There are many reasons to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX and the positive impact it has had on women’s sports, and yet there are also plenty of ways the landmark legislation hasn’t yet met its full potential.
As we enter the next 50 years of Title IX, here are a few examples of how new policies and better enforcement of the law could lead to more equal playing fields across the United States.
The sports participation gender gap starts early, and it continues all the way through college.
According to a report from the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), just 60% of girls compete in high school sports compared to 75% of boys. In fact, girls today have fewer opportunities to participate in high school sports than boys did in 1972.
At the collegiate level, 86% of NCAA institutions aren’t offering opportunities proportional to their enrollment. While women account for nearly 60% of college students nationwide, they have just 43% of college sports opportunities. This has a significant economic impact, with women missing out on $252 million of athletic scholarships. Per year.
“There’s sort of this widespread acknowledgement, like, ‘Well, schools aren’t complying’ and, you know, we’re 50 years in. That’s not great,” says investigative journalist Rachel Axon, who worked on a USA Today series that examined how Title IX has fallen short.
At the University of North Carolina (UNC), for example, the athletic department would need to add nearly 400 women’s roster spots in order to reach proportionality with its student body enrollment. UNC told USA Today that it is in compliance with the law through “prong three” of Title IX, meaning it is meeting the interests and abilities of its female students.
“And we asked them… ‘What are your surveys telling you? Are you getting requests from club teams to be elevated?’ And they declined to answer our questions on that and just gave us a generic statement,” says Axon.
Research from the Women’s Sports Foundation found that women of color are participating in sport at lower levels than white women.
At high schools where the majority of students are Black and/or Hispanic, girls receive 67% of the opportunities that are available to boys, according to WSF research. In comparison, at predominantly white high schools, girls have 82% of the opportunities that boys do. Women of color are also underrepresented in coaching and administrative positions, too.
The WSF recommended two policy changes to address these disparities: 1) that the Department of Education collect race-specific data on sports participation; and 2) that Congress pass the High School Data Transparency act, which would “require schools to publicly report information on the status of female and male athletes and students, broken down by race and ethnicity, as well as expenditures on each sponsored sports team.”
The concept behind Title IX is that — if federally funded institutions do not comply with the law — their funding can be taken away.
And yet, in 50 years of Title IX, the Department of Education has never stripped an institution of all federal funding. Instead, Title IX has been primarily been enforced through Civil Rights complaints, lawsuits and media attention.
While the NCAA has come under fire for its unequal treatment of men’s and women’s tournaments, the non-profit organization — which receives most of its funding from television, marketing rights and ticket sales — isn’t actually subject to Title IX, even though nearly all of its member organizations are.
That said, the organization could certainly take a much stronger role in making sure the legislation is enforced. The NCAA previously led a gender equity review in the 1990s and 2000s to encourage greater compliance, but the program was suspended in 2011.
“It could be doing more if it wanted to. It doesn’t want to,” says Axon.
While Title IX was meant to provide girls and women with equal opportunity, girls and women with disabilities have often been left behind.
This is something Tatyana McFadden experienced in 2005 as a freshman at Atholton High School in Columbia, Maryland, when she was prohibited from racing at the same time as her able-bodied track teammates.
“All I wanted to do was join high school track, but I was denied a uniform, I was denied (the opportunity) to race alongside others, and was practicing separately as well,” recalls McFadden. “I just thought, ‘We are in the 21st Century and I am 100% being discriminated against as a female athlete with a disability.”
McFadden filed suit against her school district — requesting equal competitive access — and won. This led to Maryland passing the Maryland Fitness and Athletes Equity for Students with Disabilities Act (also known as “Tatyana’s Law”), and in 2013, a U.S. Department of Education mandate.
And yet, women with disabilities still often have to fight for opportunities that are readily available to their able-bodied peers. Similar to Title IX itself, there is no proactive enforcement of the U.S. Department of Education mandate to ensure that students with disabilities are being given equitable opportunities.
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Before Title IX was passed in 1972, 90% of women’s collegiate teams were coached by women. These days, that number is closer to 41%. (And to be clear, that percentage refers to women coaching women’s teams; women are rarely considered for positions coaching men’s teams.)
This disparity continues to Olympic and professional leagues, where many women’s teams are currently being coached by men. At last summer’s Tokyo Olympics, just 21.1% of head coaches of Team USA were women, according to a Women’s Sports Foundation report.
Despite all of the tangible issues outlined above, 50 years after Title IX, nearly all current legislation about women’s sports is about excluding transgender women and girls, a group that is disproportionately affected by discrimination, harassment and deadly violence.
To put this in perspective: USA Today’s reporting found that six FBS universities in Ohio — Ohio State, Miami University, Ohio University, Bowling Green State, University of Toledo, and Kent State — are using loopholes and roster manipulation to make it look like they are closer to Title IX compliance than they actually are. By double- and triple- counting athletes, padding rowing rosters, and including male practice players, the six schools combined to inflate women’s rosters by 225 spots, all without adding any new women’s teams.
But rather than address this issue, Ohio House Republicans earlier this month passed a bill that not only bars transgender girls from playing sports, but also makes all girls subject to genital inspections. This is despite the fact that the Ohio High School Athletic Association said just five transgender athletes played school sports last year.
The Women’s Sports Foundation has recommended that the U.S. Department of Education “issue specific policy guidelines confirming that Title IX should be interpreted to provide opportunities to transgender and nonbinary students to participate in sports in a manner consistent with their gender identities” and for state policymakers to implement “inclusive policies for transgender and nonbinary athletes.”
Correction: A previous version of this story included the University of Akron as one of the Ohio schools that had padded roster numbers. It was actually Kent State.
Follow Alex Azzi on Twitter @AlexAzziNBC
Danielle Serdachny scored with 2:44 left in overtime to lift Team Canada past Team USA in Game 5 of the 2022-23 Rivalry Series on Monday night at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The 21-year-old Serdachny, making just her second national team start, gave Canada a 3-2 win and cut the U.S. lead to 3-2 in the seven-game series.
Also scoring for Canada was 28-year-old Laura Stacey and 22-year-old Sarah Fillier, both of whom recorded their first goals of the series. Ella Shelton and Emily Clarke recorded assists on Stacey’s goal, with Brianne Jenner and Marie-Philip Poulin assisting on Fillier’s tally. Emerance Maschmeyer made 32 saves in net.
“Honestly, I just jumped off the bench,” Stacey told the NHL Network following her goal. “Ella had the puck in the middle and I kinda saw a free lane and she made the perfect pass on my stick. I don’t know what I saw, to be honest, but I just tried to kind of get in the way of the defense been there — I think it was (Megan) Keller — and put it on net and good things happen, I guess.”
Fillier’s goal with 2:54 left in the second ended a power-play drought for Canadians, who had gone scoreless in 16 previous opportunities in the series. Poulin’s assist marked career point No. 199 for the team captain, who was recently inducted into Boston University’s Hall of Fame. Earlier this month, Poulin became the first female hockey player to be named Canada’s Athlete of the Year, and she now stands fifth on the Canadian women’s all-time scorer list.
The Americans opened the scoring in first when 23-year-old Cayla Barnes – the only member of the U.S. roster who is from Southern California (Eastvale, Calif.) – scored her first goal in her second appearance in the series. The goal, assisted by Amanda Kessel and Kendall Coyne Schofield, unleashed an epic teddy-bear toss, with the stuffed animals gathered as donations to the Salvation Army.
“It’s an awesome feeling,” said Barnes, who plays college hockey for Boston. “You know, family and friends are here. And just to get that first one in early is incredible.”
“It’s awesome to see the young fanbase here,” added Barnes, who played her 14U hockey for the Los Angeles Kings Jr. Kings. “I didn’t have that visibility when I was younger, so just for them to be able to see us play here and see that they can do it is just an awesome experience for them.”
Also scoring her first goal in the series for the U.S. was 22-year-old Taylor Heise, who tied the game at 2-2 in the third. The University of Minnesota forward was the leading scorer in the NCAA with 34 points, earning her the 2022 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award.
The Rivalry Series continues in February, with the final two games being played on Canadian ice. Host cites will be announced in early 2023.
TEAM USA
The December roster returns 19 players from the 2022 U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team that captured silver in Beijing in February. Those returners include Cayla Barnes, Hannah Brandt, Alex Carpenter, Jesse Compher, Kendall Coyne Schofield, Jincy Dunne, Savannah Harmon, Caroline Harvey, Nicole Hensley, Megan Keller, Amanda Kessel, Hilary Knight, Abbey Murphy, Kelly Pannek, Maddie Rooney, Abby Roque, Hayley Scamurra, Lee Stecklein and Grace Zumwinkle.
All 23 players that represented the U.S. at the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship in Herning, Denmark, are on December’s roster, as are 11 players from the 2018 U.S. Olympic Women’s Hockey Team that won gold in PyeongChang, where they beat Canada 3-2 in a shootout. Those players include Barnes, Brandt, Coyne Schofield, Kali Flanagan, Hensley, Keller, Kessel, Knight, Pannek, Rooney and Stecklein. Rounding out the roster are 2022 Olympian Abbey Murphy and 18-year-old Tessa Janecke, the youngest player on the U.S. roster who is made her national team debut last Friday.
TEAM CANADA
The Canadians’ December roster features 16 players who won gold medals at the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship and 2022 Olympic Winter Games: Ashton Bell, Kristen Campbell, Emily Clark, Ann-Renée Desbiens, Renata Fast, Sarah Fillier, Brianne Jenner, Jocelyne Larocque, Emerance Maschmeyer, Sarah Nurse, Marie-Philip Poulin, Jamie Lee Rattray, Ella Shelton, Laura Stacey, Blayre Turnbull and Micah Zandee-Hart. Two-time Olympian Jill Saulnier returned to the lineup, with Julia Gosling making her first international appearance in more than a year. Two players made their national team debut this month — Megan Carter and Danielle Serdachny.
The Rivalry Series, introduced by USA Hockey and Hockey Canada during the 2018-19 season, is designed as an annual showcase of the highest level of women’s hockey at various locations in the United States and Canada. The first series comprised three games between the two national teams, with Canada winning 2-1. Team USA took 2019-20 title, winning the expanded five-game series 4-1 and wrapping with an overtime win in the finale in front of a then-record-breaking total of 13,320 fans in Anaheim, California.
Following a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic and preparation for the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, the Rivalry Series resumed this season with seven games over three months: three in November, two in December and two in February. Game 3 on Nov. 20, 2022, set a new U.S. attendance record as 14,551 fans turned out to see Team USA beat Canada 4-2, at Climate Pledge Arena.
Game 1, Nov. 15: USA 4, CAN 3, SO — The seven-game series kicked off last month with Team USA grabbing a 2-0 lead off goals from Hannah Brandt and Hilary Knight. But Canada battled back with three unanswered goals and held a 3-2 lead with 13 minutes to go in the third. With just 1:29 remaining in regulation, Alex Carpenter tied it for the Americans, sending the game to overtime. The U.S. ultimately won in a shootout, with Knight and Carpenter scoring while U.S. goalie Nicole Hensley made two key saves. Series score: USA leads 1-0.
Game 2, Nov. 17: USA 2, CAN 1 — Canada was first to get on the board when Marie-Philip Poulin capitalized off a penalty shot opportunity in the second period, but USA’s Kendall Coyne Schofield knotted the score just 1:12 later. Alex Carpenter scored the go-ahead tally with 6:36 remaining in the third to give the U.S. a 2-1 win and a 2-0 series lead. U.S. goalie Maddie Rooney recorded 19 saves in net. Series score: USA leads 2-0.
Game 3, Nov. 20: USA 4, CAN 2 — Team USA’s Hilary Knight had two goals and one assist to lead the U.S. women to a 4-2 win over Canada. Savannah Harmon and Abby Roque also scored for the U.S., which notched three consecutive wins against Canada for the first time since 2019. Goalie Nicole Hensley made 22 saves in front of a record-setting crown at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, where fan attendance totaled 14,551. Marie-Philip Poulin and Sarah Nurse scored for Canada. Series score: USA leads 3-0.
Game 4, Dec. 19: CAN 3, USA 2 — Sarah Nurse scored the go-ahead goal with less than five minutes remaining to secure Team Canada’s first win of the 2022-23 Rivalry Series, winning 3-2 last Thursday at Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, Nev. Team USA’s Amanda Kessel opened the scoring late in the first, but Canada responded in the middle frame with two goals by Jamie Lee Rattray and Blayre Turnbull. Hilary Knight tied the game for USA in the third, but Nurse’s goal put Team Canada over the top. Goaltender Kristen Campbell made 21 saves for Canada, while Maddie Rooney made 13 saves in net for the U.S. Series score: USA leads 3-1.
Following Monday’s loss, the U.S. holds a 6-2-2-3 (W-OTW-OTL-L) record over Canada all time in the Rivalry Series. Canada won the 2018-19 Rivalry Series with a 2-0-0-1 record, while the U.S. won the 2019-20 Rivalry Series with a 3-1-1-0 record.
Overall, Monday marked meeting No. 172 between Canada and the U.S., the 58th meeting on U.S. ice and the second ever in California. Monday was the second time the Rivalry Series has visited California, following a Feb. 8, 2020, meeting at the Honda Center in Anaheim.
Canada holds the edge in the overall (97-74-1) and in games played in the States (32-25-1). Of note, the U.S. and Canada have battled in the gold-medal game of six of seven Winter Olympics and 20 of 21 IIHF Women’s World Championship, with the two exceptions being the 2019 World Championship and 2006 Olympics. The Canadian women are the reigning Olympic and World champions.
2019-20 RIVALRY SERIES
2018-19 RIVALRY SERIES
The men’s FIFA World Cup came to a dramatic conclusion Sunday with Argentina securing a thrilling win over France in penalty kicks, and luckily there’s no reason to bottle up even a drop of that enthusiasm. The U.S. Women’s National Team takes center stage in just seven short months, as the four-time champions look to defend their 2019 title in Australia and New Zealand at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
For the first time, the Women’s World Cup will feature 32 teams – eight more than in 2019. Several nations are set to make their debut, including Vietnam, which will face the USWNT in its opening group-stage match on July 22 at Eden Park in Auckland. The tournament kicks off with a doubleheader on July 20, with co-hosts New Zealand and Australia taking on Norway and the Republic of Ireland, respectively.
But the news gets better: Team USA is back in action next month in New Zealand, where they’ll conclude a six-day training camp with a two-game series on Jan. 17 and 20 against the co-host nation. What’s more, the USWNT also will participate in the SheBelieves Cup over Feb. 16-22 and will host Brazil, Canada and Japan in the four-team tournament. All four have already qualified for the 2023 World Cup and are ranked in the top 11 in the world — with the U.S. at No. 1, Canada at No. 6, Brazil at No. 9 and Japan at No. 11.
Additionally, Women’s World Cup action begins in February with a play-in tournament, where 10 teams will vie for the final three spots in 2023 tournament.
As for prize money, while the final numbers have yet to be released, it’s expected that the FIFA will more than double the prize money for 2023. In 2019 in France, the women’s prize money was $30 million — with the U.S. women winning $4 million — and reports suggest that figure reach $69 million or more for 2023. Of course, that’s still a far cry from the men’s 2022 World Cup prize pool, where Argentina took home $42 million of the $440 million total.
Read on as On Her Turf breaks down what you need to know heading into next year’s ninth edition of the Women’s World Cup.
The upcoming edition of the Women’s World Cup is set to run from July 20th to August 20th with matches taking place in Australia and New Zealand. Telemundo will be the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament, with streaming also available on Peacock.
The U.S. women will be led by star veterans including 37-year-old Megan Rapinoe, winner of the Golden Boot and Golden Ball in 2019, Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn and Christine Sinclaire.
But an infusion of new talent is poised to back up those veterans, led by forward Sophia Smith and center back Naomi Girma, who were teammates at Stanford and shined bright in the recent NWSL season. Smith, who won the 2022 championship with the Portland Thorns, was named league MVP, while Girma won both Rookie and Defender of the Year awards. Other young stars to keep an eye on are Mallory Pugh, 24, and 20-year-old Trinity Rodman, who was a Ballon d’Or finalist this year. Catarina Macario, 23, is recovering from a torn ACL but could return as early as late February.
The draw for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup was announced in October, with the U.S. women and their perennial foe England on opposite sides of the bracket. The U.S. is aiming to become the first team in either the women’s or men’s game to win three successive World Cups, after taking the title in 2015 and 2019. But they face a battle in their Group E pairings, which includes the Netherlands, whom they beat in the final in Lyon, France, four years ago.
Also playing out of Group E is Vietnam and one team still to be determined. That spot will go to the winner of February’s Group A playoff, which includes Cameroon, Portugal and Thailand.
The USWNT World Cup group schedule (all times ET):
The USWNT, led by head coach Vlatko Andonovski, secured its spot in the tournament this last July at the 2022 Concacaf W Championship, where it clinched the title with a 1-0 victory over 2020 Olympic gold medalist Canada and secured its spot in the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
They closed out the 2022 calendar year with a 14-3-1 record, with all three losses coming in the later months of the year. The rare losing streak started with a 2-1 loss to England at iconic Wembley Stadium on Oct. 7, followed by a 2-0 loss to Spain on Oct. 11 and a 2-1 defeat by Germany on Nov. 10. They wrapped the year on a high note, beating Germany 2-1 on Nov. 13.
All the games. All in one place. 🏆 🫡
The #FIFAWWC 2023 match schedule!#BeyondGreatness pic.twitter.com/K5VyBpxoe7
— FIFA Women’s World Cup (@FIFAWWC) October 28, 2022
A total of 32 nations will compete in the Women’s World Cup for the first time, up from 24 in 2015 and 2019. The event began as a 12-team tournament in 1991 and was expanded to include 16 countries in 1999. The number was increased to 24 teams ahead of the 2015 edition in Canada.
Currently, 29 nations have qualified for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, with three still to be determined in February through a playoff tournament. The groups are:
The 32 teams were drawn into eight groups of four nations. Each team will play every team in their group once, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the knockout rounds.
The competition then moves onto a Round of 16 (Aug. 5-8), quarterfinals (Aug. 11-12), and semifinals (Aug. 15-16). The match to determine third place will be Aug. 19, with the final set for Saturday, Aug. 20. The tournament is being held across nine cities in Australia and New Zealand, with the final being held in the 83,500-person Stadium Australia in Sydney.
The competition to decide the final three final entrants to the 2023 Women’s World Cup is set for Feb. 18-23, with 10 teams from six confederations participating in the play-in tournament. World Cup co-host New Zealand will host the contest at two of the World Cup venues, Waikato Stadium in Hamilton and North Harbour Stadium in Auckland.
The 10 teams that narrowly missed out on qualification via their confederations’ qualifying tournaments make up the intercontinental playoff field for one last chance at a World Cup berth:
The 10-team field was then divided into two groups of three teams and one group of four teams. They are:
The top two seeds, Portugal and Chile, were given the top spots in Groups 1 and 2, respectively, and received first-round byes. The top seed in each group will face the winner of the first-round match between the two unseeded teams in the group final. Hence, Cameroon will face Thailand for the right to play Portugal in the Group A final, while the winners of Senegal-Haiti will take on Chile in Group B. In Group C, the third- and fourth-seeded teams — Chinese Taipei and Papua New Guinea — will take on unseeded Paraguay and Panama, respectively. The winners of each group will punch their tickets to the 2023 World Cup.
