Equity in Athletics Disclosure reports: Progress, not equity

The Ivy League male/female athlete ratio is still 3-to-2. But Ancient Eight statistics are improving, and are better than some scholarship conferences. The Ivy League prides itself on the large number of women's varsity sports its schools offer -- more than any other conference in the nation. But according to the Ancient Eight's first-ever Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act reports, men's teams as a whole still have more members and receive considerably more funding than women's squads. The reports detail participation rates, expenditures and average coaches' salaries during the 1995-96 school year. They were released last month in accordance with the EADA, a 1995 law that requires most universities with intercollegiate athletic programs to provide this information to the public on request. The act makes it easier to judge whether an institution is complying with Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title IX requires universities that receive federal funding to provide equal resources for male and female athletes. In 1995-96, the eight Ivy schools (and Barnard College, Columbia University's all-female school, whose athletes play for Columbia) had 55,949 undergraduates and 7,748 athletes. Though the entire Ivy League student population split roughly 50-50 -- 28,620 men to 27,329 women -- there were three male athletes for every two female athletes. Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans said the conference is well ahead of all of its counterparts in women's athletics, despite the gender gap in the data. "I really do think that if you look at the variety of the sports we sponsor, the success of our teams? [and] the national scope of our recruitment for men and women, that we have the best opportunities in the country," Orleans said. Though the Ivy League does not offer athletic scholarships, its athletic resources are more equitably distributed than those in at least one scholarship conference -- the Big 12, which mostly includes large state schools in Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Texas. According to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Big 12 schools had 5,314 athletes in 1995-96 -- 2,434 fewer than the eight-school Ivy League. And roughly 65 percent of the Big 12's student-athlete population was male, meaning that overall women's athletics participation was lower than in the Ivies. Carol Tracy, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women's Law Project, said she would like to see Ivy schools do more to encourage female athletes, especially in the area of recruiting. All Ivy institutions' recruiting expenditures favored male athletes by at least a two-to-one margin, mainly because of football recruiting, officials said. "There has to be a relationship between participation rates of women and recruitment," said Tracy, a Penn graduate and former Penn Women's Center director. "All of these schools need to increase their participation." Tracy added that by increasing recruitment budgets for women's sports and by cutting costs from football programs, schools could raise women's participation rates. At all Ivy institutions, the football team had the largest operating expenses of any sport. But Carolyn Schlie Femovich, Penn's senior associate athletic director, defended football as "a vital part of our program," citing high equipment costs as the major factor in operating expenses. The Ivy League has already taken steps to compensate for football's disproportionate share of athletic budgets. Several years ago, the league limited each school to accepting 35 football players per year. Previously, as many as 60 football players each year matriculated at Ivy schools. In addition to the disparity in operating and recruiting expenses, the EADA reports revealed that head and assistant coaches for men's sports almost always had higher average salaries than women's sports coaches. Yale University's head coaches for men's teams earned an average of $56,534 last year, to $43,544 for women's head coaches. The former average salary and the men's-women's gap were the largest in the Ivy League. Yale Athletic Director Tom Beckett said the high salaries resulted from seniority among the university's coaches. "I think there's probably one very strong reason, and that's Carm Cozza," Beckett said, referring to Yale's 32-year football coach, who will retire after this season. Beckett added that only a handful of Yale's coaches have been at the school for fewer than 10 years, and several have been there for more than 20 years. At $49,981 for men's sports and $45,091 for women's sports, Penn has the second-highest head coaches' salaries in each category -- and the second-smallest gap in the league. Femovich said while football and basketball coaches' salaries are the largest, Penn instituted a system two years ago that pays coaches based on experience and accomplishments -- ensuring men's and women's coaches similar judgement standards. "I feel very comfortable with where we are with equity between men's and women's sports head coaches," Femovich said. "I think the one thing that we feel particularly good about is that all of our head coaches for women are full time." Still, participation rates remain the key concern surrounding Title IX. Combined, Columbia and Barnard's undergraduate population is 60 percent female, but less than 40 percent of the university's athletes are women. Al Carlson, Columbia's associate athletic director, attributed the gap to the age of Columbia's women's athletic programs. The Lady Lions currently field 13 women's varsity squads, the least in the Ivy League. He added that Columbia regularly surveys students to gauge their interest in certain intercollegiate athletic teams. Dartmouth College comes closest to equity in participation, as the percentages of female undergraduates and female athletes differed by less than one-half percentage point. According to Dartmouth Athletic Director Dick Jaeger, the school recently added women's volleyball and softball varsity teams and has devoted additional resources toward gender equity for the past five years. With 21 men's and 20 women's intercollegiate sports, Harvard University leads all NCAA Division I schools in both categories. Its participation rates are relatively close to the undergraduate split. Harvard athletics spokesperson John Veneziano said the university is "proud of what the report says about our athletic program." "We don't do things just to be in compliance with the law," Veneziano said. Despite the fact that men's intercollegiate teams in the Ivy League had higher participation rates, operating expenses and recruiting expenses than women's squads, most administrators doubt the percentages and dollar amounts will ever be on an exact par. Mark Nickel, a spokesperson for Brown University -- which in 1994 settled a Title IX lawsuit that made national headlines -- said Brown complies with the law. "Title IX does not require dollar-for-dollar parity in the budgets," Nickel said. "What it does require is that athletes are treated equally." Tracy, who settled a Title IX lawsuit with Penn in 1995, voiced similar views. "I don't think anyone has really argued for total equality in terms of exact numbers," Tracy said. And Tracy predicted improved gender equity in the near future, with a growing number of high school and junior high school women playing sports and annual submission of EADA reports.