Monday, June 1, 2015

Is Title IX Good?

Title IX is generally associated with sports, but athletics were only a fraction of it's original intent. In 1972, the act was made to protect everyone from sex based discrimination of any kind, at all schools. The bill reads:

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. 

Title IX affects several areas. Besides gender discrimination it supports girls going into male dominated STEM careers, protects pregnant or parenting students, and helps victims of sexual violence on campus. The act guarantees that any sexual violence claims will not be put aside and that the victim can stay safe on campus.

While the bill was made with many instances in mind, the part of Title IX that gets the most attention is definitely how it affects our sports. People for, and opposed to the idea see the program in different ways.

http://assets.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/titleIX-charts-athletes.png

People that support what the title has done say that woman used to get much less opportunity then men when it came to joining sports, and the Title IX is fixing that, but some people still think that woman's sports are still downplayed and underfunded. The program does give woman more opportunities to join the sports that they want, but to achieve this schools have to cut down on some male dominated sports.

Opposers disagree with the methods used to keep the sports balanced between the genders. Title IX wants there to be an equal number of male and female participants in sports. If a school has 50% male and 50% female students, then they would want 50% of all school athletes to be female too. Some argue that the interest level of females in sports is lower than that of the males, which means that it's unrealistic to expect an even number of athletes between the sexes. Sometimes the only way schools can even out the percentages is to cut male sport programs to make things more equal. This is met with opposition.


Questions
Is this system actually equal?
Is Title IX working it's purpose? Does it need to be removed or changed?