Backward Steps

This week, we have discussed the history women attending colleges and intercollegiate sports in their early years. Although we haven't covered Title IX yet, it is one of the biggest structural innovations in the history of women’s sports and women’s college experiences in general. However, in recent years Title IX has been talked about negatively and has even been credited to problems tied to men’s sports.

Today in the Title IX blog, there was a post titled “No sand v-ball in San Diego.” The post talks about San Diego University, and its recent plans to add two new women’s sports to their athletics program: lacrosse and sand volleyball. This was under Title IX action: they wanted to decrease the gap in scholarship dollars and opportunities between male and female athletes at the university.

But the plans changed. In more recent history, the percentage of female students attending college is slightly higher than male students. However, in the past few years female enrollment numbers at SDU have decreased. Because of this, the plan for adding sand volleyball was cancelled. Lacrosse is the only one being added now. People have been questioning if this case is similar to some other investigations at other colleges of discriminating against female applicants to keep their undergraduate populations even. If Title IX was implemented to help women, why does it seem to be hurting them? People in power have manipulated this legislation to use it to their advantage.

Personally I think it’s a shame. After everything we have learned in our history unit the past few weeks, it seems very unfair. Women have faced so much discrimination in higher education, particularly in athletics. Now when structural changes have been made to help that, why are they being used to the authority’s advantage? It doesn’t seem right. That was not the purpose of Title IX at all.

It all goes back to the issue of power. After Title IX was passed, many college sport programs combined their men’s and women’s programs for the same sport under the same administration. In Nancy Theberge and Susan Birrell’s piece “Structural Constraints Facing Women In Sport,” they make a very important point: the power and control for the majority of these sport programs are under men’s authority. Before Title IX was passed 90% of the head athletic directors of women’s collegiate programs were women. But in 1990, only 15.9% of those programs were directed by women.

In more recent history, it would seem as though Title IX is having inhibitorier and negative consequences than positive ones. Although this was never meant to happen, that is the way that people of authority and power, more specifically men, have manipulated it.