Title IX turns 40

Paige Sultzbach, Arizona High School State champion second-base woman Meet Paige Sultzbach, the face of Title IX in 2012, 40 years after the landmark legislation, the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, passed.

'I just joined baseball because the school does not offer high school softball so I decided why not,' said Paige Sultzbach. 'The boys have always been supportive, like my big brothers.'

It wouldn't have been a story at all, but for the fact that Sultzbach and her teammates reached the state championship and their would-be opponents, the private Our Lady of Sorrows Academy, decided to forfeit the game rather than share a playing field with a female. Officially, the school said "As a Catholic school we promote the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years especially in physical education.'

It's a testament to the success of Title IX that the remarkable part of this story isn't that Sultzbach tried out for and landed a starting position on her school's baseball team. That's not newsworthy anymore. No, the part that made news is that there's still a school administration out there in 21st century America that has a problem with that. The fact that it's news is progress.

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, 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...
'Title 20 U.S.C. Sections 1681-1688

Title IX wasn't just intended to provide girls and women the opportunity to play sports in public education, but to make sure boys and girls had equal access to every learning opportunity, to get girls out of the home ec class and into shop, and vice versa for boys. By the time I was in high school, just in the decade following Title IX, home ec didn't exist anymore; we had co-ed "life skills" courses in which everyone learned the basics of feeding themselves, balancing a checkbook, running a household independently. Shop was still shop, but less segregated by sex than by the fact, at my school at least, that it wasn't a particularly "cool" elective.

The advances by women academically in the post Title IX America has been exceptional. In 1976, women were just 48 percent of enrolled undergraduate students. By 1996, they comprised the majority, at 56 percent. In the following decade women earned around 62 percent of the associate's degrees awarded, and around 57 percent of bachelor's degrees. The achievements for minority women are particularly remarkable.

For nearly all levels of degrees within different race/ethnic groups, women earned the majority of degrees in 2008'09. For example, Black females earned 68 percent of associate's degrees, 66 percent of bachelor's degrees, 72 percent of master's degrees, 62 percent of first-professional degrees, and 67 percent of doctoral degrees awarded to Black students. Hispanic females earned 62 percent of associate's degrees, 61 percent of bachelor's degrees, 64 percent of master's degrees, 53 percent of first-professional degrees, and 57 percent of doctoral degrees awarded to Hispanic students.

Members of the "Original Nine" professional
tennis players who formed a new tennis tour.
Back row (L-R): Valerie Ziegenfuss, Billie Jean King,
Nancy Richey,Jane "Peaches" Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon.
Front row (L-R): Judy Tegart Dalton,
Kerry Melville Reid,Rosemary "Rosie" Casals
and Gladys Heldman, mother of Julie Heldman.
Julie Heldman sat at the same spot occupied
by her mother 40 years ago in the bottom picture. But it's for opening up athletic opportunities for girls that Title IX's 40th anniversary is most celebrated.

"In the '70s we had to make it acceptable for people to accept girls and women as athletes. [...] We had to make it OK for them to be active. Those were much scarier times for females in sports."
'Billie Jean King

What Title IX has done is pretty damned remarkable, from girls' sports programs at every level of education to the establishment of professional athletic leagues for women. We have a whole new set of heroes for all sports fans, documented in this fantastic gallery from Sports Illustrated, the "Top 40 Athletes of the Title IX Era." A trajectory from Billie Jean King to Mary Decker Slaney to Mia Hamm to Maya Moore has redefined athletic achievement and blown apart preconceptions of what "athlete" means.

It's not just the athletes, either. You won't get a lot of argument if you say Pat Summitt, Tennessee's women's basketball coach, was in the top five, if not top two, college basketball coaches'men's or women's'of the Title IX era. After eight national titles and a 1,098-208 record, Summitt announced her retirement last month, less than a year after she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Her record is burnished by the fact that every woman who completed her eligibility playing for the Lady Vols under Summitt graduated.

But it's changed the world too for all of us not-so-athletic types, or at least the ones not really good enough to compete, like self-proclaimed "everyday athlete" Risa Isard.

Growing up, I wasn't an elite athlete, but I had passion to spare. I ran, jumped, threw and kicked on a daily basis, and eventually I found my calling in high school track and cross country. I was good (I earned seven varsity letters), but not good enough for the next level. [...]

Being an athlete is a source of confidence and empowerment and provides women like myself with a positive image of our bodies. It's hard to feel badly about yourself after a five-mile run, even if you end up short of your target time and panting at the finish. It's hard to feel as if there is an obstacle out of your reach after running mile repeats in blistering heat. It's hard to feel alone when you are surrounded by teammates and connected to every other female athlete in an invisible, but powerful, way.

And that's why Title IX didn't just change the law. It changed the culture. It created a life for me that made it OK to play sports and to race my heart out during gym class. Most important, it gave rise to teams that helped girls like me to find ourselves.

My only real athletic achievement was becoming a proficient horsewoman in my pre-teens. I don't like running, suck at tennis, am worse at golf, won't drown in a pool, and am a great shot in basketball, but am not coordinated enough to do a lay-up or really anything else on the floor. But I can ride, and as a child, being able to work with a 1,500-pound animal, being able to get it to do what I wanted it to with grace and skill was phenomenally confidence building. For all the girls who aren't lucky enough to grow up on a cattle ranch with horses at their disposal, organized sports provide that kind of experience'the experience that turned a generation of girls into confident, capable women.

We need every one of them. Because the fight for educational equality is not over, far from it. Girls and women in plenty of schools still don't have the same access to resources and opportunities as boys. In 2011, schools provided 1.3 million fewer chances for girls to play sports in high school as compared to boys. As in every area of life, women still have to sue to get full access to the benefits they are supposed to be provided under the law.

But here's the good news: 40 years of Title IX has created a lot of strong, competitive women who will gladly take on that fight.