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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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A force for equity
NCAA Task Force set educational benchmarks for gender balance
NCAA Task Force set educational benchmarks for gender balance
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By Michelle Brutlag Hosick
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
When the NCAA Gender-Equity Task Force was formed in March 1992, nearly a dozen years had passed since the Association began sponsoring championships for women.
A survey showed that more money was being spent on men’s programs than on women’s and participation among males far outstripped that among females. In the wake of that study, NCAA Executive Director Richard Schultz appointed a Gender-Equity Task Force and charged the group with devising legislative recommendations to improve gender equity at member institutions.
The report attracted the expected attention at the time of its release, with some head-shaking from opponents of the recommendations and the same from others who believed the group had not gone far enough.
By the 1994 Convention, the major proposals recommended by the Task Force were approved overwhelmingly: increased financial aid opportunities for women, the creation of emerging sports and an addition to the NCAA constitution outlining the gender-equity expectations of all member institutions. The lone vote against the package came from an institution whose president wanted a more complete slate of gender-equity proposals.
Some non-legislative recommendations, including enhanced championships, occurred during 1993.
To some, the creation of the Task Force was a defining moment in NCAA history. It was the moment that the organization legitimized the fight for gender equity. With the NCAA name attached, the Task Force was sure to be taken seriously, many believed.
“It wasn’t seen as a splinter group. It was very important that it wasn’t coming from NACWAA (the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators) or the Women’s Sports Foundation. It was coming from the NCAA,” said Task Force member and one-time University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Women’s Athletics Director Chris Voelz. “When we walked away from the NCAA Convention (in 1994), we looked at each other like, was that really worth those two years, because it didn’t seem like we got enough done. Perhaps others thought we got too much done.”
The involvement of the NCAA in gender-equity issues was seen as important from outside the organization, too. Valerie Bonnette, then employed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (which was responsible for investigating Title IX violations), said the Task Force marked the beginning of the Association’s leadership in issues of gender equity. Just putting the issue at the forefront of people’s minds with the weight of the NCAA reputation was an important step, she said.
While the report may not have had the immediate impact the Task Force members had hoped, it did spur improvements over time for women who wish to participate in intercollegiate athletics. Diane Wendt, now director of strategic partnerships and corporate relations at the University of Denver, was an associate athletics director when she served on the Task Force. Wendt said in the decade-plus since the release of the report, she has seen “dramatic change” among member institutions and their approach to gender equity.
“So many of the elements that were defined gave some structure and landscape to the process of how one would achieve gender equity,” she said. “There was a real need to help the membership understand what the mission and goals were. The report set important frameworks in many areas that were comprehensive enough to help athletics administrators better understand what tasks needed to be pursued.”
While it might be presumptuous to assume all gender-equity improvements over the last 13 years are directly attributed to the Task Force report, that group and its work paved the way for the creation of championships in bowling, rowing, women’s ice hockey and women’s water polo through the emerging-sports process. It also provided educational opportunities within intercollegiate athletics.
Wendt said the report had a lasting effect by creating opportunities for people to talk about what needed to be done to move toward the end goal of gender equity.
Additionally, her institution took the report’s recommendations to heart, forming a task force of its own to investigate equity issues on the Denver campus. The committee even invited the regional Office for Civil Rights to assess the Title IX compliance and gender-equity level at the institution. The process at Denver was slow, Wendt said, but had such support from the chancellor on down that it was ultimately successful. The NCAA Task Force, with its support from the top down, was similarly successful in achieving many of its goals.
“Having the NCAA invested in that mission, focusing on it and mobilizing resources and expertise was influential,” she said. “The process was extremely important to begin the journey.”
‘We made a difference’
Some believe the journey has only just begun. Bonnette, the founder of a Title IX consulting company, said the education process has a long way to go, especially as institutions eliminate teams and blame Title IX for the cuts.
“I still think education is key to that. I’ve never met a university administrator who wants to be in violation of federal law, so even those who may have difficulty trying to figure out why they should spend their money on college sports, we should explain to them that they have options and choices under Title IX,” Bonnette said. “They don’t have to do things in one particular manner.”
Voelz said while participation opportunities have increased by the “hundreds of percents” for women, some issues remain troubling, including the scarcity of women in leadership positions at institutions nationally and within the NCAA governance structure. She thinks another task force might be a good way to shine light on that topic and to more fully research the use of the senior woman administrator title on campuses.
“Everybody gets up in arms when somebody drops a men’s sport, but that same feeling is not embraced for the women who never had it,” Voelz said. She suggested that intercollegiate athletics leaders will need to do some serious self-analysis in the coming years to avoid disaster at the hands of increasing finances.
In the end, the Gender Equity Task Force experience was an important one, for many of the individual participants, for the Association and for the whole of intercollegiate athletics.
“We made a difference. We didn’t make the huge difference that we might have, but we called attention to the problem,” Voelz said. “It was an interesting moment in time that reflected the two eras coming together.”
Then-NCAA Executive Director Richard D. Schultz appointed the Task Force and charged the group of 16 members representing each NCAA division with defining gender equity, examining and evaluating NCAA policies and recommending changes that would move the Association toward creating gender equity in intercollegiate athletics.
After a preliminary report was vetted by the membership during the spring and summer of 1993, the Task Force issued a final report in July 1993, which included a definition of gender equity and list of principles, as well as recommended guidelines institutions could follow to promote gender equity. The report also recommended legislation and asked standing NCAA committees to consider further action.
For example:
As part of the legislative package adopted at the 1994 Convention, delegates approved the principles of gender equity as an addition to the NCAA constitution, requiring member institutions to abide by federal and state laws regarding gender equity and preventing the Association from adopting legislation that would prevent compliance with those laws.
Another piece of the legislative package created the emerging sports for women program, allowing two emerging sports to count toward sport sponsorship requirements, identifying those sports and outlining minimum requirements including minimum numbers of contests and participants, allowing the emerging sports to be countable for revenue distribution purposes, and tasking the Association with creating a mechanism to identify future emerging sports.
The final piece of that package increased the financial aid limits for some Divisions I and II women’s sports. All of the legislative recommendations were approved at the 1994 Convention.
Finally, the Task Force forwarded a series of recommendations to various groups within the governance structure. Among those recommendations were the replication of the gender-equity survey of the membership at five-year intervals (the survey is now completed every two years), including gender-equity as a component of certification (it is), and annual progress in the numbers of women participating on NCAA committees (a minimum of 35 percent of either gender is required on most NCAA committees).
The Task Force also recommended the creation of a sourcebook that would include guidelines to assist member institutions in achieving gender equity. That sourcebook is embodied in the gender-equity manual, which was recently updated and is available at http://www.ncaa.org/library/general/gender_equity/gender_equity_manual.pdf.
A survey showed that more money was being spent on men’s programs than on women’s and participation among males far outstripped that among females. In the wake of that study, NCAA Executive Director Richard Schultz appointed a Gender-Equity Task Force and charged the group with devising legislative recommendations to improve gender equity at member institutions.
The report attracted the expected attention at the time of its release, with some head-shaking from opponents of the recommendations and the same from others who believed the group had not gone far enough.
By the 1994 Convention, the major proposals recommended by the Task Force were approved overwhelmingly: increased financial aid opportunities for women, the creation of emerging sports and an addition to the NCAA constitution outlining the gender-equity expectations of all member institutions. The lone vote against the package came from an institution whose president wanted a more complete slate of gender-equity proposals.
Some non-legislative recommendations, including enhanced championships, occurred during 1993.
To some, the creation of the Task Force was a defining moment in NCAA history. It was the moment that the organization legitimized the fight for gender equity. With the NCAA name attached, the Task Force was sure to be taken seriously, many believed.
“It wasn’t seen as a splinter group. It was very important that it wasn’t coming from NACWAA (the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators) or the Women’s Sports Foundation. It was coming from the NCAA,” said Task Force member and one-time University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Women’s Athletics Director Chris Voelz. “When we walked away from the NCAA Convention (in 1994), we looked at each other like, was that really worth those two years, because it didn’t seem like we got enough done. Perhaps others thought we got too much done.”
The involvement of the NCAA in gender-equity issues was seen as important from outside the organization, too. Valerie Bonnette, then employed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (which was responsible for investigating Title IX violations), said the Task Force marked the beginning of the Association’s leadership in issues of gender equity. Just putting the issue at the forefront of people’s minds with the weight of the NCAA reputation was an important step, she said.
While the report may not have had the immediate impact the Task Force members had hoped, it did spur improvements over time for women who wish to participate in intercollegiate athletics. Diane Wendt, now director of strategic partnerships and corporate relations at the University of Denver, was an associate athletics director when she served on the Task Force. Wendt said in the decade-plus since the release of the report, she has seen “dramatic change” among member institutions and their approach to gender equity.
“So many of the elements that were defined gave some structure and landscape to the process of how one would achieve gender equity,” she said. “There was a real need to help the membership understand what the mission and goals were. The report set important frameworks in many areas that were comprehensive enough to help athletics administrators better understand what tasks needed to be pursued.”
While it might be presumptuous to assume all gender-equity improvements over the last 13 years are directly attributed to the Task Force report, that group and its work paved the way for the creation of championships in bowling, rowing, women’s ice hockey and women’s water polo through the emerging-sports process. It also provided educational opportunities within intercollegiate athletics.
Wendt said the report had a lasting effect by creating opportunities for people to talk about what needed to be done to move toward the end goal of gender equity.
Additionally, her institution took the report’s recommendations to heart, forming a task force of its own to investigate equity issues on the Denver campus. The committee even invited the regional Office for Civil Rights to assess the Title IX compliance and gender-equity level at the institution. The process at Denver was slow, Wendt said, but had such support from the chancellor on down that it was ultimately successful. The NCAA Task Force, with its support from the top down, was similarly successful in achieving many of its goals.
“Having the NCAA invested in that mission, focusing on it and mobilizing resources and expertise was influential,” she said. “The process was extremely important to begin the journey.”
‘We made a difference’
Some believe the journey has only just begun. Bonnette, the founder of a Title IX consulting company, said the education process has a long way to go, especially as institutions eliminate teams and blame Title IX for the cuts.
“I still think education is key to that. I’ve never met a university administrator who wants to be in violation of federal law, so even those who may have difficulty trying to figure out why they should spend their money on college sports, we should explain to them that they have options and choices under Title IX,” Bonnette said. “They don’t have to do things in one particular manner.”
Voelz said while participation opportunities have increased by the “hundreds of percents” for women, some issues remain troubling, including the scarcity of women in leadership positions at institutions nationally and within the NCAA governance structure. She thinks another task force might be a good way to shine light on that topic and to more fully research the use of the senior woman administrator title on campuses.
“Everybody gets up in arms when somebody drops a men’s sport, but that same feeling is not embraced for the women who never had it,” Voelz said. She suggested that intercollegiate athletics leaders will need to do some serious self-analysis in the coming years to avoid disaster at the hands of increasing finances.
In the end, the Gender Equity Task Force experience was an important one, for many of the individual participants, for the Association and for the whole of intercollegiate athletics.
“We made a difference. We didn’t make the huge difference that we might have, but we called attention to the problem,” Voelz said. “It was an interesting moment in time that reflected the two eras coming together.”
Task Force recommendations enjoyed lasting impact
The NCAA formed the Gender-Equity Task Force in the wake of a 1991 survey of expenditures for men’s and women’s athletics programs. That study showed that while enrollment was evenly divided, men constituted 69.5 percent of athletics participants and received 70 percent of the athletics scholarship dollars, 77 percent of operating budgets and 83 percent of recruiting money.
Then-NCAA Executive Director Richard D. Schultz appointed the Task Force and charged the group of 16 members representing each NCAA division with defining gender equity, examining and evaluating NCAA policies and recommending changes that would move the Association toward creating gender equity in intercollegiate athletics.
After a preliminary report was vetted by the membership during the spring and summer of 1993, the Task Force issued a final report in July 1993, which included a definition of gender equity and list of principles, as well as recommended guidelines institutions could follow to promote gender equity. The report also recommended legislation and asked standing NCAA committees to consider further action.
For example:
As part of the legislative package adopted at the 1994 Convention, delegates approved the principles of gender equity as an addition to the NCAA constitution, requiring member institutions to abide by federal and state laws regarding gender equity and preventing the Association from adopting legislation that would prevent compliance with those laws.
Another piece of the legislative package created the emerging sports for women program, allowing two emerging sports to count toward sport sponsorship requirements, identifying those sports and outlining minimum requirements including minimum numbers of contests and participants, allowing the emerging sports to be countable for revenue distribution purposes, and tasking the Association with creating a mechanism to identify future emerging sports.
The final piece of that package increased the financial aid limits for some Divisions I and II women’s sports. All of the legislative recommendations were approved at the 1994 Convention.
Finally, the Task Force forwarded a series of recommendations to various groups within the governance structure. Among those recommendations were the replication of the gender-equity survey of the membership at five-year intervals (the survey is now completed every two years), including gender-equity as a component of certification (it is), and annual progress in the numbers of women participating on NCAA committees (a minimum of 35 percent of either gender is required on most NCAA committees).
The Task Force also recommended the creation of a sourcebook that would include guidelines to assist member institutions in achieving gender equity. That sourcebook is embodied in the gender-equity manual, which was recently updated and is available at http://www.ncaa.org/library/general/gender_equity/gender_equity_manual.pdf.
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