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1 Willamette Sports L.J. 1 (2004)

handle is hein.journals/wlmsplj1 and id is 1 raw text is: 





                                            Willamette Sports Law Journal

                                                              Volume   1:1 Winter  2004

                  Title IX:  Straining   Toward an Elusive Goal

                                          By

                                   Jennifer E. Powell*

Introduction

       Title IX, praised for its great impact on women's interscholastic and

intercollegiate sports, celebrated its 30th Anniversary in 2002. In 1971, before the law

was enacted, fewer than 300,000  female students (1 in 27 females1) participated in

interscholastic athletics.2 By 1976, over two million females were participating in sports3,

an increase of 600%.  Today, nearly one out of every two females participates in sports.

Despite these impressive strides in female involvement in athletics, Title IX does not

effectively equalize the athletic world between the sexes. In real life, nothing is perfectly

equal and fair. Athletic programs cannot cater to every athlete's needs and desires.

Limited budgets  and low-levels of interest in particular sports often result in schools

creating single-sex teams in certain sports. At such a school, for example, female athletes

interested in playing a sport only offered to male athletes might seek to join the male

team, or vice versa. Is this appropriate? Should females be allowed to play on all-male


* Jennifer Powell is a third-year student at Willamette University College of Law, she expects to earn her
Juris Doctor in May, 2004.
1 Kimberly Capadona, The Scope of Title IX Protection Gains Yardage As Courts Continue to Tackle he
Contact Sports Exception, 10 SETON HALL J. SPORT L. 415, 423 (2000).
2 Deborah Brake, Symposium Competing in the 21st Century: Title IX Gender Equity, andAthletics: The
Struggle for Sex Equality in Sport and the Theory Behind Title ll, MICH. J. L. REFORM 13, 15 (Fall and
Winter 2000 and 2001).
3 Jessica E. Jay, Women's Participation in Sports: Four Feminist Perspectives, 7 TEX. J. WOMEN & L. 1, 4
(1997) (citing Joan O'Brien, The Unlevel Playing Field, Salt Lake Trib., Sept. 4, 1994, at A9).
4 jd.
5 See Capadona, supra note 1, at 423.


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