The folly of Title IX and the blindness of its zealots
March 30th, 2007Good article by Carrie Lucas about the fallout from Title IX.
Evidence of men’s greater interest in watching and playing sports abounds. Recreational sports leagues open to all comers remain overwhelmingly male. Studies repeatedly have found that men watch, read, and talk more about sports than do women — five minutes in any sports bar would have yielded the same conclusion for the price of a beer.
Such common sense will be heresy, however, at the Cleveland conference. Many members of the organizations sponsoring the conference recoil from any suggestion that innate differences between the sexes contribute to disparate outcomes, whether on a basketball court or in the workplace. “Discrimination” is the only acceptable explanation when men out-participate or out-perform women, while women’s triumphs ironically are ignored.
I understand the point of the article. What struck me though was that she ignored the other activities. Why isn’t someone trying harder to get guys involved in non-sports things?
I also thought about extending my comment to look at parallels between Title IX battles and SBC leadership battles, but that was way off topic. Maybe I’ll post that at Wade’s blog
While I agree with the purpose if Title IX, to provide equal opportunity for both men and women, I don’t buy into the idea that a lack of equal participation necessarily means that there is discrimination. Just like I do not believe that the lack of male bank tellers or nurses means that men are discriminated against in those fields. Of course, men have equal opportunity to join those fields whereas there are a limited number of sports scholarships. If men have more scholarships available to them than women, that means that there is an inequality in opportunty. I personally couldn’t care less about the fans when it comes to college athletics. College is about learning opportunities, not creating entertainment for the general public.