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TASK FORCE MEDIA NOTES
TASK FORCE MEDIA NOTES
VOL. 2, NO. 3 (February 14, 1998)
This is part of a series of regular reports
to update, inform, educate and stimulate public discussion
HERITAGE FOUNDATION HOSTS PANEL DISCUSSION ON TITLE IX
On Thursday, Dec. 18, the Heritage Foundation, a nationally respected
public policy research group based in Washington, D.C., hosted a panel
discussion entitled “Sudden Death: Are Gender Quotas destroying
collegiate sports?”
The panel included three of the top experts on the subject: Beverly
Ledbetter, Vice President and General Counsel at Brown University; Leo
Kocher, wrestling coach at the Univ. of Chicago and the co-chair of the
Joint Task Force to Protect Wrestling; and Barbara Ledeen, the Executive
Director of Policy for the Independent Women’s Forum.
This panel discussion brought national attention to the problems caused
by the use of gender quotas to achieve Title IX goals. It is also
appropriate that the panel discussion was hosted by the Heritage
Foundation, an important public policy organization, and was held in the
nation’s capital, where many believe that the problem must be corrected
through Congress.
IWF LEADER BARBARA LEDEEN TELLS IT LIKE IT REALLY IS
In her presentation at the Heritage Foundation, Barbara Ledeen of the
Indepen-dent Women’s Forum explained why many women are against the use
of proportionality (a gender quota) to comply with Title IX. Said
Ledeen:
l “Title IX was passed as a simple anti-discrimination measure. But like
the 1964 Civil Rights Act before it, Title IX has come to represent the
political empowerment of a formidable collection of special interest
elites. These elites want us to believe that all women’s progress is due
to federal laws like Title IX. At a press conference to mark the 25th
anniversary of the law last June for example, President Clinton appeared
with former astronaut Sally Ride and gushed: “Title IX even sent a women
to the moon!” Press accounts of the event repeated the President’s
assertion without challenge, and by doing so, they helped Clinton
accomplish his objective: to set the scene for a radical expansion of
the scope and enforcement of Title IX beyond the familiar realm of
athletics.”
l “Consider the ‘gender equity’ officers that police each and every
public school and federally assisted college or university in the
country. Regulations drafted pursuant to the law have helped create an
army of “gender equity” police in our education system. They not only
helped make quotas possible under the law, but have also made them
self-sustaining.”
l “How Title IX made the change from anti-discrimination statute to
quota law is a cautionary tale for us all. With this law, as with other
civil rights legislation, Congress in 1972 provided the bare bones, but
it has been the federal bureaucracy and the courts, that has suppled the
flesh and the muscle. They have acted outside the scrutiny of Congress
and hidden from the view of the American people. And they are
successfully employing the old tactics to achieve through bureaucratic
and judicial fiat what they cannot achieve at the ballot box.”
WHY PROPORTIONALITY DOES NOT INCREASE WOMEN’S OPPORTUNITY
People are starting to understand that proportionality not only
eliminates opportunities for male athletes, but it also falls short of
creating opportunity for female athletes. Rodney K. Smith, the Dean of
Law at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, painted a clear picture
in a February 9, 1998 article in the NCAA News. Smith supports creating
football programs for women. While the merits of this idea must be
debated, Smith certainly understands what is happening on college
campuses. Consider this:
l “Many colleges have chosen to eliminate men’s sports to appear to
provide women’s athletes with opportunities proportional with male
athletes and to minimize the cost of operating intercollegiate
athletics. Other institutions have responded to the demand for equal
opportunity by adding new athletic opportunities for women. Emerging
women’s sports, officially recognized by the NCAA, includes the likes of
badminton, bowling, archery and synchronized swimming.”
l “Neither cutting men’s opportunities nor adding the ‘emerging sports’
recognized by the NCAA appears to be an attractive solution to the
problem of achieving equity in athletics. Cutting opportunities for men
does little to increase opportunities for women; it simply decreases
overall opportunities.”
WOMEN’S SPORTS FOUNDATION CONTINUES TO IGNORE INTEREST DIFFERENCES
The Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF) is the loudest voice in the push
for proportionality in our educational institutions. Under the
leadership of its eloquent Executive Director, Donna A. Lopiano, the WSF
is working full-time to impose gender quotas in sports.
The WSF chooses to ignore the FACT that there are three ways to comply
with Title IX. Proportionality is the first option, but a school can
also comply through the other two: a continued history of expansion of
opportunities for women, and accommodating interest and abilities.
In her article “Issues in Women’s Sports: The 1997 story,” Lopiano
muddies the waters concerning the interest issue. According to Lopiano:
“One popular refrain is that girls are not as interested in sports as
boys. Research shows that boys and girls between the ages of six and
nine -- and their parents -- are equally interested in sports
participation. However by the age of 14, girls drop out of sports at a
significantly greater rate than men (Wilson Report, 1988). Once girls
get into the school setting where most sports opportunities are
afforded, their participation slots are half that afforded boys.”
This reasoning is way off base. The WSF ignores the facts about
interest differences and attempts to blame it on a lack of opportunity.
Maybe, just maybe, when girls begin to mature, they develop different
interests than boys. Again and again, respected studies, such as the
annual survey by the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), indicate that young
men are more interested in sports than young women. Rather than fighting
for gender quotas in an artificial effort to force interest, the WSF
would better serve women’s sports by concentrating much more effort on
promoting sports participation among teen-age girls.
MORE INSIGHT FROM POLICY REVIEW ARTICLE BY ELIZABETH ARENS
In the last Task Force Media Notes (Vol. 2. No. 2, 1/23/98), excerpts
were provided from an outstanding article called “The Gender Refs,” in
the November/December 1997 issue of the Policy Review. It was written by
Princeton University squash athlete Elizabeth Arens. This week, we offer
some more of Arens’ insights:
l “A survey of students’ interest in athletics may not be an accurate
measurement of the numbers who actually plan, and have the training and
ability, to play on a varsity athletic team. Together, with the data on
high school and intramural participation, however - this evidence
strongly suggests a real disparity in the levels of interest of each sex
- one that would naturally lead to a gap in the number of male and
female varsity athletes. But the proportionality requirement declares,
in effect, that interest and ability do not matter. If not enough women
can be encouraged to play sports, schools will have to cut down on male
participation.”
l “At the heart of the scandal is the ascendency of the strict
proportionality requirement, slipped into law by the Office of Civil
Rights’ 1979 policy interpretation. This requirement is found nowhere in
the language of the original statute.”
l “The federal interpretation has set up an artificial, clumsy,
thoughtlessly egalitarian standard. The effort to achieve this standard
is destroying men’s athletic programs and eliminating men’s
opportunities across the nation.”
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