The Pros And Cons Of Title IX

Lars Carlson
EDF 4500
Dr. Barker
4/4/16
Title IX
Athletics and sports programs were dominated by males in colleges. Many colleges had very few if any athletic programs for females before Title IX got put into effect. In 1972 before Title IX was put into action the estimated amount of athletes were divided as such. There were just about 172,000 males participating in athletics in college whereas there was just about 30,000 females participating in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is also known as the NCAA. The nation had seen these numbers and figured there needs to be a way to make these numbers more equal. The NCAA had to figure out a way to make the male and female athletes have roughly the same amount of athletes. Title
As the statistics show Title IX did exactly what it was supposed to do and that is to create equal opportunity for female athletes around the nation. Title IX was signed on June 23, 1972 by President Richard Nixon. Ever since Title IX has been put into effect there have been several benefits that came out of this law. Of course, with everything in the world, there are also negatives that had come from Title IX passing. With Title IX passing it made the budgets of the programs relatively closer to each other. Rather than all the money going towards the men’s programs, this law made it where the men’s programs cut down and let the women’s programs get more finances, but still not equal. Another great statistic comes from http://titleixhistoryfair.weebly.com/ stating that “2012 olympics is said to be the Title IX olympics because this year, the USA sent more women than men to the olympics. We got several gold metals in women's swimming, soccer, and gymnastics. Title IX also allowed boys to join cheerleading squads, figure skating and volleyball, proving that Title IX not only opened up the playing field for women,
(2) Another thing that should also be remembered about Title IX should be it also had some negative effects for majority of school districts. Due to Title IX trying to create a balanced financial status towards men and womens athletics this cut the budget for the men’s athletics. This resulted in schools having to lose their absolute best programs and would actually lose money due to the lack of income from the most profitable program. Some schools would cut the men’s athletics budget in half, even more, and then develop weaker programs for their schools creating lack of interest. Schools would lose fans for their events because they would be constantly losing in these events they lost money for. (3) During the period before Title IX women usually were only able to be in classes that were going towards what the school believed there profession would be. Examples of this would be classes that would help them be a household wife. In neatoday.org, it states “Before Title IX, many schools only allowed women to train for careers they found suitable for women – namely, housekeeping. Now, school administrators can’t legally dictate which students can take which classes based on gender.” (neatoday.org, 2016) Also before Title IX the school districts had the right to suspend