No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Title IX applies to three broad areas: opportunities to participate in sports, athletic aid (scholarships), and the benefits and services the school provides to sports teams.  Schools are supposed to comply with each of these areas. We break these down below.

Part 1 - Opportunities to play: Title IX allows schools to comply with the requirement to provide equal opportunities to play sports in one of three ways:

i. Proportional opportunity: Schools are supposed to offer girls and women opportunities to play sports (roster spots) proportional to their percentage of all undergrads. For example, if 50% of students are female, 50% of roster spots should go to female athletes.

If the number of missing roster spots is large enough that a new team could be formed, then the school is not in compliance with this test of equal opportunity.

See how any college is doing on our Gender Equity Dashboard.

ii. Continuous improvement: Schools can show a record of continuing improvement in providing more opportunities for girls and women to participate in sports.

At Accelerate Equity, we believe that it is time to sunset this provision. It made sense early on to give schools time to reach proportional opportunity, but Title IX has been the law of the land for over 50 years. Also, as the Gender Equity Dashboard shows, collectively, colleges are not showing continuous improvement.

iii. Fully meeting the interests of students in playing competitive sports: The third option for a school to show that it is fully meeting the interests of students in playing competitive sports is to show that there is insufficient interest in more sports being offered, or that girls and women at the school, or those who might attend, lack the interest or skill to form a new team, or that there are no schools to compete against in the region.

Schools can show that they meet this test in several ways: through a lack of interest in club and intramural teams, a lack of requests for club teams to be elevated to varsity status, or through the lack of teams at other schools to compete against. Schools can also survey students to see what interests they have in potential new sports.

However, most schools do not conduct surveys regularly and may not know if there is an unmet demand. This option was included due to concerns that not enough girls and women would be interested in playing sports. Currently, over 3 million girls play sports in high school. We believe that in most cases, girls and women have sufficient interest and skill for schools to be able to achieve a proportional share of roster spots.

More from the Department of Education.

Part 2 - Athletic aid (scholarships): Colleges are supposed to provide proportional athletic aid to men and women. For example, if 50% of a college’s athletes are women, 50% of athletic aid should go to women athletes. You can check out any college on our Gender Equity Dashboard. 

Part 3 - Treatment and benefits: Schools are supposed to provide similar quality treatment and benefits overall to male and female athletes across many areas including fields and facilities, locker rooms, equipment, scheduling, travel, meals, coaching, medical, recruiting, and publicity. If girls and boys don’t get equal treatment and benefits, the school might be violating the law.

It is fine for schools to spend more on some teams and less on others, as long as the quality provided is similar when comparing the entire athletic program for boys/men to the program for girls/women.

The Keeping Score Toolkit to Assess Compliance with Title IX, is an easy to use resource from the National Women’s Law Center that walks through the details.  You can also use our Contact form and we will get in touch to help you figure out whether you may be facing discrimination.  We’ll connect you with resources and discuss options for next steps.

It doesn’t matter where funding comes from, schools have the responsibility to provide equal opportunity and treatment to male and female athletes.  Even if a private gift paid for a new locker room or new field for boys’ sports, the school has the legal obligation to provide girls’ sports with equivalent upgrades.

Because coaches, athletic directors, principals, and school superintendents are not required to take any Title IX and Sports training, they are often unaware of the requirements.  The lack of awareness about how Title IX works in sports allows unequal treatment to persist.

Not necessarily – and we strongly discourage this approach. Research has shown that when men’s teams are cut, the funds are most often diverted to support men’s basketball and football, rather than to support women’s sports. Also, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, of 948 colleges that added women’s teams, 72% of them did so without cutting men’s teams.

People do! Athletes, parents, alumni, coaches, and others who point out inequities and fight for them to be made right are the main reason that so much progress has been made.

The Office of Civil Rights, in the Department of Education, has the responsibility to enforce Title IX and the authority to withhold federal funding from a school that has violated Title IX. In 2024, the General Accounting Office (GAO), a federal watchdog, reviewed the Department of Education’s track record of enforcing Title IX.  They found that the Department of Education  could and should do a much better job enforcing Title IX.

Accelerate Equity is creating data transparency to inform not just athletes and educators, but everyone, so that more people can help to advocate for equity.

Colleges and universities are required to report annually to the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis (EADA) survey, which is managed by the U.S. Department of Education. We use data from the EADA website, which is available to the public. Accelerate Equity makes no representation regarding the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the data posted on the Department of Education’s EADA website.

Yes it does if the school accepts any federal funds, which includes almost all public schools and some private schools.