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.

Q An institution has "declared" football and men's basketball as its tier 1 men's sports and has declared women's basketball and volleyball as its tier 1 women's sports. The number of female participants is about 100 fewer than the male participants on these combined tier 1 teams. Will the institutions have to raise other women's teams to tier 1 to account for the same number of males and females on the tier 1 level?

A A tier system means that an institution treats sports in significantly different ways. For example, tier 1 sports may have maximum NCAA scholarships, a nationally competitive schedule and expenses that allow for national and even international recruiting. Tier 2 sports may have 50 percent of the maximum NCAA scholarships, regional competition and expenses for regional recruiting. Tier 3 sports may have 25 percent scholarships, competition primarily in the state or within driving distance and expenses primarily for in-state recruiting.

For the situation in the above question, let's assume that there are 130 men in tier 1 (115 football and 15 basketball players) and 30 women (15 basketball and 15 volleyball players). If the institution's athletics population is 50 percent male and 50 percent female, then an additional 100 women would have to be upgraded to tier 1 status. In other words, the number of men and women in tier 1 should reflect about the same ratio that exists in the entire athletics program. For example, assuming that the number of male student-athletes in tier 1 remains constant (that is, together the number of football and basketball players constitute 130), then the number of women in tier 1 would change according to the percentage of female student-athletes in the entire athletics population:

TIER 1

Participants in all other tiers also should reflect the overall male/female athletics ratio.

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