Panel argues Penn is behind other Ivies in gender equity

Though female participation in sports has grown over the last 30 years, academic institutions still have a long way to go to achieve gender equity.

As part of a series of discussions celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Penn Women's Studies program, a panel was held last night in Houston Hall to discuss Title IX. Around 30 people, mostly women, attended the event that promoted the benefits of the legislation and pointed out Penn's serious underperformance in sports gender equity.

Title IX was passed in 1972 in an attempt to promote gender equity in America, especially in academic institutions.

One way for schools to be Title IX compliant is if the male-female ratio of the student body is "substantially proportionate" -- within 3 percent -- to the ratio of student-athletes. Janice Madden, a sociology professor and director of Women's Studies at Penn, displayed data collected from the U.S. Department of Education that showed most schools do not meet this proportionality clause.

In nearly every category relating to gender equity, including proportionality, per capita expenditure, share of athletic budget and others, Penn had the worst or second worst numbers compared to the rest of the Ivy League. Only in recruiting expenditures for women's teams was the University performing well.

"We need to find more ways to achieve equity," Madden said. In her presentation, she ridiculed Athletic Director Steve Bilsky's statement that per capita expenditure for males and females was comparable.

Though the numbers suggest that for years Penn has failed to satisfy the requirements of Title IX, Associate Director of Athletics Mary Di Stanislao said that while much of the data was true, there were some important qualifiers that had to be taken into account.

"The statement about per capita expenditure is certainly true for analogous sports," Di Stanislao said. "The way numbers are reported varies from year to year," she added, which raises questions as to the trustworthiness of the data.

Susan Miller, a lecturer in Women's Studies, related several anecdotes that illustrated the necessity for enacting the law.

"Women's scores were left out [of University publications] in May '73," Miller said. She highlighted several incidents in which women had performed superbly but had received no recognition.

Tina Sloan-Green, a professor at Temple University, noted that inequality exists in college athletics beyond simply gender. As head coach of Temple's women's lacrosse team, she said that African Americans were under-represented in many sports.

"Although black men and women are dominant in basketball and track and field, there's still a long way to go in tennis, lacrosse, fencing" and other sports, she said. She added that even in sports where blacks were the majority, there "was a definite underrepresentation of African-American women as coaches."

Sloan-Green was the first black woman to be inducted into the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame.

Students praised the panel for shedding a new light on Title IX and raising some issues they had not realized existed.

"I learned a lot from the statistics," College sophomore and women's basketball player Henley Hansen said. She added that it was illuminating to see how Penn compared to other schools.

Several people said they wanted to bring the Title IX issue to the forefront of the University's attention, possibly by directly displaying the data to President Judith Rodin.

"Our performance isn't as good as everyone else's," Madden said. "It's a discussion that's long overdue at Penn."

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