Happy birthday, Title IX!
Title IX, the landmark legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender by institutions that receive federal funding, is 34 years old today.
The fine folks working on educational equity at Education Development Center have an excellent history of Title IX on their website. Here are some highlights:
- The whole deal got kicked off when Dr. Bernice Sandler noticed that President Johnson's executive order forbidding gender discrimination would apply to colleges and universities with federal contracts or funding - and that's most of 'em
- Rep. Martha Griffiths of Michigan gave the first speech to Congress about gender discrimination in education.
- Rep. Edith Green of Oregon, chair of the subcommittee that dealt with higher ed, drafted the initial legislation and held the first congressional hearings on women and education. In one of those cool instances where everyone acted right, Rep. Green listened to the concerns of African-American leaders concerned about the practicality of adding gender stuff on to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act; she proposed a whole new section, which is where we get the name Title IX.
- The jackasses in the Reagan-era Department of Justice tried to limit the application of Title IX. Congress smacked 'em down with the Civil Rights Restoration Act, and then the Supreme Court affirmed the liability of institutions for the acts of individual employees and ruled that plaintiffs could sue for monetary damages. So yeah, y'all got to take us seriously.
We're not done yet. Lots of stupid adminstrative rules still exist that mean women's sports still get less funding than men's. There's still a huge lack of support for women in traditionally male fields. Women don't leave these fields because they can't do the work; they leave because they're not welcome and the workload is tailored for single men.
But. For today, I'm celebrating the fact that some smart, badass ladies saw a problem, took an opportunity to fix it, and gave us the legal stick (and later the carrot) we could use to demand equal rights in education.