Mention “Title IX” to a random stranger and you’re likely to find yourself embroiled in a discussion about athletic opportunities for boys and girls. But truth be told, there’s much more to it than that. While most famous for its requirement that schools provide girls with equal athletic opportunities, Title IX applies to all educational programs that receive federal funding, and to all aspects of a school's educational system. Simply put, it is the linchpin of our efforts to promote and establish gender equity in schools.
Enacted in 1972, Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, including on the basis of sex stereotypes, in education programs and activities that utilize federal funds. Benefiting boys and girls alike, its ramifications reach far beyond the playing field, impacting such areas as sex-segregated schools, pregnancy and parenting teens, and sexual violence in schools -- all issues that the ACLU has worked on for decades. And as shown by our new interactive timeline, we’ve made a lot of headway on these important issues in the last four decades.
To honor all the progress we’ve made, the ACLU is celebrating “40 Years of Title IX” this week with a blog series that will explore the importance of this groundbreaking statute on the American education system, while at the same time underscoring just how far we still have left to go. We’ll be looking at the barriers pregnant and parenting teens face in completing their educations; we’ll tell the story of an ACLU client in Texas who was raped in school by a fellow student and then told by school administrators to “work it out” with her attacker; and we’ll also look at some recent victories for equality in athletics, as well as some of the hurdles still to overcome.
So keep your eyes peeled this week (and beyond) as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this very important statute. Without it, our schools would look a lot different today – and not just on the basketball court or the soccer field.
