For many years, women's sports have taken a back seat to men's sports and struggled to attain the level of attention and revenue that men's sports have always received.
"Title IX is a federal statute that was created to prohibit sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal financial assistance," says the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Web site. However, there has recently been some dispute as to whether it is achieving its intended goals.
Initially, Title IX did not include athletic teams established inside of educational systems. This led to the 1974 passing of the Javits Amendment, which required that Title IX include a section about equal treatment of athletic associations of different sexes.
Since the Javits amendment, colleges have been required to give equally-proportional funding to men and women's sports. However a recent study revealed that schools have been drifting away from Title IX's rules.
"A biennial gender equity report released without fanfare by the NCAA on Thursday [Oct. 30] finds that colleges that play Division I sports directed a smaller proportion of athletics spending to women's teams in 2005-06 than they did in 2003-04," according to an article from InsideHigherEd.com.
The trend appears to be that the larger the school is in terms of athletics, the larger the difference in men's and women's athletic funding.
According to the article, Division I schools with a football team split their funding 70 percent for men and 30 percent for women, while Division I schools without a football team divvied their funding 52 percent for men 48 for women.
Division II schools stayed consistent with their funding from 2003-04, at a ratio of 58 percent to 42 percent for men and women, respectively.
Division III schools have decreased the spending ratio from 58 percent for men and 42 percent for women to 56 percent for men and 44 percent for respectively.
"Other data in the NCAA report suggest that the major sports of football and men's basketball are responsible for most of the diverging fortunes of men's and women's sports programs," the InsideHigherEd article said. "The average Division I college spent $7,095,000 of the $8,635,600 it laid out on men's teams on those two sports."
At the University of Massachusetts, where there is an active athletics program with a number of nationally recognized and some nationally ranked teams, Title IX's rules are followed to a degree similar to that found in the InsideHigherEd article.
While female athletes make up 49 percent of the athletic population on campus, women's athletics are given 42 percent of athletic related student aid.
According to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis, of the $4,001,633 spent by the University on athletics, $1,345,682 is spent on women's athletics, which accounts for 34 percent of total expenditures.
The money spent on men's football and basketball accounts for some of the difference in spending. Nearly half of the school's spending on men's sports goes to men's basketball and football.
Excluding football and men and women's basketball, total spending on athletics is $2,208,072. Spending by the school on women's sports excluding basketball is $978,975, or 44 percent.
"In recent years, most Division I colleges have tended to deal with financial shortfalls by cutting back on men's sports other than football and men's basketball, which has often led advocates for those sports to blame the push for gender equity […] for their plight," the article said.
Ricky Flynn can be reached at rjflynn@student.umass.edu.
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