age,” Cox reports. “Sparked by outrage at the unequal state of softball versus baseball fields in public parks, Assembly Bill 2404, signed by [California] Governor [Arnold] Schwarzenegger in 2004, now holds entire communities to the same standards of equal opportunity for athletics as educational institutions.”

“AB 2404 follows an interventionist strategy.” Well, that would be in keeping with the legacy of Title IX.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.