I try to stay out of the ongoing arguments over Title IX, proportionality, and women’s sports. (I’ve mentioned Title IX once or twice) but I’d rather leave the defense of Title IX to those who are best equipped to do that — the good folks at the Women’s Sports Foundation.
But sometimes, the issues raised in the ongoing debate over proportionality (the principle that spending on men’s and women’s athletics by colleges should match the percentage of the respective genders in the student body) get me really interested. On Wednesday, the National Review published this piece by Jessica Gavora, who is associated with the nemesis of women’s sports, the College Sports Council.
Gavora is worried that having had great success in defending the proportionality rule in colleges (which has led many schools to cut certain men’s sports, like wrestling, in order to meet quotas), the advocates for Title IX are going to push for similar measures in high school. Gavora, like most conservatives, is a fierce believer in gender essentialism; she is convinced that girls “just don’t like sports” as much as boys do. Thus mandating equal funding for both sexes unfairly punishes boys for their “natural” competitive nature. After all, many conservatives seem to believe that most real women would rather be at the quilting bee (or shopping at the mall, or writing sonnets in imitation of Millay) than running, leaping, or striking at balls with their bats or their cleats.
Okay, so maybe that’s not fair. Here’s what Gavora says that I did find interesting:
The reason high schools are having trouble finding as many girls to play sports as there are boys clamoring to take the field is apparent to anyone who takes the time to look: Girls have more varied extracurricular interests than boys. Girls out-participate boys in every extracurricular activity — band, drama, debate, student government — every one, that is, except for sports. The extracurricular gender gap so favors girls that the Independent Women’s Forum calculated that if the government were suddenly to require the same gender quota for participation in other extracurricular activities that it does in sports, 36 percent of female choir members, 25 percent of female orchestra members, and 33 percent of female debaters would have to be eliminated.
The implication of this is clear: If high schools follow colleges and universities in instituting gender quotas in athletics, boys will be forced to pay the price in limited or eliminated opportunities. Girls are too busy doing other things after school to turn out at the same rate for sports.
Bold emphases mine. There’s a grain of truth in what Gavora says, though it’s hardly an argument against proportionality. I’m convinced that the primary reason some schools have a hard time getting enough girls to come out for sports is not because of a lack of interest, but because of a perception on the part of these over-scheduled, over-pressured young women that sports isn’t the best use of their time. I’ve written before about the colossal pressure we put on this generation of young women to be successful; all things being equal, it does seem clear that our daughters are more anxious to please and to achieve tangible signs of success than many of their brothers.
It’s not that girls are any less competitive, any less interested in getting sweaty and dirty, any less interested in victory than boys. But as they think about college applications, as they look to their parents and adults for cues as to how to succeed, they are more likely to be pushed towards student government, the debate team, the French Club, or massive amounts of community volunteering. That’s not a function of nature — that’s a calculation about what will look good. When applying to a selective university, these girls imagine that being president of the student body will look more impressive than being an all-league mid-fielder on the soccer team.
Not everyone wants to play sports, of course. There are plenty of boys (I was one in high school) who have no interest in being athletic, and I know perfectly well that there are lots of girls who find the idea of playing on a team to be a dreary one. But I know full well that those boys who are interested in playing are more likely to be encouraged to do so, while their sisters are more likely to be pressured to choose other, seemingly more “prestigious” extra-curricular activities.
Applying proportionality to the high schools will force a necessary cultural shift. We’re going to need to do more than demand that dollars spent reflect the percentage of girls and boys in the entire school. We’re going to have to challenge the “culture of perfection” in which so many young women labor, a culture which often discourages girls from putting their hearts, bodies, and souls into sports. (Courtney Martin writes very well about that culture, I reviewed her book here).
And we’re going to need to get some boys up off the damn couch, away from the video games, and into not only sports, but those activities now so often dominated by girls: debate, band, student government.
Bring on proportionality.
That reminds me of Disney’s recent hit “High School Musical” (a favorite of my sports-crazy, book-hating teen gal pal, ironically) where all the boys were jocks and the girls were well-coiffed brainiacs. Girls now outnumber boys in college, too. Do you think it’s true that once a critical mass of women take part in an activity, that activity is perceived as feminine, and boys concentrate on the remaining typically male preserves? If so, what do we do about it, if anything?
Applying the rule of proportionality is one thing we can do. Spending more time nurturing boys and pushing them is another. We push girls harder because we’ve raised them to be more compliant with our pushing; it’s sometimes easier to mentor girls because we’ve raised them to be easier to mentor. So we’ve got to overcome our fear of reaching out to the sullen, the stoned, the shy and the disengaged boys. We’ve got to love them and while we love them, we’ve got to kick their butts a bit. Tenderly.
I’ll refrain from any debate about whether boys or girls are naturally more inclined for sports or any other extra curricular activity. Partially because we’ve had that sort of conversation plenty recently, partially because it’s hard for me to care. I had less than no interest in sports in school (still do) myself, but really enjoyed speech and theater.
But I will say this: If you try to push a kid into an extracurricular activity he or she just isn’t interested in you’re doing neither the kid nor the extracurricular activity any favors. The kid will be bored and resentful, an attitude that will likely spill over to the rest of school. The football team or debate team or choral group or whatever is going to suffer from his or her low interest and minimal compliance.
My father is a total jock. If it’s a game involving a ball he loves it. But he loves me and my sister more, enough to not push us when neither of us showed any interest in playing sports. It’s the same attitude I intend to have with my daughter–I’m going to insist that she participate in SOMETHING, but she gets to choose what. I’m not going to browbeat her into something she doesn’t want just to satisfy some hairbrained idea of social engineering.
Chief, no one is talking about pushing anyone into playing sports. I agree with your approach to your daughter — the key is changing those cultural factors that discourage sports participation among girls, and discourage student government/debate/band among boys.
An intelligent woman I respect told me yesterday that she quit running because, at 125 lbs., her breasts would shrink and she was embarrassed
If even she can feel that way…
Sigh.
I’m not going to browbeat her into something she doesn’t want just to satisfy some hairbrained idea of social engineering.
Sadly, Chief, even if you don’t, there are plenty of people who are going to try to browbeat her away from things she does want just to satisfy some hairbrained idea of essentialism.
There’s also the fact that boys are often under pressure to NOT participate in other extracurricular activities. I remember being called a “fag” a lot in High School because I was interested in drama and music and uninterested in sports.
Hugo -
proportionality (the principle that spending on men’s and women’s athletics by colleges should match the percentage of the respective genders in the student body)
That definition of proportionality is not the standard used in Title IX though — percentages of male and female athletes are substantially proportionate to the percentages of male and female students enrolled;
The only area in Title IX with regards to spending in athletics that requires the same dollars be spent proportional to participation is scholarships. Otherwise, male and female student-athletes must receive equitable “treatment” and “benefits” in 11 specified areas.
The Javits Amendment stated that legitimate and justifiable discrepancies for nongender related differences in sports could be taken into account. While that difference may not be great (and quality levels should be equal in spite of equipment differences) across most programs, football and ice hockey (5 to 1 participation boys to girls participation ratio according to the NFSHSA) will always skew spending numbers and make “equal spending” problematic.
If you are in favor of “forcing” cultural shifts, do you support applying a participation proportionality rule to all extra curricular activities? In as much as getting boys into “girl dominated” activities to reduce differences, I would think getting more girls football and hockey programs (even if subsidizing youth programs to build a foundation) going would be equally effective since girls are not “any less competitive, any less interested in getting sweaty and dirty, any less interested in victory.”
I would think getting more girls football and hockey programs (even if subsidizing youth programs to build a foundation) going would be equally effective since girls are not “any less competitive, any less interested in getting sweaty and dirty, any less interested in victory.”
If my high school had a hockey program, I would have been there in a New York minute.
A filly just won the Belmont. Even without the five pound weight allowance she would have finished a solid second.
Hmmm . . . Why are women and men’s sports segregated at the college level? There aren’t separate white, black, asian, and indigenous teams at colleges. You know what would slay the dragon of gender essentialism? . . . Division I football where women make up half the team. :)
//If my high school had a hockey program, I would have been there in a New York minute.//
mythago, amen to that. Just because I also played tennis doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy getting muddy and sweaty playing soccer … I would have died and gone to heaven if there’d been any sort of women’s ice hockey team when I was growing up.
So much of this seems like a “catch 22″ in that, if there isn’t an attempt to offer a proportional number of opportunities for participating in sports, then the number of young women participating in sports will be fewer. May not mean young women aren’t “into” sports. It may mean they don’t have the opportunity. Now that programs like Hockey are available at the college level for women as well as men, more women are participating.
I do find it curious that the number of extra-curricular activities that aren’t sports have such strong female participation. Is it because, to get into college, many boys think sports will be their ticket, while the number of scholarships for female athletes may still not be up to the mark? With the drastic cutting in education funding going on under President-Select Bush, more and more people have to get their via scholarships.
There are a lot of cultural issues going on here and I think that there is still lots of cultural “churn” going on. For me, this issue is an academic one, but I am curious to see how it turns out.
With the drastic cutting in education funding going on under President-Select Bush, more and more people have to get their via scholarships.
I assume your comment focuses on higher education funding. Putting aside the issues of whether the Federal government should be in the business of funding what some might consider a more private than public good and that final spending depends on both the Administration and Congress, look at the numbers.
Funding for grants (Pell/SEOG/LEAP/Veterans/Others) grew by 37% in the last 5 years of the Clinton administration. Funding for same grants grew by 68% in the first 5 years of the Bush administration. Total Federal aid (grants plus loans plus work study) grew by 48% in the same period under the Clinton administration while aid grew by 71% in the first 5 years of the Bush adminstration. Those figures are in current dollars. Adjusting for inflation (constant dollars), the figures for all aid are 21% under Clinton and 47% under Bush.
If you want to discuss the current budget, you can get a somewhat fairly balanced assessment here —— http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/02/06/edbudget
you can go to collegeboard.com for trends in student aid and crunch the numbers.
At best, your statement is a gross simplification because of the complexities and multiple actors in higher education funding. At worst, your statement is a cheap, uninformed statement that undercuts the notion you suggest.
From an economist standpoint, let me offer a simpler hypothesis. By 2004, women were earning 58 percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States. And according to the U.S. Department of Education, this gender gap will only widen in the coming decade. According to Columbia University, the female advantage is particularly apparent among black and Hispanic women, who now respectively claim a staggering 67 percent and 61 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in their racial group. Meanwhile, 57 percent of degrees awarded to whites are earned by women, and 52 percent of undergraduate degrees awarded to Asians are awarded to women. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, females
complete more challenging curricula and earn higher GPAs (than males), (but) they do not perform as well on NAEP as males with the same academic records. Now, since the census shows the population of high school males is slightly larger than females, what you have is a greater competition among females, especially when considering the role of standardized tests in college admission. The higher “price” females have to pay because of the greater competition is reflected in the extra activities necessary to gain admission.
Some of the cultural issues Hugo has blogged about (Martha/Mary) and perhaps inequities in scholarships play a role too, but the disparities in extra curricular activities is not surprising when taking an “economist supply and demand” perspective.