Backsliding for Women’s Sports

Inside Higher Ed
October 31, 2008

Most of the major changes in the status of women’s intercollegiate sports came a decade or two ago when, through a combination of tough federal enforcement, court challenges, and enlightened decisions by college leaders, many institutions began to lavish more money and attention in an attempt to give equitable treatment to their women’s teams and female athletes.
Over the last five years or so — even as advocates for lower-profile men’s sports have continued to spar with women’s sports advocates about numbers and politics — the status quo has largely held, with the proportion of college athletes who are women staying relatively flat.
Now, though, it appears as if women are beginning to lose ground. A biennial gender equity report released without fanfare by the National Collegiate Athletic Association on Thursday finds that colleges that play Division I sports directed a smaller proportion of athletics spending to women’s teams in 2005-6 than they did in 2003-4. In the 2003-4 academic year, when the NCAA last surveyed its members, Division I sports programs spent an average of $7,285,500 on men’s sports and $4,194,800 on women’s sports, for a 16 percentage point differential (63 to 37 percent). In 2005-6, the year examined in the survey released Thursday, that split had widened to 22 percentage points, 66 percent to 34 percent ($8,653,600 for men’s sports vs. $4,447,900 for women’s teams). [Full story: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/31/women]