A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR WOMEN

By Steve Wulf

Lisa Stern received some bad news over the phone on April 30, 1991. Then a high school senior in Phoenix, Arizona, Stern had committed to Brown University not only because it is part of the Ivy League but also because of its reputation in women's gymnastics. The call from Providence, Rhode Island, though, was to inform her that Brown's athletic department was eliminating four sports, among them women's gymnastics, in a budget cutback. "I was devastated," recalls Stern. "I wanted the best academics and the best athletics. Brown's team had won the Ivys the year before. I had already turned down full rides at Berkeley [California] and Illinois." Stern and other female athletes eventually filed a class action against the university to restore gymnastics and volleyball, citing Brown's failure to comply with Title IX, the landmark civil rights statute barring gender discrimination in education.

One small decision for Brown women turned into a giant one for womankind last week. On April 21, a phone call brought some very good news to Stern, now an investment banker in Baltimore, Maryland. The call was from Lynette Labinger, an attorney representing the women. Labinger told Stern that the U.S. Supreme Court would let stand a lower-court ruling that Brown was in violation of Title IX. "I was ecstatic," says Stern. "After six years, it was finally over. It shows that universities can't ignore women in sports."

Reaction to the Supreme Court's non-decision was as swift as a Lisa Fernandez fastball, as dramatic as a Kerri Strug vault. "It's the greatest single legal action in the history of women's sports," said Donna de Varona, the Olympic swimmer and first president of the Women's Sports Foundation. "It's bad law," says Southern Cal athletic director Mike Garrett, voicing a concern that the Brown ruling will spur lawsuits against schools that are earnestly trying to upgrade women's sports.

Taking a more measured view of the Supreme Court's pass was Donna Lopiano, a true pioneer in women's athletics and the current executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation. "The impact is as much psychological as anything else," says Lopiano. "A lot of people--football coaches, especially--were absolutely convinced that some rich school would go to the court and salvation would be at hand and Title IX would be overturned. That was their dream. We hope now that they realize there is no out, that we can move forward and do what we were supposed to do 25 years ago."

Title IX was signed into law on June 23, 1972, by Richard Nixon as part of a larger bill, the Education Amendments Act, proposed by Oregon Congresswoman Edith Green. Though compliance wasn't required until 1978, Title IX has become one of the most important pieces of social legislation ever enacted. When it was first passed, there were 31,000 women participating in intercollegiate athletics. There are now more than 120,000 female athletes in the nation's colleges. A survey by Brooklyn College professors R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter shows that in 1977, a year before Title IX went into effect, women were offered an average of 5.6 teams per college; in 1996 that figure was 7.5. Even more impressive is the growth of girls' sports in high schools. While the number of boy athletes remains the same as it did in 1971 (approximately 3.6 million), the number of girl athletes has increased from 294,000 in '71 to 2.4 million in '95. The outstanding performances last summer by the U.S. Olympic women's teams in soccer, swimming, basketball, softball and gymnastics are directly attri- butable to the expansion of women's sports mandated by Title IX.

"It's wonderful that we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Title IX, and so much has happened," says Carpenter. "But it's frustrating that there is still so much to be done." Acosta and Carpenter also discovered in their survey that the percentage of women coaching women's teams is down, from 49.4% in 1994 to 47.7% in 1996. While there are 1,003 more head-coaching jobs for women's teams than there were 10 years ago, there are only 333 more female head coaches.

The Office for Civil Rights within the Department of Education is responsible for enforcing Title IX, and it has established three criteria for compliance: 1) a close correlation between the percentage of female athletes and the percentage of female students; 2) continual progress in the expansion of women's sports; or 3) matching athletic opportunities with the interests and abilities of female students. According to a recent analysis by USA Today, only 9 of 107 Division I-A schools (Air Force, Navy, Army, Georgia Tech, Washington State, Virginia Tech, Kansas, Utah and Washington) meet the first criterion, so the two more subjective standards are most often applied. Because the OCR has never actually enforced Title IX by denying federal funds to noncomplying schools, wronged parties have had to resort to legal challenges. In recent years such high-profile schools as Colgate, Auburn, Texas and Colorado State have had to deal with sports-bias lawsuits.

One of the reasons the Brown case became such a focal point is that the university has, in some ways, a model women's athletic program. When the case first went to trial in 1994, Brown offered 17 varsity sports to women and 16 to men; women constituted 51% of the student body and 38% of the varsity athletes. At the same time that Brown tried to eliminate women's volleyball and gymnastics, it had also cut loose men's golf and water polo. But as Labinger has pointed out, the total funding for the two men's teams was $16,000, while the women's teams represented an expenditure of $62,000. Brown, which was supported by briefs from more than 60 other institutions, has since spent an estimated $1 million on a team of lawyers to fight the Title IX ruling. Duke University law professor John Weistart, an expert on sports law, says, "I've looked at the amicus briefs, and some of them read like polemics, comparing Title IX to affirmative action. This case became the rallying cry for the anti-Title IX folks, so the reaction of supporters is understandable."

Opponents of Title IX are worried that the expansion of women's sports will cause the elimination of men's teams. But that is a shibboleth that can be chased away with better fiscal management. College sports administrators like to point out that there are actually three genders: male, female and football. Maintaining a football team for 12 weekends of entertainment is an astoundingly expensive proposition for Division I-A schools, especially when Nebraska insists on dressing 140 players. If the Green Bay Packers can get by with 45 players, why can't colleges play with, say, 60? According to one athletic director, eliminating 20 football scholarships would save his school a quarter of a million dollars. A university could fund a women's lacrosse team for the money it spends on the sixth string of its football team.

Those who scream loudest about the injustice of Title IX are usually football boosters, some of whom are middle-aged male athletic directors who hold the purse strings. But as Lopiano says, "The dinosaurs are leaving." What's driving them into extinction is not so much feminism or economics but rather parenthood. "Young parents, that first generation of moms and dads who grew up believing their daughters could be athletes, are a vast force for change," says Lopiano. Dads--especially, she adds, men who have coached their daughters' teams for years--are really going to be mad if athletic scholarships aren't available to their daughters. "There is no reason why in the next 10 years we won't be looking at fifty-fifty participation in sports," she says.

Those disappointed in the Supreme Court's tacit approval of Title IX won't like this further prediction from Lopiano: "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

--Reported by Lawrence Mondi/New York, Jacqueline Savaiano/Los Angeles and Tom Witkowski/Boston