On January 30, a commission convened by the Bush administration rejected dramatic changes to Title IX. This means that a program that is broken will not get fixed and that men's sports will continue to suffer discrimination.
Title IX of the Education Amendments passed Congress in 1972. "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex," says its crucial language, "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 measure enjoyed bipartisan support, but a cadre of militant feminists hijacked it quickly. With the help of compliant courts, activist lawyers, echo-chamber journalists, weak-kneed administrators, and politically correct politicians, they got virtually everything they wanted.
There are three ways that schools can prove compliance with Title IX, but the main means is proportionality, the notion that men and women should be equally represented in all endeavors, especially sports, in proportion to their number on campus. As Jessica Gavora pointed out in Tilting the Playing Field, this involves "the belief that men and women are undifferentiated in their abilities and inclinations; and that any disparity in behavior or performance necessarily results from discrimination or the legacy of centuries of past discrimination; and because so many activities do in fact yield such disparities, the federal government must step in to erase them."
As anyone without a grudge against reality knows, men and women are not undifferentiated in their abilities and inclinations. Proportionality, and its promoters, ignores personal differences, effort, and choices among women and men. It also ignores the reality that statistical disparities between people and groups are the rule, not the exception, and are not necessarily the product of discrimination. Funding decisions should be based on the level of interest in particular sports, not proportionality.
Contrary to its original intent, Title IX has become a quota system, pure and simple, enforced with a politically correct McCarthyism. Schools are assumed to be guilty and must prove their innocence. Norma Cantu, Bill Clinton's choice to head the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Education, deployed a 700-member staff and $60 million budget. She reviewed 240 schools from which no civil-rights complaint had been filed, and she demanded that her enforcement squads double the number of complaints.
The easiest way for schools to achieve proportionality, of course, is to cut men's sports. The victims include longstanding baseball programs at Providence College and Colgate, and the UCLA swim team that had sent so many to the Olympics, among many others. From 1982-2002, 138 colleges dropped their wrestling programs. Far from being seen as a tragic consequence of Title IX, this is the outcome that quota forces wanted all along. In the minds of feminists such as Maria Burton Nelson, author of The Stronger Women Get, the More Men Love Football, wrestling, like football, is macho nonsense that deserves to be banished.
The way it is being applied and enforced, Title IX is not only discriminatory and damaging to men's sports, but it is patronizing to women. When women do succeed, it is attributed not to their training, determination, or skill, but to Title IX. As Jessica Gavora notes, this makes women athletes the "welfare queens of sports."
It is tragic that the Bush panel could not rectify something as obviously unfair as the proportionality dogma. The proceedings and surrounding protests revealed that many within mainstream feminism remain dogmatic and narrow minded. Despite claims of independence, they also remain wedded to big government.
As Jessica Gavora shows, women's sports were on the rise before Title IX and would surely have prospered without it, and without punishing men. With apologies to Ms. Nelson, the stronger women get, the less they need Big Brother to look out for them.
Sally Pipes is President and CEO at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.
