Woman; Title IX

And one. Thing. Good evening and welcome to woman my guest this evening we'll discuss equal education

and most particularly the controversial title 9 of the education amendments of 1972 which among other things mandates equal treatment for women in athletic programs. With me tonight is Congressman Michael Blue and a first term Democrat from Iowa. Mr. Boone is on the House committee of Education and Labor and the Subcommittee on higher education. Also with me tonight is Margaret Margaret is associate director of the project on the Status of Women for the Association of American colleges. She's also director of the National Institute for Women and sport. Welcome to both of you. Margaret what is all the hoopla about. Give us the wording of Title 9. OK the wording of Title 9 which became law in 1972 is that no person in the United States. On the basis of sex be excluded from participation. In denied the benefits of or subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial

assistance. It's a broad law a very basic law. Now we talked in terms of 1972 with it's 1975 what's been happening in the interim. Well in June of 1974 you publish some draft regulations for implementing the law. And in July of 1975 those regulations finally went into effect would happen between 1972 and 1974 though. It took you a long time to analyze the problem and come up with some standards for judging sex discrimination. Title is the only broad federal law prohibiting sex discrimination against students. So they really didn't have a whole lot of precedence in terms of. How to set their criteria and standards. There are a lot of issues Congressman bluing concerning Title 9 other than the

most controversial one which seems to be the sports issue which we'll get into in a little while. But can we talk a little bit about some of these less publicized like for instance recruitment and admissions. You know that's. I think that's the direction the people really ought to turn when they take a look at Title 9. Frankly because. Just one small part of it has dealt with that flood X and you know that's grab center stage. For three years really the it's been kicked around. It gets into every aspect of education. With thrust being eliminated discrimination as much as possible. Admissions has been a source of. Flagrant discrimination for years especially on the college campus where there's been. A concerted efforts to establish quotas in reverse and here it's. The same woman it's all that says you can't have that kind of a policy and more. Individuals have to be admitted

to co-educational institutions regardless. Of their sex. Those women who have. Because of of quotas who have not been able to qualify in the past even though they might be more qualified for a mission to an institution will now be able to be admitted. It's a tremendous barrier that's been dropped. And I think it's far more important than all of the hoopla about athletics and. And what's going to happen to the football game or the. A professional basketball team. There are two reasons I think that we're really seeing a lot more women in the professional schools now in medical school in law school. First reason is that. It's illegal now to make it more difficult for women to get in than for men to get in. It's a clear violation of the law and it has been for several years since. The since Title 9 went into effect. And the second reason I think is is tied into the opportunity that Title 9 provides and

that's the rising aspirations. Of women now that they see that there's an opportunity for them to get into professional training and into good jobs. They're more likely to aspire to that and to attempt to. What are some of the examples of the overt discrimination in admissions. Well there have been clear quotas on the number of women admitted. Even public universities and public colleges have a kind of percentages are we talking and quotas. They've had quotas of 30 or 40 percent. Often times or instead of having clear quotas they've set higher test scores and higher grade point averages for women in order. For them to be admitted. There are also a number of subtle. Types of discrimination that have worked to keep women out. For example if if a woman is applying to graduate school. She's often found it more difficult to get a fellowship because they say her husband all supporter or she's not married they say that when you get married and drop out so you're a bad

risk. A lot of people made assumptions about how women will lead their lives which leads them to treat the same information for women and men differently and make it more difficult for women to get in. You had up you had some I think you had a statistic of a University of Georgia quota figure until a couple of years ago they had a. 40 percent. Quota on women. That's a public institution which is. Paid for by. Tax tax dollars they no longer have. Such a similar quota. Private undergraduate schools. Under Title 9 can still legally have quotas. On admitting women. Public counterparts of those schools cannot. And the graduate schools cannot even in private institutions. There's another face to this admissions to the people that. Probably don't give much thought to connection with the whole scholarship. And

private funding approaches really discriminate against them. There's really no road scholarship counterpart. A lot of challenges as well will have a different course requirements in different areas for women than for men. Many cases the requirements are tougher. You know. It's a built in barrier. OK once you get it we're going to make it a little tougher for you to cover something like the Rhodes Scholarship. I think it does in terms of availability of opportunity that has what title it says that you have a scholarship like the Rhodes which offers training abroad you have to have a similar types of opportunities for women. So you have to eliminate the role you know. And another type of thing is in classes when I was in high school I had to take Home Ec. And I couldn't take shop and the boys had to take shop and they couldn't take Home Ec. And quite frankly I needed

much of it. Economics courses but that opportunity was was denied to me. That type of sex discrimination is a clear violation of both the spirit and the letter of title. How will it affect student rules and regulations. It will affect them quite quite clearly if you have different rules or regulations based on sex. Then that's a. Violation. Of title no line. An example is for example many educational colleges. Have curfew route rules. For the female students and no curfew rules for the male students. Now under. Title the title and regulation in law it seems pretty clear that institutions have a choice of either. Having the male standard for the females. No curfews having the female standard for the males that is have them the males come in at 9:30 or come up with something in between for both students but the

basic idea is that whatever you do you do equally regardless of the sex of. The student. Visiting Hours is well within dormitories. Activities within the door. Regulations around campus the. Campus as a store only vary. From male to female. I think there's going to be a lot of shaking up if you will with. That approach in the future there's going to have to be a lot of the opponents of tile nine have said it's going to be an immediate radical change and that you know we're never going to see the end of this how do you feel about that. Well we've been waiting three years for that radical change. You can be put into words colleges and and K through 12 schools across the country you know what do. I think we've waited long enough. And it's about time the guidelines were about. I don't think

it is going to run in with a big stick and start clubbing administrators over the head. I do think they're going to be quite forceful. In their efforts to create the desire and educational arenas to meet the standards set out. You know the. Concept of overwhelming change and revolution coming it is terribly overrated. Even so often give up so much in the regulations that parts of it are really too weak. And led some to consider opposing it on that basis if it hadn't been so long between passage of the law and the regulations. And. So I think it's important to realize too that. The types of changes that the regulations set down are the types of changes that are already happening on campus campuses because of the interest in concern. By. The parents. By the students by the teachers by the faculty are

starting to take a look at all aspects of their program for sex discrimination. And one of the components of the regulation which says that. Every single covered institution has to do a self evaluation to determine where their problems are. It's something that a number of campuses a number of schools have already done. And the interesting thing that's happened. Is that. A lot of discrimination. Occurs because it's habitual because people don't really realize they're discriminating. And in doing a self evaluation in systematically looking through their admissions procedures for colleges the rules and regulations they have the health benefits they offer the sports opportunities the class requirements the types of opportunities counseling the types of opportunities they offer. Schools have found. That they were discriminating unintentionally. In a number of

instances and the self evaluation has given them. A perfect opportunity. To find their own problems and come up with solutions to their problems so that they really really sort of helps. Help them resolve their own problems rather than having to go through the rather. Sometimes messy complaint. Process of. Which can become an adversary. Is not going to be a question of time also before there is going to be enforced many. Others who are three years in the sports or. The college and high school and high school as well and the mediately for the moment when you're still in the one year when you know there really isn't much of an immediate earthshaking. But that's just my gut with regard to sports and physical education. All of the other aspects became effective on July 21st when of this of 1975 when the regulation went into effect

so schools are now fully covered by regulation that spells out a lot of criteria to be used in judging sex discrimination. How is this going to affect single sex courses and women's studies programs. It's questionable. Under what circumstances single sex courses could be justified. It's clear that women's studies programs are perfectly consistent with. Title knowing. That programs designed to overcome a missions and course material in the past. Are. Consistent. As a matter of fact I think even encouraged. Under Title law on. The question of whether or not you can limit admission to those courses to women only is a much more difficult question and you probably have to really be able to to show that. Having a single sex course was absolutely essential in the

short term to overcome the effects of past discrimination. Is it true that the regulations don't cover sex bias in textbooks. Yes that's right. Why. I'm not exactly sure why. I'm not too terribly were of the first couple of years of AGW dwelling into this I think it's an area of exceptions for innovation. We really need to work at. It. And quickly. You know even the early readers the first learners are terribly slack terribly discriminatory for us. But yet it's a it's a whole area of the title mind rules never get into. To my knowledge. And is exceptionally difficult to get the Committee to want to delve in. Touched on it. In different hearings over the last several months but never really been able to get enough momentum to get a handle. On. A program. Here one of the concerns that people have had in the First Amendment concerns and freedom freedom of speech. In the long run

through court decisions it may turn out the title line will be interpreted to cover textbooks. In the short run. The area of evaluating. Text books in your church in your child's school in your school to see if they're there biased is the type of activity the lot of local communities are doing. PTA days community groups women's studies. Classes women's studies students are taking a look at BIOS and textbooks and I think we're going to see a lot of change there is if you look at some of the types of discrimination. It even appears in math books when there's a math problem with. Counting the number of cookies. Joyce talks about the little girl's counting number of cookies or the myth problem counting nuts and bolts in the car or. Enjoying something in geography. Then they use news mail examples. In

many children's readers all of the the the women have have have aprons on. They never go outside they're pictured inside. The little girls never get dirty. I didn't. And I've never seen a little girl yet that didn't didn't get didn't get dirty. There's a lot of. Both subtle and overt discrimination there that's. And the local communities. Are starting to look into. And I think that's. That may be the first step. In the self evaluation aspect of tight online I think is going to help greatly. You know the ironic thing is that that's one of the parts of title mine. That the opponents of the regulation went after as something that was outside of the scope of the intent of Congress in writing the law specifically. And yet it's the heart of it. You know it's the one part as Margaret is pointing out that really isn't a club thing it's a self-help kind of a provision.

You know let's avoid beating and directing folks take a look at your problems analyze your habits in relationship to what you know the real world ought to be like and go from there. And many many textbooks and authors of textbooks. I think if if they do the same thing although not required to. Are going to necessarily I think start to change maybe their habits. It was a number of years I don't remember those kinds of textbooks. You know more directly right McGraw-Hill for instance is one of the publishers who already has begun to tend to write. Let's talk about that hysterical Hornets national sports thing. Where would you like to start. I don't know what was in all the opposition I think is a good way to begin is to analyze the opposition. The main opposition came from. Such organizations as the National Collegiate Athletic Association the American Football Coaches Association. And.

They had a number of concerns. And I think. Unfounded concerns that the title non-regulation as written. Would seriously jeopardize their programs. I think it's interesting to take a look at the other side and realize that a number of women's advocacy groups came very very close to opposing the entire regulation because they felt that the athletics section. Didn't go far enough in protecting the rights of a. STUDENT. Women's student athletes. Let's talk about exactly what it does mandate and how to fix it. You know things like context sports and things like that. Basically it mandates equal availability of a sport based on the interest on the campus. In terms of co-education participation within that sport. It excludes the educational aspect in what's known as a contact sport.

Football rugby baseball things of this nature. It's baseball complex that's hard to believe. I've seen a film where all that about little league. But it excludes those from the integration aspect but it does require that if the interest is on the campus they have to offer that same sport within that one point there's something in the regulation about taking a poll on the campus to see where the interest was. Not was taken out. That was an earlier draft of the regulation and that was taken out and now what there is is there's a laundry list that says. It says in in considering whether or not a school is providing equal opportunity. AGW take a look at the interest and ability of the. Various of the of the two sexes the facilities in the Quitman the coaching the publicity. The. Types of opportunities they have to practice time and scheduling and produce and travel. But then

at the end of this list. There's a specific sentence that says equal money is not required aggregate expenditures are not required. But that's what people fear most isn't it. They're not just raised all the time. You are requiring us to break up our spectator interest. You know you're going to destroy collegiate football it'll never be the same again. Even if that's the truth so what is my idea of the regulation that it is it is or the truth whether or not you want to pay that yes under the regulation it isn't. I readily admit that you know my views are prejudiced on the basis that we have twin daughters who may one day go to school and start thinking that they are equal and unless we do something to open the doors when I have to tell them they're not you know it's been kind of hard. Maybe one of them might develop some athletic abilities that might warrant a scholarship program for them. Why should they have to pay their way.

When the men don't have to in many respects you know. So I am not too concerned about breaking a world. If he wants to be a minor league coach let him get off the campus. If the program is not of educational value then it ought not to be on the campus. It is and it ought to be available equally to both sexes. But the regulation as written allows a royalty University of Texas program to stay on campus pretty much. As it is right now. You know I read somewhere that there's an annual intercollegiate athletic budget of three hundred million dollars. Yeah probably right. Yeah it's about three hundred million dollars it's about the budget for intercollegiate athletics is about 1 percent of the total expenditure. In higher education. And if you take that. 1 1 percent. National study done in 1974. And found that. The women's. Intercollegiate sports budget was equal to 2

percent. 2 percent of the men's budget. That's. Not a whole lot but if you look at it. Compared to where we. Women sports programs were when Title 9 was passed then it was only 1 percent. So I guess you could say it was a hundred percent increase. Progress in. Progress I guess. You know nobody's going to it looks that way to most college athletic departments support themselves. No. No I think that's a popular misconception. Most college athletic programs run a deficit. Probably half a dozen programs in the country. Make money on their sports programs. And they're the ones that get a good bowl bid get TV contracts. And get outside sources of money. Most.

Big time college sports programs are supported by mandatory student fees. By special appropriations the legislature. And there are also a lot of. Hidden. Hidden subsidies by the institution for example the bond issue in the stadium may be picked up out of general funds. The training equipment or personnel trainers come out of physical education Apia project the. Tax exemption status. That they receive is there because. It's another objection that some coaches had is that athletics is really outside the jurisdiction of Title 9. They were something you're going to be it looked into very thoroughly and they were saying that only that was it outside of the jurisdiction. But I think the NCAA tried to leave the impression.

That it was outside the perimeter of an educational program as such but it was part of an educational institution but not part of the educational program. That's a distinction I don't know really existed. But even the most ardent. Supporters of that view on the committee realised that it wasn't outside of the scope. Of the rules and and the law as written. In fact they give credence to that belief by introducing a separate piece of legislation to change the law in athletics and physical education and separated from the resolution that would have stricken parts of the regulations for being outside of the school. So I think that was a rather unanimous feeling in the subcommittee that they were ardent supporters of Dura as well. As within the parameters. That have to go to the law.

If they really want to change one thing that's important to recognize that the. The few big time teams. That. Make it onto television for the games are very few teams. Most institutions. Do. Their intercollegiate athletic programs like an educational. Activity. It. Is very very often an integral part of the education program at that institution. And it's not the type. Of. Program that was really described before. Before your. Committee. Will physical education classes be co-education. Some of them will. Will it be a mandatory thing. Or it's necessary physical education programs will be in many parts of the country it has been for a good number of years. And the interesting thing about the

floor the week before the regulations was that if it passed it might well have. Polished the programs that were in existence around the country. Many school districts opposing it on that basis. You're going to break up something that's worked. I think it's important to know too that. The instruction in contact sports can still be single sex. But. When you're talking about tennis or archery or badminton. That instruction is to be coeducational in elementary schools have until July of 1976 to come into that. And high schools and colleges have until July of 1700 So they have an adjustment period and they can break teams up on the basis of that. So you think it's all going to work out. I think it is beautiful. We're out of time. I thank you Michel. And thank you and Goodnight goodnight. The.

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