Intercollegiate Athletics

More than 100,000 American women now participate in intercollegiate athletics each year--a four-fold increase since enactment of title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletics at colleges and universities receiving federal financial assistance. Some have seen this increase as a move toward "gender equity" in athletics, while others point out that a gap still remains in overall opportunity between men's and women's programs. This report discusses (1) the steps that the Department of Education and the National Collegiate Athletic Association have taken since 1992 to promote equity between men and women participating in intercollegiate athletics, (2) the steps that states have taken to promote gender equity in athletic programs at colleges, and (3) what existing studies show about the progress made since 1992 in promoting gender equity in intercollegiate athletics.

GAO found that: (1) since 1992, the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has focused on prevention of title IX violations by clarifying its policies on title IX compliance and increasing technical assistance to help colleges meet title IX requirements while it continues to investigate the relatively few complaints filed each year; (2) NCAA created a task force to examine gender equity issues and now requires certification that athletic programs at all Division I schools meet NCAA-established gender equity requirements; (3) state efforts to promote or ensure gender equity in intercollegiate athletics vary considerably; (4) of the 22 states that reported having laws or other requirements to specifically address gender equity in intercollegiate athletics, 13 reported having full- or part-time staff responsible for gender equity issues; and (5) results from 8 national gender equity studies show gains in the number of women's sports that schools offer, number of female students participating in athletics, and percentage of scholarship funds available to female students, but many women's athletics programs lag behind those for men in the percentage of female head coaches, salaries paid to coaches, and proportion of women athletes to total undergraduate enrollment.