Reply #4: Title IX was a good idea.

[Igel]

And it was workable. It mandated process.

The implementation required that either the number of slots for male and female athletics be the same or that the funding be the same.

Then it was decided that the outcome wasn't what they expected. There was still more money spent on men's sports--more revenues, too, but they could overlook that. And, worst of all, there were more men athletes than women athletes. Of course, that could only mean the process was somehow wrong, and the only interpretation available to the enforcers' feeble brains was "discrimination."

So they altered how they evaluated the process. Still not the right result. And altered it again. Still not the right result.

In the meantime, men's teams were disbanded and women's teams started. When I was in grad school there was a implementation shift in Title IX. In response, my school actively recruited women to be on intramural and intermural squads. They ran large ads. They posted flyers in all the departments. They came around to the dorms and put in appearances in female-heavy activity- and advocacy-based clubs. They offered stipends. They gave the women's teams the pick of times and fields, offered the newest facilities and even offered to make the schedule work, whatever the women's teams wanted. They had coaches. They wold provide uniforms, training coaches, and refreshments (even). They guaranteed field time. They even had repeated tryout opportunities. They just didn't have warm bodies--essentially show up and you're on the team. (The men's teams? They got the leftovers. There was a small announcement in the student paper a couple of days before the tryouts, to be held one day at 7 a.m.; the men would have to provide their own uniforms and contribute some money for a part-time coach. Fewer than half the men made the cut, and every team was filled.)

They *still* had to cut men's teams again that year because the men were far more interested in being on teams than the women were--and this is just a "warm body count" comparing things like soccer or tennis., leaving out the "big name" sports. Strictly speaking, the asymmetry in recruitment efforts screams "sexism." The Title IX folk said that the preferential treatment didn't go nearly far enough to be considered "neutral."