Letting Women Athletes Soar

If you walk around a college campus today, you’ll see many things that weren’t there 30 years ago, including many more women engaged in competitive sports and enjoying the benefits of athletic scholarships. Much of the credit for this dramatic change goes to Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in all aspects of federally funded education programs, including athletics.

Title IX, passed 30 years ago today, created the opportunities that led to key accomplishments of my life. My dream to attend college was made a reality with a Title IX basketball scholarship to UCLA. This provided the momentum and opportunity to represent the United States in four Olympics, bringing home six Olympic medals.

So much has changed for women and girls since I was a kid. At age 9, I remember being excluded from facilities and training rooms because they were for boys only. My coach even had to make a long-jump pit in his backyard because I couldn’t use the boys’ field.

This pattern continued in junior high and high school, where, as a female athlete, I was relegated to after-hours practices and underfunded programs.

But by the time I reached college, Title IX was being enforced to give me--and millions of young women like me--the opportunity to develop my fullest potential. With the guidance of my role models and support of my family, I rose from those beginnings in East St. Louis, Ill., to the Olympics in Seoul.

I am just one of many who have benefited from Title IX. Since Title IX, the number of female college athletes has increased from fewer than 32,000 to more than 150,000 today. Like me, many of these women would not have made it to college without the scholarships that Title IX provided.

We have seen changes at the high school level too. These girls are not only developing their athletic abilities; girls who play sports enjoy greater self-esteem as well as better health, body image and academic accomplishment. Participation in athletics also decreases the likelihood of drug use, sexual activity and unplanned pregnancy.

But Title IX’s role in athletics is far from complete. Too many young women and girls are still in danger of never realizing their true potential. Stereotypes about women and girls being uninterested in sports persist.

All those stereotypes I heard didn’t stop me from going the distance; growing up in a family of athletes, I knew girls could practice with as much strength and dedication as the boys. Unfortunately, many girls never receive such encouragement.

At the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Boys & Girls Club of East St. Louis, we give girls this kind of encouragement--and it gives boys the opportunity to see that girls’ participation in sports takes nothing away from them.

Critics claim that Title IX produces reverse discrimination, eliminating men’s athletic teams for the sake of meeting “quotas.” This is simply untrue; nothing in the law says schools must set aside a mandatory number of slots for women or show certain numbers to prove equal opportunity. In fact, schools can comply with Title IX simply by demonstrating expanded opportunities for female athletes or by showing that the interests of female students are indeed being met at the school.

As I was growing up, my mother told me to be strong like a rose that has grown through the cracks in the sidewalk.

As this important civil rights law turns 30, it is my hope that young women and girls across the country have the chance to follow these words of encouragement and continue to break new ground for themselves.