Feature

THE WOMEN'S

ISSUE

From reproductive rights to women in sport, lots has changed—and changed again—in the last 50 years. Our annual Women’s Issue takes a look at some of the issues facing women today, and looks ahead to new frontiers.

Title IX, 50 Years Later

The landmark civil rights bill barring discrimination based on sex in public schools keeps finding new avenues to build equity

By Jack Harvel

In the early 1970s Hawaii Rep. Patsy Mink, with the help of Oregon Rep. Edith Green, drafted a version of what would later become Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The whole bill modified financial aid, expanded the Equal Pay Act of 1963 to cover executives, administrators and outside salespeople, and most notably prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions. Before then, schools limited educational opportunities for women.

“If you were in math and science, you did not have access to the universities,” said Ellen Schmidt-Devlin, co-founder and executive director of the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management Program.

Schmidt-Devlin has personal experience of schools’ practices of diverting women from math and science. She was in high school when Title IX passed, but her sister attended Oregon State University before it was enacted.

“Without a doubt she would have been a computer scientist. She went to Oregon State, and they quickly showed her the Home Ec. college,” Schmidt-Devlin said. “She kept on going over saying, ‘I think I want to go to this college, and I think I might be good at this.’ And they kept saying, ‘Well, no, no, no, you’re a woman, you’ll be over here.’”

Women in sports

There was a similar chilling effect in sports, which is among the most visible ways Title IX changed the landscape of public education. Few sports were available to women prior to that.

“There were some girls sports—you could do cheerleading, you could maybe play tennis, there was maybe one or two things you could do as a girl in high school, but there wasn’t very much opportunity,” SchmidtDevlin said. “In 1972, Title IX was passed, and the high schools started adding sports for the girls. I was right there and I was in heaven. I could play basketball or play volleyball and I had already started to run.”

College-level athletics was separated into the National Collegiate Athletic Association for men, and the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. In 1981 the NCAA offered championships for women, causing many AIAW defections. The AIAW lost an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and would cease to exist by 1983. Schmidt-Devlin felt the AIAW was too cautious in advancing women’s sports.

“We quickly found out that the NCAA only wanted men at that point. And the AIAW were responsible for women, and their approach was that they have a section of high performing women, but this is more about opportunity, and participation, and we need to slow things down, so that we can allow more women’s coaches to be developed and ready to lead women,” SchmidtDevlin said. “Rather than letting it evolve and letting

Courtesy of Truby Studio, Durant, Oklahoma

The Oklahoma Presbyterian College Cardinals were trailblazers for pre-Title IX women’s athletics, offering scholarships 40 years before the legislation passed. Without competition, they mostly played against semi-professional women’s teams.

“Women’s sports is still trying to figure out how to be a profitable business. And I think it’s clearly on the way. Soccer, basketball, tennis, it’s clearly on the way, but still, it’s expensive for the universities.”