National Collegiate Athletic Association

The NCAA News - News Features

November 25, 1996

Gender-equity condition criticized in new book

A new book, "Crashing the Old Boys' Network: The Tragedies and Triumphs of Girls and Women in Sports," provides accounts of legal battles from Little League to collegiate sports in the effort to achieve gender equity in sports.

Author David F. Salter, currently director of public information at York College (Pennsylvania), chastises government for taking 25 years to enforce Title IX guidelines and society for perpetuating the attitude that it is inappropriate for females to be intensely involved in athletics. The book offers examples of how gender equity can be achieved with what Salter believes are rational, well-designed plans of action.

"In this era, when women have made great strides in many other segments of society, women athletes are still an oxymoron -- almost," Salter writes. "Nearly 25 years after the passage of Title IX to the Education Amendments Act of 1972, approximately 90 percent of all colleges and universities in the United States are not in compliance with this federal law. Ironically, there are few laws protecting women in other endeavors similar to the way Title IX was meant to fortify women in athletics. Strangely, it has taken 25 years for a federal law to be enforced. Hopefully, it won't take another 25 years to make amends for decades of neglect."

He notes the Collegiate Sports Aptitude Test (1992), which reported women had a better chance of becoming a president of their college or university than becoming athletics director.

Salter begins his book with the story of Mary Alice Hill, the first woman hired as athletics director at a Division I institution and the first woman fired from one.

He also reports on the case of Monmouth College (New Jersey), where Marilyn A. McNeil was hired as athletics director in April 1994. Salter wrote that during her first year at the school, she slashed the men's basketball budget by 30 percent and subtracted more than $150,000 from men's football, which operates as a nonscholarship program. McNeil said she did it to achieve more equity, according to the book.

Salter presents an informal checklist available from the Women's Sports Foundation for use by institutions in adding women's teams and redistributing resources:

  • Search for new money through fund-raising.

  • Cut items that don't affect the sports themselves, such as delaying renovations or new construction.

  • Cut middle management before taking the final step of cutting excesses in a sport's standard of living or cutting teams.

    "Sports is a microcosm of society in that many, if not all, of the attributes required to compete and be successful in the athletics arena are prerequisites for basic survival," Salter writes. "Whether it is in business, law or medicine, people need the skills to work as a team, to be able to function effectively under pressure and to exhibit similar traits like responsibility and discipline. Are these characteristics not as important for our daughters to learn as they are for our sons?"

    -- Compiled by Sally Huggins

    Title IX Ticker is a monthly feature in The NCAA News. News and information regarding Title IX and gender-equity issues can be sent to The NCAA News, Attn.: Title IX Ticker, 6201 College Boulevard, Overland Park, Kansas 66211-2422.