The Gender-Equity Q&A is intended to help athletics administrators understand institutional gender-equity and Title IX-related issues. Answers for the Q&A are provided by Christine Grant, associate professor at the University of Iowa, and Janet Judge, attorney with Verrill & Dana LLP.

Title IX measures athletics compliance in three separate areas (participation, financial aid and treatment) with individual tests for each. When assessing compliance in these areas, although each area should be reviewed individually, the treatment of the men's and women's programs overall is dispositive for compliance purposes.

Accordingly, a disparity in one area that favors one sex may be offset by a similar disparity in another area that favors the opposite sex. For the next several issues of the Gender-Equity Q&A, we will address ways to review each treatment (also known as "the laundry list"). Of course, each program will have its own unique characteristics and any review will have to be tailored to the circumstances of the program in question.

Q How is equity measured in the provision of medical facilities and strength training services?

A Five factors must be assessed when evaluating whether comparable benefits, services and treatment are provided to men's and women's programs:

• Availability of medical personnel.

• Availability and qualifications of athletic trainers.

• Availability and quality of athletic training facilities.

• Availability and quality of weight training facilities. (In the Investigator's Manual, the qualifications of weight trainers are not mentioned, perhaps because weight and conditioning programs were not as popular as they are today.)

• Health, accident and injury insurance coverage.

Because times have changed, we have included some guidance on the qualifications of these specialists.

Before assigning medical personnel, it is prudent to categorize sports according to the likelihood of injury in each sport and the severity of common injuries in each sport. That is a more defensible approach than assigning personnel based on traditional practices. When armed with those data, administrators are more likely to meet the needs of all sports. After that, an easy way to make assignments is to treat comparable sports in identical ways and with equally qualified personnel. For noncomparable sports, the goal is to meet their unique needs.

Medical personnel

Ideally, male and female student-athletes should have equal access to physicians for medical examinations, for the assessment and treatment of injuries and for surgeries. Care should be taken to ensure that certain teams are not given higher priority than others in this critically important area. For example, the hours that doctors are available should not be scheduled around the practice times of one team.

The assignment of physicians to games and/or practices also should be equitable. In football, where the risk for injury is high and where the sheer size of the team makes it unique, it would be defensible to have a physician at all games and practices. What is not defensible is to have a physician at all home and away basketball games for the men's team and to have only an athletic trainer at women's games or to have a physician only at home games.

Certified athletic trainer

The challenge here is to allocate fairly to men's and women's programs full-time certified athletic trainers and first-responders. While football, because of the risks inherent in the sport and because of the size of the team, may require extra consideration in the allocation of certified athletic trainers, the safety needs of specific women's sports can not be ignored. As has been stated before, assigning equally qualified athletic trainers to the same sports is a defensible way to ensure equity in the treatment of student-athletes. Equally important, travel policies for athletic trainers of comparable sports should be the same.

What cannot be justified is having professional full-time athletic trainers working with football and men's basketball and having women's sports serviced mainly by an unsupervised athletic training student serving in a first-responder capacity. It also would be difficult to justify having different travel policies for athletic trainers of men's and women's sports.

Athletic training facilities

The size of an athletic training facility should be directly related to the number of student-athletes being serviced at that facility at one time. The number and qualifications of athletic trainers assigned to that facility also should be related to the number of student-athletes and risk of injury in the sports being serviced in that facility. At institutions with several athletic training facilities, care should be taken to ensure comparable access to comparable facilities and personnel since the health and safety of student-athletes is the core concern.

The quality of the equipment is another area of potential concern, especially where there are several athletic training facilities. A common problem occurs when student athletes for football and/or men's basketball are provided superior equipment to that found in athletic training facilities for women's sports (for example, a rehabilitation lap pool).

At some institutions, student-athletes are permitted to use the athletic training facilities on a drop-in basis; at others, specific times are scheduled for specific teams. If the latter, it is prudent to have shared or rotating times for teams to ensure that no athletes are advantaged or disadvantaged by this practice. Yet another factor to consider is the proximity of the athletic training facilities to the practice and competitive facilities. Problems may occur when selected teams of one gender are given the more convenient locations.

Strength and conditioning rooms

Since all coaches do not require a strength training regime for their student-athletes, a starting point would be to determine which coaches do require strength training and then assess whether the needs of the women's sports are being accommodated equitably.

Like athletic training facilities, the size of weight rooms should be related to the number of student-athletes using the facility at one time. On a similar note, the number of strength training personnel should be related to this factor as well as the amount of the equipment available in each facility for strength training. The quality and the appropriateness of the equipment may be a potential problem since in some institutions equipment discarded by football may be redirected to strength training rooms for women's sports even though those machines may be inappropriate for those sports.

A common problem that seems to be escalating in some of the larger institutions is to provide a separate weight training facility for football, complete with its own staff, its own equipment and its own budget. Compounding this potential problem of preferential treatment for football is the tendency to then treat comparable sports in similar ways and view that as being in compliance with Title IX (for example, comparing weight training for men's and women's tennis teams, men's and women's basketball teams, etc.). A well-equipped, well-furnished and well-staffed weight training facility for football must be factored into the overall evaluation between the men's and women's programs.

According to several strength training specialists, having a large facility such as the football strength training room is the most efficient use of both staff and equipment since such a facility can accommodate several teams simultaneously. On some campuses, however, many women's sports may have multiple small strength training areas that isolate the staff, do not promote staff cohesion and do not allow for enough oversight or guidance of junior staff.

Another possible problem occurs when strength training personnel who have focused on performance training for football are reassigned to performance training for other sports. That practice has escalated in recent years because it has become fairly common at some institutions to reassign the football strength training staff when a new football coach is hired. The imposition of football performance training regimes, which largely focus on strength and power, is not necessarily an appropriate approach for other sports.

Recently, it has been rumored that to get around the limitations on the number of coaches permitted in each sport, some administrators are permitting a coach to hire someone in a strength and conditioning position specifically for that sport. In reality, that person is then used as a coach, although he/she is counted as a strength and conditioning specialist. Not only is this practice unethical and in violation of NCAA rules, it also prevents a fair evaluation of the strength training programs for male and female student-athletes.

Finally, the institution must determine whether performance training practices are done on a drop-in basis or on a scheduled basis. If the latter, then preferred times must be shared or rotated to ensure fair access to both genders.

Insurance coverage

Institutions today are required to certify that student-athletes are insured against athletics injuries. Until recently, many programs, after claiming through the insurance plan paid for by the athlete's family, assumed responsibility for any remaining costs. With tightening athletics budgets, however, student-athletes at some institutions are being asked to help shoulder those costs. In that instance, the athletics policies for male and female student-athletes should be the same.

For student-athletes who arrive on campus not covered by their parents' insurance, the policies for male and female athletes must also be equitable.

Athletics administrators also should ensure that gynecological care is covered for female student-athletes since this is an area that has caused an equity problem in the past.

For additional gender-equity resources, including newly created video segments featuring Christine Grant and Janet Judge, visit www.ncaa.org/gender_equity.