Title IX
US Dept of Labor Title IX website
Many of you may know about Title IX; many more of you may have benefited from Title IX without even knowing it! I would urge you to check out the original document either via the U.S. Dept of Labor (which you see on this slide) or via the Title IX website. I'll give you the short version here: Title IX requires that federally funded educational programs provide the same opportunities for boys and girls, men, and women. Title IX affects education in the classroom and on the field. Sometimes Title IX is associated only with equality in sport, but it actually concerns a range of educational programming. You will have a chance to hear more about Title IX and the current state of women in sports when you watch Playing Unfair this week. In case you think that we don't need feminism or Title IX anymore, let me rattle off a few statistics from the Title IX Info website (http://www.titleix.info/History/History-Overview.aspx ): "Before Title IX, the primary physical activities for girls were cheerleading and square-dancing. Only 1 in 27 girls played high school sports. There were virtually no college scholarships for female athletes. And female college athletes received only two percent of overall athletic budgets." Even now, girls and women are proportionally under-represented in high school and college athletics. AND more importantly, we have not finished making all of the larger systemic changes to ideology that would ensure the continuance of women's participation in sports should Title IX cease to exist.