Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds the following: 50 years ago, Congress passed title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (referred to in this section as title IX ), helping to transform participation in and support for women’s sports by barring discrimination on the basis of sex in all schools that receive Federal funding, including in their athletic programs. Since the passage of title IX, millions more women and girls have had the opportunity to compete in interscholastic athletics. At the high school level, athletic participation opportunities have increased from nearly 300,000 in 1972 to more than 3,400,000 in 2019.
At the collegiate level, opportunities have increased from nearly 30,000 in 1972 to 215,000 in 2020 on teams sponsored by institutions who are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (referred to in this section as the NCAA ). Despite progress, women and girls still face unequal opportunities. At the high school level, girls have over 1,000,000 fewer athletic opportunities than boys, with schools providing girls with 43 percent of all athletic opportunities while girls represent nearly half of all students.
At the collegiate level, colleges would need to provide women with an additional 148,000 sports opportunities to match the same ratio of sports opportunities per student as is offered to men. Girls of color are often most impacted by inequitable opportunities. At high schools predominantly attended by White students, girls have 82 percent of the opportunities that boys have to play sports, while at high schools predominantly attended by students of color, girls have only 67 percent of the opportunities that boys have to play sports.
The magnitude of current gaps in intercollegiate participation opportunities is likely undercounted, as investigations of intercollegiate athletics data have found that the majority of NCAA member institutions inflate the number of women participating in sports by double- and triple-counting women athletes who participate in more than one sport more often than the institutions double- and triple-count their male counterparts, counting male practice players on women’s teams as women athletes, and packing women’s teams with extra players who never end up competing.
Women and girls in sports also face unequal treatment. They are frequently provided worse facilities, equipment, and uniforms than men and boys, and they receive less financial support and publicity from their schools, as women receive $240,000,000 less than men in athletic-based scholarships annually. For every dollar colleges spend on recruiting, travel, and equipment for men’s sports, they spend 58 cents, 62 cents, and 73 cents, respectively, for women’s sports. Amid ongoing inequitable treatment, athletes and athletics-related staff too often are unaware of the rights and obligations that are described in or come from title IX.
In surveys of children and their parents, the majority report not knowing what title IX is. A study conducted by the Government Accountability Office in 2017 found that the majority of high school athletic administrators were unaware of who their title IX coordinator was or felt unsupported by their title IX coordinator. In collegiate sports, the majority of coaches report that they never received formal training about title IX as part of the preparation for their jobs.