Contemplating A 21st Century View of Title IX’s Application to College Sport

Abstract

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is arguably one of the most consequential pieces of legislation to affect change within college sport. In retrospect, Title IX’s influence on college sport programs and its governing bodies is a lesson in what legislation can achieve in promoting gender equity within an entrenched male hegemonic system and what its legal limitations are in a predominantly white system of college sport. Title IX’s implementing regulations reflect a negotiated settlement between commercial, economic, and state interests invested in men’s sports and some educational leaders leveraging the optics of what the general public would think of colleges and universities engaged in outright gender discrimination (Hextrum & Sethi, 2022; Staurowsky, 2023). The result in the late 1970s was a series of “last stand” protections for men’s sports, contained in such mechanisms as the “contact sports exception”, designed to resist the incursion of women into those all-men’s spaces. Connected to the idea that in the athletic arena, “separate” could be “equal,” the framework of a gender binary was embedded in the regulations (Staurowsky et al., 2022). This paper explores the limits of Title IX’s liberal feminist conception of equality through Title IX’s impact on the college sport system and compliance; Title IX’s embrace of “separate but equal” and fears regarding strong women; the insulation of men’s sports from women through the contact sports exemption; Title IX, race and intersectionality in college sport; the manipulation of Title IX by the NCAA and the case of NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2021; and the NCAA’s pretense of leadership regarding gender equity and gender discrimination.