When I taught women’s history, I offered a choice of topics for the exam essay. “Which act empowered women more: the Nineteenth Amendment, Title IX, or Roe v. Wade?” There was no wrong choice.
The opening text of Title IX is thirty-seven words. “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.” The legislation’s full title, shortened to the Education Amendments of 1972, was forty-five words long. Additions in 2020 and 2024 have added 2000 pages to a voluminous bill.
Title IX intended to dismantle discrimination against women in educational institutions. It assured equal access to campus activities and athletics and offered recourse in cases of sexual harassment. It outlawed limiting the admission, hiring and promotions for women based on sex. Widely known for increasing access to college athletics and credited for the surge of female athletes, Title IX also resulted in larger numbers of women attending college and graduate schools. Women are no longer the “second sex” in educational achievement.
Mixing academics and athletics was historically common at elite schools for men. Whether girls could or should be physically active was not an issue until after the Civil War. As educational opportunities expanded, enabling girls to undertake the same rigorous academics as their brothers, questions about their intellectual and physical fitness arose. Nineteenth-century attitudes about appropriate behavior for ladies limited their activity and agency, so female physicality challenged norms about delicacy and femininity.
It was a privileged problem. Only wealthy women had the leisure to play. Most women -- farm wives, sharecroppers, factory workers and drudges – did hard physical labor. They did not inhabit the “separate sphere” reserved for middle- and upper-class white ladies. They died of exhaustion.
Women were different than men, but there was no evidence to conclude that using either their brains or their muscles would undermine their health. Archeologists had uncovered mosaics picturing ancient women working out. Without any evidence, Harvard’s Edward Clarke, MD, asserted in 1872 that thinking would make women infertile.
Roman mosaic, Sicily, date unknown (Wikipedia commons)
Public schools had long been coeducational, underfunded, and regionally and racially uneven. They might offer recess but not sports. While mostly segregated, all girls’ independent schools and women’s colleges insisted on athletic participation.
Athletics challenged fashion standards. Femininity (and class expectations) required layers of cumbersome clothing. Women wore whale-bone corsets, crushing their lungs and other organs. Women who enjoyed swimming were swathed in enough fabric to drown, lest a bare ankle arouse the opposite sex. To play tennis in the 1890s they wore white (to conceal sweat), long skirts, petticoats, corsets, high necked “shirtwaists,” belts, stiff collars, neckties and straw boaters.
Charlotte Cooper, British champion, 1900
Demands for dress reform preceded women playing sports because long skirts were hazardous. Mothers tripped carrying a baby and candle upstairs, or burned to death when clothing caught fire. Hobbled by skirts. women could not safely enter carriages or streetcars.
The dress reform movement, launched by Amelia Bloomer, failed. She proposed a “Turkish dress,” a short dress worn over pantaloons, and published patterns in her temperance journal, The Lily. The postmistress in Seneca Falls, she introduced Elizabeth Stanton to Susan Anthony in 1851. They both briefly wore “bloomers,” but were met with more ridicule than suffrage. Later, girls’ schools adopted them for gym class.
Women’s Rights National Park, Seneca Falls: Anthony, Bloomer in bloomers, and Stanton (NPS)
Once kitted out, girls played the same sports as boys, with modified rules to adhere to social norms. Because exertion was unladylike, girls played half-court basketball. Because competition was unseemly, they were not allowed to steal the ball.
An underlying concern was what if girls proved better athletes than boys? Some of them were. The Ladies Home Journal was not concerned, declaring in 1891: “As a nation we ought to welcome the healthy, hearty girl who can beat her brother in managing a tennis ball, rowing a boat, or [riding] a frisky horse.”
In 1922, Sybil Bauer, 19, swam the 440-yard backstroke in 6:25 minutes, beating the male record. She won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics. In 1931, Jackie Mitchell, 17, became the second female pitcher in professional baseball. Playing for the Chattanooga Lookouts in an exhibition game against the NY Yankees, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The League Commissioner voided her contract and she never played again.
“[Women] will never make good. They are too delicate.” Babe Ruth
Concerns about female ability and propriety resulted in sex-segregated sports, even in areas where the playing field was even, like fencing, ice skating, and equestrian competitions.
Competitiveness was a male characteristic. Southern states passed laws forbidding competitive games for girls. Competitive women seemed unnatural and raised questions about gender identity long before anyone measured testosterone levels.
In the 1950s, when Althea Gibson became the first Black player to win Wimbledon and be ranked number one in the world, she confronted hateful racial epithets. Almost six feet tall, with a powerful physique, she initially wanted to box or play basketball. She dismissed tennis as a sport for weaklings.
Two legislative successes, almost fifty years apart, kept women in the game. The first was one of very few bills activists passed after winning suffrage. Enacted in 1921, it required that public schools offer physical education for girls. The second was Title IX, whose “godmother” was Bernice Resnick Sandler.
In 1969 Bunny Sandler had a PhD in psychology but was passed over for positions at the University of Maryland because she was “a middle-aged housewife” and “too strong for a woman.” Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act barred such sex discrimination in employment but exempted educational institutions. As a remedy, in 1967, President Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, prohibiting sex discrimination by organizations with federal contracts. Sandler used LBJ’s order to fight discrimination.
As the one-woman Committee on Federal Contract Compliance at WEAL (Women’s Equity Action League), she brought class action suits against 250 educational institutions. Aware that an executive order could be reversed, she joined the staff of the House Education Committee. With chair Edith Green (D-Oregon) and Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii), Sandler drafted Title IX.
Edith Green (D-OR) Patsy Takemoto Mink (D-HI)
Green, who was not allowed to teach after she married, worked as an educational lobbyist before running for Congress in 1954. The author of the Equal Pay Act served until 1974. Mink, a Japanese American, was the first “woman of color” elected to Congress, in 1964. She earned a law degree from the University of Chicago but was shocked by stateside racism. She served for 24 nonconsecutive years.
Title IX prohibited discrimination on account of sex in any K-12 school, college or university receiving federal funds. Non-compliance risked losing funding. Sandler discouraged feminists from testifying because she did not want to draw attention to its scope. Before and after data is staggering. Fifty years later, 3.4 million girls and 4.5 million boys are on high school teams and women are 44% of all college athletes. Without threats, girls joined soccer teams and the Little League. “Before or after Title IX” became a generational marker among women.
Women’s sports lacked adequate resources for staff, facilities, equipment, uniforms, even transportation. More equitable investment produced professional superstars, Olympic gold medalists and World Cup champions. Mia Hamm, whose record of 158 career soccer goals remains unbroken, appeared on a Wheaties box, in Nike ads and as a Barbie icon. Both Hamm and her teammate Brandi Chastain played on boys’ teams growing up.
Brandi Chastain penalty kick won the 1999 Women’s World Cup for the US against China.
Title IX changed our culture but challenges remain. In 1973, Billie Jean King insisted on equal prize purses at the US Open. In May 2020, a federal judge rejected a suit about pay equity and working conditions brought by the US women’s soccer team, four-time World Cup winners. Megan Rapinoe responded, “One cannot simply outperform discrimination.”
Female athletes earn fewer endorsements and lower salaries than their male counterparts, but that may change. Last March, 24.1 million fans watched the women’s college championship game between Iowa and South Carolina. It was the most watched, non-football telecast in ESPN history.
Based on the visibility and popularity of female athletes, people assume that Title IX has been a sweeping success. Not for everyone. It is subject to countless lawsuits. Grove City College v. [Secretary of Education Terrell] Bell was the first to reach the Supreme Court. The small, private, church-affiliated school in northwest Pennsylvania was charged with violating Title IX. It had never taken any federal money, but 140 of its 2200 students received government grants. In 1984 the Court held, 6:3, that Title IX applied but only to specific programs; in this case, to the office of financial aid. That allowed an athletic department to ignore Title IX if only the physics department got a government grant. Many more challenges followed.
Title IX is supposed to protect female students not only from inequitable programs but also from sexual harassment. More recently, it has been used to protect the rights and access to sports by transgender women. In April 2024 the Department of Education issued new regulations to protect trans students. A week ago, on behalf of plaintiffs representing Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho, a federal court blocked enforcement of the new guidelines, creating confusion among other states about rules for the next school year. I’m saving the trans topic for another essay.
The Chronicle of Higher Education is tracking thousands of pending suits relating to sex discrimination which have not been resolved. Hundreds of colleges have been noncompliant without consequences. Despite enormous gains for women, the perception of the effectiveness of Title IX exceeds its reality, Yet the abstract idea of equal access has motivated millions of women and girls to participate, compete and thrive.
Dearest Gentle Readers: How does Heather Cox Richardson do this every day?? Clearly she is a phenomenal woman! I’ve never written back-to-back PINKS before. I was going to go for a triple play and tackle the anniversary of the Dobbs decision tomorrow, June 24. I would have delineated the factual errors in Justice Alito’s decision and described examples of the resourcefulness, resilience and despair of women whose reproductive rights and personal autonomy have disappeared. But I do not want to wear you or me out with TMI. Onward!
SOURCES
Photo credits: public domain.
Deborah Brake, Getting in the Game: Title IX and the Women’s Sports Revolution (NYU Press, 2010).
Alina Tugend, “Title IX at Age 50,” New York Times, https://www.alinatugend.com/article/title-ix-at-50/
Emily Langer, “Bernice Sandler, ‘Godmother of Title IX,’ Who Championed Women’s Rights on Campus, Dies at 90,” Washington Post (January 7, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/bernice-sandler-godmother-of-title-ix-who-championed-womens-rights-on-campus-dies-at-90/2019/01/07/9633e7b4-1297-11e9-90a8-136fa44b80ba_story.html
Maria Cramer, “How Women’s Sports Teams Got Their Start,” New York Times (April 28, 2022),
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/sports/title-ix-anniversary-womens-sports.html?
"Grove City College v. Bell." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/1983/82-792.
Wesley Jenkins, “Hundreds of Colleges May Be Out of Compliance With Title IX. Here’s Why,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (October 23, 2019), https://www.chroncile.com/article/hundreds-of-colleges-may-be-out-of-compliance-with-title-ix-heres-why
Lindsay Crouse, “Title IX Has Not Done Enough for Women’s Sports,” New York Times (June 24, 2022), A23.
David French, “The Legal Foundation of Women’s Sports Is Under Fire,” New York Times June 26, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/opinion/womens-sports-under-fire.html
Laura Meckler, “Court Blocks Title IX Rules for Transgender Students,” Washington Post (June 15, 2024), https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/06/14/transgender-titleix-schools-federal-court/
Thank you for this! this is a terrific summary of the title IX history and the persistent battle for equity, particularly as it relates to women's athletics.