Making strides toward Title IX compliance

Title IX prohibits gender discrimination in athletic programs at institutions that receive federal funds. While some see it as a necessary form of affirmative action for women in sports, others believe that it challenges the same equality that it purports to demand. Title IX comes into question with the announcement that Duke will be establishing a softball team in Spring 2018.

We applaud the strides that Title IX has made for women in collegiate sports. Title IX has led to greater investments in women’s programs. The establishment of the rowing team in the 1990s, the improvement of the women’s basketball team and increased funds for female coaches and players are prime examples of this.

To reflect compliance with Title IX, universities like Duke must accomplish one of these three goals: 1. Demonstrate proportionality for the number of athletes and expenditures for each gender; 2. Show that it is steadily increasing opportunities for women, or 3. Prove that it is meeting the athletics interests and abilities of its female students.

Despite these mandates, it is estimated that 80 to 90 percent of universities (including Duke) are non-compliant with Title IX. They do not lose federal funding on the designation that they are compliant “conditioned on remedying identified problems.” There are fewer female athletes at Duke and fewer female athletes on scholarship than there are in the men’s programs. Most of this inequity comes from the football program, which contains the largest number of athletes on scholarship and incurs the greatest expenditures from the athletic program. Football and men’s basketball are the only two programs which do not run a deficit for the Duke athletic program. The sheer size of the football program—with 85 total scholarships—makes the gap between men's and women's sports extremely difficult to counteract.

When seeking greater proportionality, universities are essentially given three options: 1. Add a women’s sport to increase expenditures for women 2. Drop a men’s non-revenue sport, or 3. Reduce the size of the roster or recruiting budget for the men’s sports. Duke football and men’s basketball are untouchable.

It appears that Duke’s move has been to give fewer scholarships to men in non-revenue generating sports. Adding a Duke softball team represents a highly visible move that will create more equity on paper by allowing women to share the men’s baseball team’s field (lowering the men’s costs on paper) and increasing the number of female athletes. By the numbers, this is a strong move toward Title IX compliance.

However, we question the establishment of a new softball team and the mandates Title IX has imposed on Duke and other NCAA schools. We think that existing programs could be strengthened if such great pressures were not placed on Duke to produce greater proportionality between men and women’s programs on paper. Sheer numbers are not a good indicator of value for female athletes at Duke. We do not blame Duke for these problems. In continuing struggles for compliance, a new conversation must be generated about the experience of female athletes and how universities can improve their experiences without compromising those of male athletes.