Title IX, US legislation also known as the Equal Opportunity in Education Act, is part of the education amendments of 1972. While it addresses issues such as sexual assault and inequality, it is most famous for requiring schools which receive state funds to provide female students with equal opportunities to participate in educational programmes.
The act states that: “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.”
As well as bettering the lives of women and girls more widely, Title IX has revolutionised many aspects of female school sports in the US. Since the legislation was passed, academic and athletic opportunities for women and girls have increased vastly. For example, from 1972 to 2011 female students’ participation in high school athletics rose from approximately 250,000 to 3.25 million (pdf).
Mia Hamm, who is widely considered to be the world’s best all-around women’s football player, cites Title IX as instrumental to her success. At 15 she became the youngest player ever to make the US women’s national team and went on to win two Fifa World Cups. She retired in 2004 as the record holder of international goals among both male and female soccer players. Hamm was able to study for a degree while playing soccer at the University of North Carolina – something that would have been impossible before the legislation because athletic scholarships for women were virtually non-existent.
In 2012, Barack Obama publicly reflected upon the impact of the law, saying it was a springboard for success and praising it for helping more women graduate from US colleges prepared to work in a much broader range of fields, including engineering and technology.
In comparison, Britain has no legislation that ensures maintained schools’ expenditure on sport benefits male and female students equally – and there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that funding in the UK is given primarily to boys. There are no equality targets to ensure government funding for sport and physical education (PE) benefits both genders fairly.
The struggle to engage women in sport goes beyond the school gates; participation rates between men and women are unequal across the country. Since London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games, the number of people participating in sport has decreased, particularly among women, disabled people and the poorest in society. A Sport England report shows that 8.63 million males aged 16 years or over played sport once a week compared with just 6.86 million females.
This inequality is also having a huge impact on female sport in the UK. Women’s football has been a huge part of my life: aged seven, I signed for the Arsenal centre of excellence and went on to represent London at county level, training with England youth a few years later. But at 17-years-old I went to the US, where I undertook a full, combined athletic and academic scholarship to study and play college football. As a female athlete, leaving the UK’s education system and moving into the US equivalent enabled me to combine training every day at the highest standard with higher education. In the UK, most people have to sacrifice one or the other – you can’t usually do sport and university both to a high standard. However, in the US it’s much easier – no matter who you are – and this is all thanks to Title IX.
We are haemorrhaging talent to the US due to economic and educational reward. There are no statistics showing how many young British sportswomen are playing US college sports, but not one team I ever competed against had less than two British players.
Unequal funding, opportunity and/or resource in schools is playing an instrumental role in the inequality of opportunity for girls and women in sport. This summer the government launched a consultation to tackle the fall in sport participation. Such actions are positive but only if they inform measurable and pragmatic change on the ground.
The government needs to re-examine PE programmes to ensure that schools are treating their female students fairly with respect to participation opportunities, facilities and investment. A change in the law alone would not solve the falling participation figures, but a guarantee of equal access to sports would help to stop the vicious circle surrounding women and girls’ relationship with PE and sport.
A Title IX equivalent would force questions to be asked about existing practices and assumptions in our education system. Legal duty would see equality built into the very framework of schools’ decision-making process as a foundation, not an afterthought. Furthermore, legislative duty would stop people who are trying to get more girls into school sport and PE being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task as it would become a collective duty. Finally, legislation would be centrally monitored – preventing equality policies getting lost in bureaucracy between parliament’s meeting rooms and school playing fields.
Title IX is not just about sporting opportunity. The taxpayer’s pound should leverage equality and a similar law in Britain has the capacity to enhance social, economic and physiological aspects of life for women and girls in the UK. An equivalent policy could correct an imbalance in Britain’s education system. A change in the law has the capacity to take down the wall between government desires for increased participation and what happens in the playground. It would build a framework of equality in the very architecture of Britain’s educational context.
