The number of Title IX complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) related to athletics and sexual assaults both spiked in the 2013-2014 period, according to
a new OCR report.
But the jump has been particularly notable in athletics, where complaints nearly tripled from those reported in the three-year period from 2009-2012—a total of 1,264—to the two-year period of 2013-2014, when 3,609 were filed.
Travis Waldron reports that OCR's enforcement of the law demonstrates that the issues of inequality vary from case to case.
In one complaint, it ruled that Portland (ME) schools were not providing equal opportunities to girls, and that while the district’s baseball teams played at a professional-quality minor league stadium, girls’ softball teams played at “local, poorer-quality fields.” In another, it found that an Indianapolis school district did not provide equal opportunities to girls while also failing to provide “equal access to practice and competitive facilities, locker rooms, equipment and supplies, and the scheduling of games and practice times at some high schools.”
The report suggests that female athletes have a long way to go before they achieve parity with male athletes. A past
OCR report noted that although girls account for about half of all high school students, they make up just 41 percent of the varsity high school teams. Worse yet, in college women compose 57 percent of the student body but only 43 percent of varsity sports teams.
But the rise in complaints also reflects an increased awareness around the problem, according to Scott Lewis, partner at The NCHERM Group, which provides legal and consulting services to schools on Title IX.
The law’s 40th anniversary in 2013, which followed the success of women athletes on huge stages (Lewis pointed to the 2012 London Olympics, where women made up a majority of the American Olympic team and won more medals than their male counterparts, as one example) brought more attention to the law’s successes and to the ground it has left uncovered. Outside organizations too have made a push to file complaints on behalf of girls and women across the country.
All of this has made girls and women more aware of the disparities, and “with more awareness comes more complaints,” Lewis said. “Particularly with athletics, we’re seeing a very empowered group of young women. They are looking at their male counterparts and saying, ‘Wait a second.’ And they are more willing to ask those questions. They’re more sophisticated athletes, willing to exercise those rights.”
Anyone can file an OCR complaint, legal representation isn't necessary. But some advocates for female athletes hope the latest report will also reveal ways in which systemic discrimination can be remedied. That's the hope of civil rights lawyer Nancy Hogshead-Makar, who is also a former Olympian and chief executive of the advocacy group Champion Women.
The question Hogshead-Makar’s organization and others are trying to address now, she said, is how to address the problems on a broad scale rather than on a case-by-case basis.
“The idea is, how do you get change to scale?” she said. “We do the one-offs. But one-offs inform the bigger projects of how you get change to scale.”