How Title IX has Affected Public Policies in the U.S - Research Paper Example

?How IX has Affected Public Policies in the U.S.? Introduction The early growth of women’s athletic programs and gender equity policies may be associated with, significantly, Title IX. The 1972 Title IX of the Education Amendments is a federal statute which bans sex discrimination. As stated in Title IX (Klein 2007, 555): No person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal aid. Title IX and other acts, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, were forerunners of transformed societal outlooks, including legal aspects that significantly contributed to the significant decrease in sex discrimination in the United States (Hanson, Guilfoy, & Pillai 2011). Title IX has indeed changed public policy in the United States. Thus, this essay discusses how Title IX has influenced American public policy. The existence of legal alternatives resulted in a heightened dependence on the legal institution to resolve the issue of sex discrimination. Women filed cases against unfair treatment and they were frequently victorious in their lawsuits. Yet, all over the mid-1980s, a series of problems overwhelmed the women’s movement (Blumenthal 2005). The unsuccessful ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and constraints inflicted on the implementation of Title IX by the Grove City College—the school that declined to recognize a Title IX agreement form-- resolution of the Supreme Court brought the condition at a deadlock all over this period (Zimbalist 1999). According to Hanson and colleagues (2011), with the enactment of the Civil Rights Restoration Act in 1988 and the resolution of all curriculum-based sex discrimination cases against Montana High School Association, Washington State University, and Temple University, has the opportunities for continuous progress toward sex equity in athletic programs revitalized. Prior to the endorsement of Title IX, women made up merely 15% of the overall population of athletic members in college and 5% in high school. In 1988, 33.4% of the entire National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) intercollegiate population and 35% of the entire interscholastic population were women (Zimbalist 1999, 66). Membership in women’s athletics has grown due to numerous factors. The leading cause is the far-reaching transformation in society’s treatment of and outlooks toward women, as well as a new awareness of women of their own athletic abilities and involvement (Mezey & Gluck 2003). Basically, the boost in membership of women in athletic programs and the increase in public policies addressing sex discrimination in education institutions began since the inception of Title IX. History of Title IX The Congress in 1972 endorsed Title IX of the Educational Amendments. Since 1972, the development toward sex equity in school athletic programs has been notable, although not without its problems, limitations, and flaws. Although the first guideline about the execution of Title IX was not made public until 1975 and colleges and high schools were granted until 1978 to meet the terms, its enactment conveyed a direct notice to athletic courses all over the nation (Carpenter & Acosta 2005). The law at this time clearly declared that women cannot be singled out or unfairly treated in any school activity or program where the school obtained federal support. Soon after, participation of women in athletic programs skyrocketed (Zimbalist 1999, 58): In 1971, 294,015 girls participated in high school sports; that number increased 2.8 times to 817,073 in 1973, and to 2.08 million in 1978. At the college level, 31,852 took part in varsity sports in 1971, and by 1977 the number had more than doubled to 64,375. Nevertheless, this initial thrust was not maintained as incompetent implementation machinery and legal barriers weakened the prospects of Title IX. The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education, the department assigned to address sex discrimination, occupied a secondary position in promoting equal treatment and opportunity for women in school athletic programs (Gavora 2002). In the legal domain, where only a handful of sex discrimination complaints surfaced until in recent times because the right for victims to get financial reparations was only instituted in 1992, the Supreme Court confronted a serious delay in the execution of Title IX. The Supreme Court, in Grove City College v. Bell, decided that Title IX affected only certain programs which obtained federal support (Carpenter & Acosta 2005). Hence, if a particular sports activity was not a direct recipient of federal aid, then gender equality in sports activities was not mandated. Nonetheless, according to Kennedy (2010), the U.S. Congress, in March 1988, endorsed Title IX’s comprehensive safeguard against sex discrimination. Intriguingly, after the unsuccessful dissuasion of Title IX in 1972, the NCAA resorted to extra political agendas designed to counteract or reduce the law’s impact. The NCAA consulted the previous Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1974 to push for the omission of sports from Title IX. Afterward NCAA mobilized a major movement in 1974 in favor of the Tower Amendment which would have let off ‘revenue’ athletics, such as men’s basketball and football, from the range of Title IX (Blumenthal 2005). Then, in 1976, the Association questioned the legitimacy of Title IX in the court (Gavora 2002). But all of these attempts were rejected. Nowadays, athletics directors (AD) do not openly question the objectives of Title IX anymore. The mere concern is how quickly complete gender equality can be achieved in the face of economic setbacks confronted by education institutions. However, it is uncertain whether such economic restrictions have legal position in preventing the advance toward sex equality (Levin 2009). Title IX does not contain a passage that declares “discrimination protection shall be subject to a financial constraint” (Zimbalist 1999, 60), and, for that reason, the courts have rejected claims based on financial shortage. For instance, the irrelevance of economic circumstances to the implementation of the prerequisites of Title IX for gender equality was endorsed in the case Cook v. Colgate University in 1992. An essay in the Seton Hall Journal of Sport Law explained the resolution of the court along these lines (Zimbalist 1999, 60): While the court acknowledged Colgate’s argument that funding of the program would be expensive, it did not allow the finances to be a justification for refusing to allow the program to move forward. The court aptly observed that if financial concerns could justify disparate treatment, Title IX would become meaningless. Likewise, Judge Maurice Cohill Jr, in the case Favia v. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, stated in his judgment (Berman, Greiner, & Saliba 2004, 851): We are also sympathetic with the fact that the football team represents a large portion of the dominance of men’s teams over female teams at IUP. Football is a high profile sport; it generates money through ticket sales and undoubtedly heightens the interest of students, alumni and potential students in the university. As a dangerous sport, it is also expensive. Unfortunately, however, Title IX does not provide for any exception to its requirements simply because of a school’s financial difficulties. In other words, a cash crunch is no excuse. Hence, according to Berman and colleagues (2004), the Congress, at the latter part of 1994, ratified the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act which obliges universities and colleges to provide comprehensive financial information about the procedure of women’s and men’s athletic programs. Influence of Title IX on Public Policy The origin of Title IX is the historical formation of civil rights. It was approved without any trumpet blast and almost without deliberation. When Senator Birch Bayh and Congresswoman Edith Green presented it in Congress in 1972, it embodied the growth of an intellectual group of women, and the peak of the clamor of the women’s movement for gender equality (Carpenter & Acosta 2005). But how did Title IX influence public policies in the United States? The term ‘policy’ is an indefinable idea. It essentially denotes formal declarations of plans to address particular issues. Or, policy can be described as formal declarations of plans to address issues revolving around education and gender (Stromquist 1997); however, even this description is still unclear until the concepts of ‘formal declarations’, ‘plans to address’, and ‘issues of education and gender’ are explained. Formal declarations are institutionally developed and implemented. Even though school boards, voluntary organizations, groups, and individuals, can and do affect public policies, they cannot release formal declarations of policy unless they have legal powers over educational issues. The three local offices of the federal government, namely, educational officials, local governments, and the state, hold such powers in the United States. The formal policy declarations of these entities can assume different forms, such as course syllabus, student and faculty handbooks, court resolutions, executive directives, statutes, and reports (Berman et al. 2004). Several of such declarations, like Title IX, address unequivocally both gender and education. Identifying formal policy declarations as ‘plans to address’, instead of measures, underlines the reality that public policies may or may not result in a successful act. This is due to the extreme difficulty of policy interpretation and execution (Berman et al. 2004). A court resolution, executive directive, or law is not a clear-cut code that everybody interprets equally; that can, should, and will be approved and conformed to by everybody; and that has evident and expected outcomes. The vagueness of laws is well demonstrated by the reality that even though Title IX was ratified in 1972, it was not until after three years that the Congress spelled out how Title IX should be implemented to school sports, and it was not until the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW) circulated the guidelines and parameters for putting the law into practice; nor did such rules and regulations made Title IX clear for all people and all periods (Stromquist 1993). As stated by Mezey and Gluck (2003), further explanations were released in 1979 by DHEW; in 1988 by Congress; and in 1996 by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education (DOE). Numerous of these explanations were motivated by court disputes that were evoked to establish whether DHEW and DOE had properly understood the ruling; whether every program in a school were encompassed by Title IX or just those that were granted federal subsidy; whether athletic courses for women and men may be ‘separate but equal’; whether education institutions must be obliged to shell out reparation to those whose Title IX rights had been abused; and so on (Carpenter & Acosta 2005, 47). Although the court judgments that stemmed from these disputes had been completely definite, which they were not, dilemmas in exercising court resolutions to interpret the law without executive or congressional response would still exist. A particular dilemma stems from the fact that resolutions given by almost all federal courts are confined to the power of that judiciary, and even the decisions of the Supreme Court, which concern the entire nation, are confined to circumstances that are akin to that on which the Supreme Court based its resolutions (Dowd 2003). For instance, as mentioned by Hanson and colleagues (2011), the prominent Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas prohibited racial, but not gender, discrimination in education institutions. The practice of policy development and implementation does not engage only people in government whose task is to endorse, interpret, and implement rulings about education and gender. In addition, the policy process engages students, parents, faculty members, and university and college officials, every one of whom has its own perception of what gender is or ought to be, what sex equality implies, what the purpose of the law ‘truly’ is, how sincerely or critically they should deal with it, and what impacts it will or should have on educational practice, activities, and programs (Anyon 2009). Agreement about such concerns among the numerous individuals or groups involved is not likely to be substantial, especially when the policy under consideration is sensitive or debatable, as gender policies, like Title IX, certainly are. Even though the extreme difficulty of policy interpretation and execution frequently thwarts successful measures, problems and confusions can at times be exercised as justifications for indifference that is intended to mask intentional opposition to policies. This opposition is mostly probable when policies are intended to change power structures by amplifying resources of formerly marginalized groups, thus shrinking the comparative advantage of formerly prevailing groups (Rhode et al. 2008). This form of policies involves those designed to advance gender and other types of educational equity. These policies have defied and still pressure the comparative privileges and authority of White males. Such policies have by now created more prospects for females and, if totally executed, would produce further wide-ranging reforms in educational practices and systems. Resistances to them have emerged from all levels of social and political structure, and it is quite expected that the most powerful opposition has emanated from the top echelons (Stromquist 1993). For instance, as recounted by Zimbalist (1999), President Reagan and his group of advisers were famous for their decisions to discontinue the financial subsidy of law implementation endorsed by previous congressional assemblies with which Reagan opposed. These involved the Title IX and other civil rights laws, and it was expected that, by the conclusion of the Reagan administration, Congress thought it mandatory to endorse the Civil Rights Restoration Act over the rejection of Reagan. Legitimate opposition to Title IX and other gender equity policies suggests a switch in the manner in which the government had identified the key issues of education and gender in the past. As a reaction to the attempts of the women’s liberation movement, in the 1960s and the 1970s, the federal government had approved and responded to the claim that the key dilemma of education and gender was akin to that of education and race: that is, the issues of inequalities in education, especially the difficulties race-ethnic groups and women were at the time confronting compared to White males (Sigelman et al. 1999). Within the far-reaching expanse of gender inequalities were particular dilemmas that do not exist anymore, like the lack of women’s representation in higher education usually, and numerous issues that still exist, like the underrepresentation of females, in comparison to males, and the sexual violence and harassment inflicted on women and girls throughout their education. Moreover, second-wave feminists campaigned for policies that would cultivate gender equality among school administrators and educators at the elementary and secondary levels and among all officials and faculty members in higher education (Klein 2007). Particularly, it was claimed that more women must be assigned to administrative and academic jobs. The public policies formulated to eradicate racial and gender discrimination on education institutions and in other organizations had only just begun to be put into practice in the United States when they confronted critical resistance. Primarily were the failures to implement the legitimate policies. This type of opposition was most effective when used by the federal government’s executive body (Blumenthal 2005). Not simply was this government body assigned to the enforcement of official policies of equity all over the country, but it also was granted the financial subsidy to perform the task (Blumenthal 2005). According to Berman and colleagues (2004), when the president and group of advisers rejected those financial subsidies to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other departments assigned to enforcement, numerous school administrators became uninhibited to discontinue using up their own resources on programs for affirmative measures and equity, and almost all athletic directors kept on or reverted to dispensing bulk of their resources into athletic programs for men rather than for women. Lessons Learned by U.S. Public Policies from Title IX As demonstrated in the discussion of Title IX, the government should capitalize on its role, particularly at the state and federal levels, in establishing gender equality in education. The policy process can strengthen this by developing definite laws banning sex discrimination, rulings that reinforce affirmative measures to promote gender equality, and informed and accommodating employees who ensure that such policies and laws are wholly executed to achieve the gender equality objectives (Klein 2007). It also becomes apparent that this dynamic function of government is most probable if the public scrutinizes and advocates the government programs. Hence, there should be a continuous ‘full federal coverage of Title IX and other current civil rights laws and regulations’ (Klein 2007, 92). First, all advocates of gender equality in education should maintain communication and awareness to rescue civil rights laws from current problems, including deterioration (Acosta & Carpenter 2002). They must identify the threats to these civil rights laws and other official equity policies so these problems can be neutralized as promptly and successfully as possible. Second, vote for local, state, and federal delegates who will reinforce and justify such laws and discourage legal or other candidates who would destabilize them. Third, ensure that contenders for educational leadership jobs are knowledgeable of and sympathetic toward gender fairness in education (ASHE Higher Education Report 2011). Fourth, assure that the Office for Civil Rights in the federal departments collaborate to give useful analyses of civil rights laws. Assure that Office for Civil Rights (OCR) agendas prevent any threatening condition to the Title IX rule or regulation doctrines. Fifth, there should be larger financial subsidy for the Civil Rights Act Title IV Equity Assistance Centers (EACs) in order for them to vigorously promote gender equality alongside racial equality (California Legislature Senate Select Committee on Higher Education 1998). They must be subsidized to support more bodies than are encompassed by Title IX, like recreation agencies, museums, and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools. EACs should assist in developing and preserving gender equity mechanisms like the Title IX’s system and other equity directors, and they must assist in gathering and disseminating research and assessment data on effective measures as they give practical support to their members (Klein 2007, 93). In addition, EACs should work together with NGOs and other organizations to guarantee the preparation and thorough use of education personnel and community groups who keep on determining how to promote gender equality in their areas (Klein 2007). For instance, these Centers could support yearly regional and national conventions on gender equality with regard to organizations like Association for Gender Equity Leadership in Education (AGELE) (p. 93). Another lesson learned in the policy arena is the importance of striving toward full execution of civil rights policies. A particular danger to Title IX is that it is frequently disregarded because almost all educators are not informed about its coverage and its importance to the eradication of sex discrimination. Thus it is vital for governments to create and employ both rewards and punishments in innovative and improved ways (Bornstein 1985). To boost the execution of civil rights policies may involve new ruling and subsidy that develops approaches that deliver, financial support systems like an improved Women’s Educational Equity Act initiative to give assistance to formation, practical support and communication, and the enhancement of NGO and governmental structures like groups of Title IX directors and their associates. NGO professionals and governmental personnel should obtain government funding to aid in granting these rewards and support to achieve equity objectives (Klein 1987). Subsidy for these reward programs should emanate from all governmental levels, but mainly from the federal government since protection of civil rights is a major federal education obligation (Riposa 2003). Almost all states exert modest effort to help their personnel in these tasks and it has been very uncommon for states to expend government resources to help others in their states to carry out major gender equity task (p. 58). There are several definite proposals for the federal government. First is to persuade federal government coordinators to aggressively advocate civil rights policies like Title IX by their official declarations and programs to give enforcement supervision inside and outside their department. Alleviate the impacts of declining Title IX, like the 2006 law amendments, by pulling out this law and also by informing citizens about the effects and threats of augmenting single-sex education unless it is especially intended to reduce sex discrimination as permitted within the Title IX directive of 1975 (U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics 2000). As stated by Lay and colleagues (2009), provided that single-sex education is established, demand for protections like statements of external assessments that present proof of the lack or existence of sex discrimination and stereotyping in education institutions, including proof that the single-sex program reduces gender inequities in the results greater than varied sex options. Second is to wholly put into practice the conditions to strengthen the federal headship and management function in gender equity like employing a permanent, highly eligible public official to function as the Special Assistant for Gender Equity. In addition, enhance the system of management and support utilized by OCR in collaborating with the government officials of the Memorandum of Understanding terms to execute the vocational education policies of 1979 to prevent discrimination (Klein 2007). As argued by Anyon (2009), extra attempt should be initiated by OCR to collaborate with NGOs, and to keep in touch with and offer preparation and support to Title IX directors at the state education departments, and in institutions of higher education. Third is to grant federal subsidy for gender evaluations of gender-oriented initiatives, including other federally subsidized initiatives, to determine any gender disparities in results (Whitmire & Bailey 2010). Both quality control and federal subsidy should be rooted in empirical proof and the obligation of the service provider/recipients and their consultants at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on matters like the endorsement of urgent contraceptive. Bolster and reform the Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA), the sole ruling exclusively focused on putting into effect Title IX and promoting sex equality (Blumenthal 2005). As claimed by Hanson and colleagues (2011), the reformed WEEA should concentrate on useful approaches and helping groups of Title IX directors and NGOs, including practical support and countrywide diffusion of clear information on gender equity. Conclusions Title IX has considerably enhanced employment and educational prospects for women. However, assessing the benefits and inequalities confirms that Title IX should be reinforced and implemented. The Office of Civil Rights should be aggressive and oblige schools to release information that shows how they have supported Title IX provisions. But, most importantly, public policy in the United States has been informed of the entire scope of Title IX safeguard, the benefits that women have gained consequently, and the problems that still exist. The effect of Title IX on civil rights policy and on the larger policy process cannot be miscalculated. Title IX requires the support of the general public to break down the existing problems and attain gender equality in the education and social institutions of the United States. Understanding of Title IX will permit people to identify what the law mandates of schools and offer a mechanism to remedy injustices they may confront. Informing the people fosters support that is integral in surviving and averting arguments against Title IX. Sustaining the mission and accomplishing the objectives of Title IX is at the mercy of public approval, knowledge, and advocacy. The considerable achievements and benefits in the public policy domain facilitated by Title IX should be commemorated, and the current mission should be a motivator for all policymakers as they work toward fair and unbiased education. Public policy is integral so that in the future gender equity can be finally realized. References Acosta, R. Vivian and Carpenter, Linda J. 2002. “Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal Study. Twenty Five Year Update, 1977-2002.” City Univ.of New York, Brooklyn, NY. Brooklyn Coll.; Smith Coll., Northampton, MA. Anyon, Jean. 2009. “Progressive social movements and educational equity.” Educational Policy 23, 1 (January):194-215. Sage Journals Online (November 16, 2011). ASHE Higher Education Report. 2011. “Women’s status in higher education.” 37, 1:1-161. EBSCO Host (November 17, 2011). 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