EDITORIAL: Title IX opens education, sports, careers to females

Jun. 30—When Warsaw High School star Judi Warren climbed the ladder in Hinkle Fieldhouse to cut down the state championship net in 1976, it was the beginning of something big, something that had been a long time coming.

The Tigers were the first girls basketball champion crowned by the Indiana High School Athletic Association.

Forty-six years later, 122 girls high school teams in Indiana have climbed that championship ladder in basketball, while tens of thousands of female athletes have reached the Hoosier summit in nine other sports.

It was all made possible by a simple but sweeping piece of legislation passed by Congress 50 years ago. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 contains just 37 words:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Those words were drafted by Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh, inspired by his wife, Marvella. A brilliant woman and the driving force behind her husband's career in politics, Marvella had been denied entry into the University of Virginia in 1951 simply because of her gender.

Almost immediately after passage of the new law, state high school athletic associations — some motivated by lawsuits — began sanctioning girls' sports.

In Indiana, the IHSAA conducted its first girls state tournaments beginning in 1972-73 with gymnastics and volleyball. Golf and track followed the next year, and by 1985, state tournaments in nine girls sports were conducted annually. Soccer was added in 1994-95.

Today, Hoosier high school girls have the same number of IHSAA-sponsored sports, 10, as boys. According to statistics compiled by the National Federation of State High School Associations from 2019, 63,410 girls played high school sports in Indiana that year, accounting for 41% of the overall participation.

Thousands of those girls have gone on to play sports in college, and many have become coaches, athletic directors and successful professionals in a slew of other pursuits.

But Title IX's effect goes well beyond athletics. The law has been used to prevent discrimination against women and girls in a wide range of academic areas. It has led to more female scientists, more mathematicians, more engineers.

But perhaps the most profound change has come in the realm of sexual violence and sexual harassment. A school's failure to respond immediately and effectively to reports of such abuse has been found by the courts to be a failure to ensure equal access to education.

When Birch Bayh wrote Title IX, he probably didn't fully grasp the significance of the new law. Nor did Judi Warren when she climbed that championship ladder in 1976.

Still today, women face discrimination in athletics. Just ask the U.S. women's national soccer team, which recently won a landmark $24 million settlement from the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay.

The firm footing of Title IX laid the groundwork for that settlement, just as it has positioned women in Indiana and across the country to continue winning both on and off the field of play.