Title IX: Good, Good, but..., or Bad

[smedindy]

smed: My point is not about foggy speculation concerning societal norms but is about the once upon a time accomplishment of more with fewer resources while as a byproduct youth's initiative was being exercised.

The girls had no role models, nor encouragement, and I bet that if many of them asked if they could play the boys may have sneered at them or their parents may have said, 'girls don't play that'. Again, it may not have been overt - rather covert.

[sigma one]

You know, I've never been too much concerned with the rise in the number of women's sports teams as a significant part of the societal movement toward equality for women in all aspects of life.  That some mens' teams have been lost is an unfortunate, and in my view unnecessary, consequence.  The whole women's movement and its consequences for men in all aspects of life is a complicated topic, with many nuances.  Just in recent times have people who know about these things started studying the impact on boys and men--and so on society as a whole. Anyway  it's hard for me to believe that most colleges and universities (and in particular those with big-time football and/or basketball programs) can't find the money to sponsor "minor" sports--not so minor to those who participate in them.  Even knowing that only a few of the big boys (no pun here) actually make money in their athletic programs does not change my thinking on this.  When I see the lists of how many hangers on go to Bowl games, I am disgusted that some of those same institutions have dropped mens' programs.  With DIII schools, I am not surprised that mens' teams are lost when a school does the math and knows that it has to comply to receive Federal money.
     I do recall a fairly recent study that showed the number of participants in high school wrestling has climbed in the last twenty years. By the way, another counting of programs indicates that college wrestling is not the sport most dropped.  Cross country, indoor track and field, golf, tennis, rowing (!), outdoor track and field, and swimming have all been lost in greater numbers (in part, I think, because not as many schools offered wrestling to start with.  But what a list.) Having watched a lot of college wrestling and track and field for a long time, one of the ironies for me is that the decrease in the number of teams in these sports has actually resulted in a higher level of competition in Division III.  Wrestling is harder to gauge--but I'm told the competitive level is way up, And look at the national records in DIII T & F and what has happened to them in the last decade or more.   As more DI and DII schools drop wrestling and track and field, dedicated athletes look for somewhere to compete, and this trickles down (or up) to DIII.  At least that's my theory--in addition to realizing that today's athletes are bigger, stronger, and better trained than the athletes of the past.     
     How schools adding football fits into all this, in light of Title IX, is another interesting discussion as they fight for male students.  It would be fascinating to be a fly on a campus wall when the discussions of adding a football comes up.  This makes my head hurt.  Fascinating discussion on this board:  passionate, learned, and educational.  We have to do something between O:OO on the clock and kick off.





   

                                                                         

[DGPugh]

"But the south isn't a true microcosm of the entire landscape of college athletics."
oh yea, and of that we be proud 

"so I doubt if Title IX disappeared magically they'd all gallop to add wrestling"very very true for the SEC at this point in time, football pays the bills, 2 other boys sports come close to breaking even where i live, but football  really, really pays bills.... and we do like our football in the deep south

keep the faith

[frank uible]

Boo-hoo. As long as we are taking wild guesses about who did what to whom, it is guessed that 1940s girls judiciously chose to use their recreational time as well or better than 1940s boys did theirs, whether the girls use be in endeavors the same as or similar or dissimilar to those of the boys. It is arrogant to substitute our judgments about the value of various recreational pursuits for the judgments of the participants.

[pg04]

Please be a little more general and condescending next time.  Thanks.

[smedindy]

It's also arrogant to discount the pull of societal norms, values and pressures toward how children approach their play time. We are all somewhat products of our environment, for better or worse. And without overt or tacit approval or peer pressure, kids won't engage in an activity.

And while the general notion that girls should have athletics opportunity is probably now cemented in our society, the fact remains that there are significant minorities who think that women are abandoning their 'traditional' place, and sports was not part of their 'traditional' place. It wasn't 100 years ago that women couldn't vote for president, and some cynics believe they only got that right because the 'drys' assumed that women wouldn't vote in 'wet' politicians.

Without a kick in the backside from Title IX, women's sports would be at least 20 years behind where it is today. And that means no feel good stories like the US Women's Soccer team...

[Mr. Ypsi]

It's also arrogant to discount the pull of societal norms, values and pressures toward how children approach their play time. We are all somewhat products of our environment, for better or worse. And without overt or tacit approval or peer pressure, kids won't engage in an activity.

And while the general notion that girls should have athletics opportunity is probably now cemented in our society, the fact remains that there are significant minorities who think that women are abandoning their 'traditional' place, and sports was not part of their 'traditional' place. It wasn't 100 years ago that women couldn't vote for president, and some cynics believe they only got that right because the 'drys' assumed that women wouldn't vote in 'wet' politicians.

Without a kick in the backside from Title IX, women's sports would be at least 20 years behind where it is today. And that means no feel good stories like the US Women's Soccer team...

That is not cynics; that is mainstream historians.  Another reason was that many felt that women had been sufficiently scared about 'Negro predators' that they would support Jim Crow.  The suffragette victory should NOT be equated with the feminist movements of the 1800s or later 1900s.

I do totally agree with your last paragraph, though I might hazard at least 30 years.  Mia Hamm was so motivated she probably still would have been Mia Hamm, but she might not have had a team to play for.

[emma17]

For my simple mind this discussion seems to be way over-complicated.
I still see this as a supply and demand issue.  Yes, Title IX probably did give women's sports a jump start.

However, at the end of the day, if the Demand is there, then the supply will follow.  If no less than 50% of college students are female, and a reasonable % of those female students want to attend a college that offers female sports, then the college "powers that be" have a decision to make.  They can choose to Supply the Demand, or they can decide not to.  I don't think we need a law to tell them what to do. 

The same theory of course applies to men's sports.  I don't think the government has any business dictating to a college how it should allocate its resources.  This is a market decision.  Today, women are the bigger part of the market.