When the 2018 Winter Olympics closed, American women had won more medals than men for the first time in 20 years. Some observers attributed the women’s success to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX prohibits institutions that receive federal funds from practicing gender discrimination in educational programs or activities. The law states: “No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid.”
Enforced by the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, it was the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination against students and employees in these institutions.
Until the passage of the Education Amendments of 1972, the United States had no national policy regarding women and girls in education. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in education on the basis of race, color, and national origin but did not include sex. Although Title VII of the act prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex, it applied only to employment. The law’s silence permitted public colleges and universities the option of refusing even to admit women. For example, Virginia state law prohibited women from being admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Virginia, the most highly rated public institution of higher education in Virginia. It was only under a court order that the college admitted its first woman in 1970.
Married women also experienced legal discrimination in education, regardless of their family’s status. One example occurred in 1966, when Luci Baines Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson, applied for readmission to Georgetown University after her marriage. The university denied her application because the school did not accept married women students.
Institutions of higher education that admitted women had no legal requirements to provide women with educational or program opportunities comparable to those offered to men. Significant differences existed in athletic and sports programs available to women and men at most colleges and universities. For example, men’s football and basketball teams held center stage on many campuses, but women’s sports programs were neglected, if they existed at all. A Connecticut judge explained in 1971: “Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls.”
Feminist leaders objected to this form of legal discrimination on the basis of sex, at least in part because many of them were well educated, middle-class women who valued education. Bernice Sandler, who was active in the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL), took a leading role in exploring ways to end sex discrimination in education. In 1970, Sandler used President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11375 as the basis for a class action suit that WEAL filed. The executive order prohibited discrimination, on the basis of sex, by all federal contractors, including educational institutions. In its suit, WEAL asked for reviews of all institutions with federal contracts, filed suit against 260 institutions, and later filed suit against all medical schools in the country. Sandler’s actions prompted Congresswoman Martha Griffiths (D-MI) to give the first speech in Congress on gender discrimination in education.
Also in 1970, WEAL advisory board member and Democratic congresswoman Edith Green of Oregon held congressional hearings on sex discrimination in education, the first devoted to the topic. WEAL assisted Green with the hearings by recommending individuals to provide testimony and in other ways. After the hearings, Green asked Sandler to join the committee staff and assemble the written record of the hearings, making Sandler the first person ever appointed to the staff of a congressional committee to work specifically in the area of women’s rights. The resulting two volumes, more than 1,000 pages total, concretely established the facts of sex discrimination in education; after Green had thousands of copies printed and distributed, they provided evidence for other activists to use in their advocacy for educational equity. In 1971, members of Congress responded to the hearings by introducing several plans to prohibit sex discrimination in education, but it took several months to negotiate a plan for accomplishing the goal.
The Education Amendments of 1972 apply to all schools from preschool through graduate and professional schools and prohibit any education program receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex. Educational institutions are prohibited from having different admissions or other standards for women and men and from discriminating against married women, pregnant women, and women with children. As a result, girls and women gained access to athletic facilities equal to those granted to men, became eligible for athletic scholarships, and obtained equal opportunities to engage in sports. The law requires schools to have teams for males and for females in any given sport, or if there is no girls’ team in a sport, they must be permitted to try out for boys’ teams.
In 1984, the U.S. Department of Justice sought to enforce the broad scope of Title IX, but in Grove City College v. Bell the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Title IX was program-specific, meaning that only those programs within institutions that received federal funds had to comply with Title IX. With the passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, however, Congress made the institutions, not just directly funded programs, responsible for compliance with Title IX. The U.S. Supreme Court expanded Title IX in Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992) by ruling that sexually harassed students could sue for monetary awards.
It is arguable that the law has opened significant opportunities for girls and women. For example, in the 1972 school year, fewer than 300,000 girls were involved in high school sports, but in the 2010-2011 school year that number had grown over 10 times to nearly 3.2 million. At the college level, in the 1971-1972 academic year about 30,000 women participated in athletics, while over 300,000 participated in the 2010-2011 academic year.
While the law’s demands for equality in athletics has received a great deal of attention, other opportunities have opened. For example, seventh and eighth grade girls dramatically increased their math SAT scores. The percentage of women earning PhDs in science, technology, engineering, and math grew from 11 percent in 1972 to 40 percent in 2006.
Title IX also prohibits harassment based upon sex. While more than half of girls and 40 percent of boys in grades 7 through 12 reported sexual harassment, 85 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students report it. The law requires schools to eliminate hostile environments.
See also: Affirmative Action; Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII; Davis v. Monroe County School Board of Education (1999); Education, Women and; Executive Order 11375; Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992); Green, Edith Starrett; Grove City College v. Bell; Sexual Harassment; Women’s Equity Action League
References: Baer, Women in American Law: The Struggle Toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present (1996); Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 92nd Congress, 2nd Session 1972 (1973); Hankerson, “Courts Have Extended Sex Bias Law’s Reach” (1999); Wandersee, American Women in the 1970s: On the Move (1988); National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education, Title IX: Working to Ensure Gender Equity in Education (Washington, D.C.: NCWGE), 2012. Spellings, “Remarks to the First National Summit on the Advancement of Girls in Math and Science.”