Some Are Finding Creative Ways to Gain Gender Equity

A few big NCAA colleges are finding ways to comply with Title IX banning discrimination against women without hurting football, the Kansas City Star says in today’s editions.

One, it said, is the University of Kansas, which decided three years ago that it was going to comply within five years.

Today the school, whose men’s basketball team ranked No. 1 most of last season, is only a few percentage points away from reaching proportionality--women make up 49% of all students and 47% of athletes, according to 1995-96 figures, the most recent available.

“It’s been a challenge, but we said this is what we are going to do and we’re going to do it,” Athletic Director Bob Frederick told the Star. “At the outset we said we were not going to sacrifice our existing sports but we were going to find a way to come up with the extra revenue to meet the challenges.”

Frederick said Kansas found people willing to help, including a couple in Los Angeles, and held fund-raising dinners for prominent women in Lawrence.

In all, $8 million came in to build a new athletic sports complex with facilities for men and women.

A San Francisco couple also donated $150,000 that was used to renovate the women’s basketball locker room, and Super Target in Lawrence donated $150,000 to build the women’s soccer field.

Frederick said the school now is raising $3 million annually for both men’s and women’s scholarships.

All in all, interest in women’s sports is growing in the United States, the Star noted.

“Any coach knows that whoever brings up Title IX is facing retribution,” said Donna Lopiano, head of the Women’s Sports Foundation and a nationally known advocate of Title IX. “Athletic directors hire women who they think won’t give them trouble.”

NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey acknowledged that progress has been slow for women coaches, but he said progress was being made. For example, the gap between coaches of men’s and women’s teams has narrowed, he said.

Often, the Star said, the designation of senior women administrator is meaningless, a prestigious title with responsibility for overseeing Title IX and gender equity issues.

Sharon Riker, a secretary in the athletic department at Division III Howard Payne University in Texas, said her position as senior woman administrator is a farce.

“I’m just a secretary,” Riker said. “I have no clue how I got the title.”

The NCAA rules book says, “A senior woman administrator is the highest ranking female administrator.”

At Division I Bethune-Cookman College in Florida, senior woman administrator Shirley Lee is executive assistant to the president and directs long-range planning for the college. Lee said she pushes Title IX issues but her words often seem to go unheard.

“This program really revolves around football,” Lee said.