Social Stratification:Women In Sports Essay, Research Paper

RP on Social Stratification

Article:

Fields, Cheryl M. “Title IX at X”. Sport in Contemporary: An Anthology. Edited by D. Stanley Eitzen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989, 368-373.

This article discusses the court decision concerning, basically, the equality of women and men. This decision was applied to intercollegiate athletics and the use of money to intercollegiate athletics. Simply, “the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which bars sex bias in federally assisted education programs or activities. Title IX was created on June 23, 1972. In the beginning of the article, it discusses what the treatment of women was ten years ago (1960s). In the 1960s, college admission was more difficult for females than males. Females needed a higher SAT score than males; and, also there were not any athletic scholarships for women (pg. 368). After Title IX, the requirements for females were lowered to those of the men.

The article discusses one individual who was probably the ‘founder’ of Title IX, Edith Green. Green was, at one point, “the Democratic Representative from Oregon and chairman of the House Special Subcommittee on Education. She held hearings on the treatment of women in school and in the workplace, which ultimately led to Title IX.

There was much attention to how money was spent on intercollegiate athletics at institutions that received federal money. “In 1974, for example, the average annual budget for women’s sports in the Big 10 was $3,500″ (368). Before 1973, high schools did not have athletics for women. So after Title IX, high schools slowly began women’s sports.

The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights investigated some college’s athletic programs. They found that the women’s programs (locker rooms, scholarships, practice facilities, travel and promotion) were not at the level of those of their male counterparts. One report conducted by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women showed that the “NCAA spent an average of $1.2-miilion on their men’s intercollegiate athletics programs in 1973-74 and an average of $27,000 on their women’s programs the same year” (370). The numbers increased to $1.7-million for the men and $400,000 for the women in 1981-82.

Some colleges and universities are contesting this Title IX because they have a problem with how Title IX is worded. It says that programs and activities that receive federal money need to be equal. But some institutions are challenging this since some of the programs are not run off of federal money.