Photo:Jimmy Carter signs House of Representative Resolution for Equal Rights Amendment. – NARA
**Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // May 2005 **
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires that schools and colleges not discriminate “on the basis of sex.” The law says nothing about equal numbers of men and women, sex-integration, “proportionality,” quotas, affirmative action, remedies for underrepresentation or past discrimination, or even about sports. Title IX’s author, Rep. Edith Green, stated at the time that the law is “exceedingly explicit so that the establishment of quotas would be prohibited.”
Despite Rep. Green’s promise, gender quotas were created by the feminists during the Carter Administration and have been enforced ever since. It is an incontrovertible fact that men are more interested in competitive sports than women, and it is typical for colleges to have difficulty finding women to meet their quota targets.
We all know that Title IX has required colleges to abolish hundreds of men’s sports teams, but an unintended consequence is that the irrational fe1ninist agenda harms women, too. A 1999 study found that girls softball had double the rate of serious head injuries as boys baseball, despite a baseball’s greater hardness and speed. Feminism is pushing girls into higher risks of injury and hormonal-changing drugs. Studies show that female competitors, especially in soccer and basketball, have a higher incidence of knee and head injuries compared to men. Torn anterior cruciate ligaments are crippling women athletes at an alarming rate, and have decimated even the well-trained women’s professional soccer league.
More than half of the 103 soccer players, who were ages 14 to 28 at the time of an ACL injury, suffered osteoarthritis of the knee 12 years later. It is alarming that women soccer players develop osteoarthritis at age 31, which could require two or three knee replacements over their lifetime. No one knows for sure why girls are at a higher risk than boys, but they are.
Title IX should be returned to the way it was originally intended and not used to promote feminist goals that do so much harm to both men and women.
This post originally appeared at https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/constitution/congress/title-ix-harms-women-too/
Ryan Hite