Advances in Athletic Equality Progress

Only 25 years ago, few women entering college would ever have expected athletics to be an integral part of their college experience.

Even three years ago, women's volleyball, softball and ice hockey were considered Level II varsity sports at Harvard, not afforded the full time coach or support given to Level I sports.

And until last year women's crew was not sponsored by the NCAA. There was no national championship race for the sport, no rings for the fastest boat.

The nature of college athletics in this nation has changed in the past two decades, and that change has accelerated within the last five years.

An increased focus on women's athletics, along with the passage of the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act of 1994, requiring athletic departments to publicize their budgets for men's and women's sports, has ensured athletic departments that the public and the law are watching as they make decisions regarding women's sports.

As funding and opportunities for women athletics have become more available, Harvard students say the impact on their lives has been tremendous.

"Athletics mean everything to me," says Rebe E. Glass '98, captain of the women's soccer team. "They've shaped my college experience. My mother didn't have the opportunity to play soccer or any team sport, and she's incredibly jealous of the experiences I've had."

Harvard has traditionally been at the forefront of the gender equity debate. And while many coaches and students report the department has room for improvement, they also say they are surprisingly pleased with the way recent changes have affected women's athletics.

A Lasting Title

The current revolution which has taken place in women athletics began in 1972, with passage of Title IX of the Education Amendment.

Title IX was designed to eliminate sex-based discrimination in federally run educational programs. A broad-based bill affecting elementary schools, high schools and colleges, Title IX states that "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."

In 1979, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued an elaboration of Title IX, in which the bill was interpreted to apply to two main areas of athletics--opportunity and finances.

The strength of Title IX was tested in 1992 when the Supreme Court made a public school's athletic department pay monetary damages for Title IX violations. It was the first time the law showed its teeth.

But it was in 1993, when the Supreme Court found Brown University guilty of Title IX violations after the university eliminated its women's varsity gymnastics and volleyball programs that athletic departments of the ivy-league got a wake-up call.

The ruling established that woman must make up a percentage of the school's athletic population equal to their percentage of the student body as a whole.

Suddenly, schools and colleges realized they could no longer ignore Title IX regulations.

"Title IX has been around for 25 years. We're just now getting around to doing something about it," says Carole A. Kleinfelder, who has been the coach of the women's lacrosse team for the past 20 years and is currently on a leave of absence.

Polling the Experts

In 1997, the Women's Sports Foundation, a New York based Title IX advocacy organization, compiled data from colleges and universities across the country, and gave them each a grade based on their commitment to equity. The study was based on data gathered from the 1995-96 school year.

Harvard was awarded a B+, one of the highest grades given to any NCAA division I-AA school, and a tie with Yale and Dartmouth.

The study concluded that while participation among male and female athletes at Harvard was fairly equal, there are still large discrepancies in spending.

Last month, As part of an 18-month long review process for NCAA certification which the department must undergo every 10 years, the Harvard Athletic Department completed a self-study that yielded similar results.

In particular the study found that while opportunities for women athletes at Harvard are more extensive then ever before, financial inequities still exist between men's and women's athletics, particularly in the areas of recruiting budgets and coach's salaries.

According to figures published in the 1996-97 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report, 60.7 percent of Harvard's operating budget was spent on men's sports in '96-'97. Even eliminating football, a cost-heavy men's sport with no women's equivalent, men's sports still spent more than 55 percent of the total athletic operating budget.

The report also showed that men's teams spent almost three times as much on recruiting during '96-'97 than women's teams did, and that the average salary of head coaches of men's teams was over $8,000 more than that of women's coaches.

Patricia W. Henry, senior associate director of the athletic department, cautions against relying too heavily on such raw statistics.

"It's not all a numbers game," Henry says. "These charts don't always tell you the whole story. The whole compliance issue is so much driven by numbers. On the one hand, we need to have a measuring stick, but I don't know how good a stick it is."

Henry notes that salaries are determined by a variety of factors, including experience, performance and market value, none of which are reflected in the statistics.

"You use all three to figure it out. One of the things which causes a lot of the discrepancy is that we happen to have a lot of people who have been here for a long time, and they're on the men's side," Henry says.

Henry says she is confident that coaches who have been at Harvard for the same amount of time and have experienced similar levels of success are being paid equitably.

However, Kleinfelder, questions using market value to determine coach's salaries.

"Market value is based on society's values, and society values men's sports more then women's. I don't think an educational institution should necessarily buy into what society values," she says.

Administrators also stress that men's and women's budgets don't have to be strictly equal for equal opportunities to exist.

"One point of confusion people sometimes have is that unequal dollars spent on men's and women's sports is de facto a sign of inequity," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68, chair of the self-study steering committee. "Not true--there is no standard that says that the dollars spent have to be the same, and in fact that would make no sense."

Lewis highlights the example of the costs of mounted police hired for the Harvard-Yale game. Hiring similar police officers for women's games when they are not needed would be wasteful.

"The important thing is that the needs of men's and women's sports are being met to comparable degrees, and we have concluded that that is the case," Lewis says.

Star Search

Despite receiving a B+ overall from the Women's Sports Foundation, the University was awarded a considerably lower C+ for equality in recruiting budgets. The study found that, in '95-'96, the athletic department spent only 20 percent of its recruiting budget on women's athletes.

Lewis says discrepancies in recruiting budgets result from regional differences between sports.

"Some sports are harder to recruit for than others," he says "A sport that is played in only a few states does not need as large a recruiting budget as one that is played nationally."

Despite this, women's sports are beginning to recruit nationally. Women's Hockey Head Coach Kathleen B. Stone notes that women's hockey is no longer centered only in the northeast, as it once was.

"If you're going to do recruiting right, you have to go to Canada, you have to go to Alaska. You have to go wherever they're playing hockey," she says.

Figures show that the athletic department has increased funding for women's recruitment drastically over the last year, from just over $64,000 in 1995-96 to more than $130,000 in 1996-97.

Traditionally, recruiting has also been partly funded through friends groups. These groups were established to allow alumni and other donors to fund extra expenses for specific teams, including out of region travel and supplementary recruiting efforts.

In the past, it was common for alumni to only donate to men's sports through these programs.

"You've got these long established, broad based friends groups for men, and these small, relatively new friends groups for women. We saw that these were not equating," Henry says.

So in the early '80s, beginning with men and women's crew, the athletic department has been in the process of combining friends groups for individual sports.

"We've revitalized that effort over the last three or four years," Henry says.

The recently released self-study found that the merging of friends groups will increase fundraising efforts, eventually to the point where these groups will pay for all extra-budgetary expenses for women's teams, as they now do for men's.

But in the mean time, in order to make up for the funds men's teams received from donations, the Harvard Radcliffe Foundation for women's Athletics (HRFWA) was also established in 1981. Today, HRFWA still allocates approximately $40,000 a year solely for women's athletics.

Despite the merging of the friends groups, in some sports it is still possible to earmark funds solely for a men's sport.

A Head Start

According to Stone, Harvard has long been thought a leader in gender equity.

"I think the awareness of Title IX has been sort of a hanging cloud at times," says Stone. "It's been a threat to a lot of athletic departments, but the Harvard athletic department has taken it upon itself to be proactive, to do things before anyone has said they had to."

Harvard athletics has issued reports on women's status within the department every two years since 1976.

"I don't know of any other school that has looked at itself in that sort of measuring way over the past 22 years," Henry says.

Henry says that in the early '80s administrators from other universities would call frequently to ask how Harvard had organized the report.

In addition, Harvard was the first school in the Ivy League to offer women's lightweight crew. The sport is currently being added to athletic departments across the nation in order to increase numbers of women athletes.

"We just looked around our campus, and noticed most of the women here were in the lightweight category," Henry says. "It was totally common sense. Now everyone's waking up to it."

And although some coaches say that monetary inequities do exist, their teams are receiving the money they need.

"I've never been told no," says Susan E. Caples, head coach of the women's field hockey team. "When there are things we've needed to do, we've done what we needed to do."

Stone says she feels the hockey squad receives everything they need.

"It's always been on a needbase. We've always received everything we've wanted," she says.

Nevertheless, the discrepancies still exist. While coaches and teams often receive the needed resources they request, some athletes and coaches say a mentality has existed within the department in which women don't always think to ask for what they'd like.

Sarah M. Demers '99, a member of the women's lightweight crew team, says this was the case when the men's lightweight crew team went to England this past summer after winning the national title.

"When they win something that big, they usually go over to Henley [England]," Demers says.

The women's lightweights also won the national title, but they did not make a similar trip.

"We never even thought of it. We never even asked," she says.

Henry says she worries that misperceptions about equity issues lead students looking only at numbers to see inequity where none exits. "Perceptions feel real," she says.

One recommendation of the NCAA self-study involved increasing communication between coaches, students and administrators, so that "coaches of women's teams are aware of all the resources available to them."

And with this increased communication, the mentality of a double standard is being removed.

Elizabeth H. O'Leary, head coach of the women's heavyweight crew team, says women's coaches are now asking for what they need.

"The group of women's coaches at this university is not a shy group," O'Leary said. "We've all learned, some of us the hard way, that we need to step up and ask for what we need, not because the athletic department isn't receptive to us, just because [before] we didn't know that we could or should ask. Where I had coached previously, you had to go out and hold bake sales for what you needed."

And Demers says that this year the team is thinking of making the trip to England.

In March, peer reviewers from other universities will visit the athletic department, conduct interviews, and write their own report in which they determine whether Harvard complies with NCAA guidelines and should be certified by the organization. As with all studies, this will continue to push Harvard toward self-scrutiny.

Coaches say they are hopeful that, as much progress as has already been accomplished, true equity is just on the horizon.

"It's coming in admissions, it's coming in the facilities. It's frustrating when there isn't more movement, [but] it's an on-going process. It doesn't happen overnight," says O'Leary.CrimsonMelissa K. CrockerUP IN THE AIR: As recently as three years ago, women's voleyball was considered a Level II sport.

In 1979, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued an elaboration of Title IX, in which the bill was interpreted to apply to two main areas of athletics--opportunity and finances.

The strength of Title IX was tested in 1992 when the Supreme Court made a public school's athletic department pay monetary damages for Title IX violations. It was the first time the law showed its teeth.

But it was in 1993, when the Supreme Court found Brown University guilty of Title IX violations after the university eliminated its women's varsity gymnastics and volleyball programs that athletic departments of the ivy-league got a wake-up call.

The ruling established that woman must make up a percentage of the school's athletic population equal to their percentage of the student body as a whole.

Suddenly, schools and colleges realized they could no longer ignore Title IX regulations.

"Title IX has been around for 25 years. We're just now getting around to doing something about it," says Carole A. Kleinfelder, who has been the coach of the women's lacrosse team for the past 20 years and is currently on a leave of absence.

Polling the Experts

In 1997, the Women's Sports Foundation, a New York based Title IX advocacy organization, compiled data from colleges and universities across the country, and gave them each a grade based on their commitment to equity. The study was based on data gathered from the 1995-96 school year.

Harvard was awarded a B+, one of the highest grades given to any NCAA division I-AA school, and a tie with Yale and Dartmouth.

The study concluded that while participation among male and female athletes at Harvard was fairly equal, there are still large discrepancies in spending.

Last month, As part of an 18-month long review process for NCAA certification which the department must undergo every 10 years, the Harvard Athletic Department completed a self-study that yielded similar results.

In particular the study found that while opportunities for women athletes at Harvard are more extensive then ever before, financial inequities still exist between men's and women's athletics, particularly in the areas of recruiting budgets and coach's salaries.

According to figures published in the 1996-97 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report, 60.7 percent of Harvard's operating budget was spent on men's sports in '96-'97. Even eliminating football, a cost-heavy men's sport with no women's equivalent, men's sports still spent more than 55 percent of the total athletic operating budget.

The report also showed that men's teams spent almost three times as much on recruiting during '96-'97 than women's teams did, and that the average salary of head coaches of men's teams was over $8,000 more than that of women's coaches.

Patricia W. Henry, senior associate director of the athletic department, cautions against relying too heavily on such raw statistics.

"It's not all a numbers game," Henry says. "These charts don't always tell you the whole story. The whole compliance issue is so much driven by numbers. On the one hand, we need to have a measuring stick, but I don't know how good a stick it is."

Henry notes that salaries are determined by a variety of factors, including experience, performance and market value, none of which are reflected in the statistics.

"You use all three to figure it out. One of the things which causes a lot of the discrepancy is that we happen to have a lot of people who have been here for a long time, and they're on the men's side," Henry says.

Henry says she is confident that coaches who have been at Harvard for the same amount of time and have experienced similar levels of success are being paid equitably.

However, Kleinfelder, questions using market value to determine coach's salaries.

"Market value is based on society's values, and society values men's sports more then women's. I don't think an educational institution should necessarily buy into what society values," she says.

Administrators also stress that men's and women's budgets don't have to be strictly equal for equal opportunities to exist.

"One point of confusion people sometimes have is that unequal dollars spent on men's and women's sports is de facto a sign of inequity," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68, chair of the self-study steering committee. "Not true--there is no standard that says that the dollars spent have to be the same, and in fact that would make no sense."

Lewis highlights the example of the costs of mounted police hired for the Harvard-Yale game. Hiring similar police officers for women's games when they are not needed would be wasteful.

"The important thing is that the needs of men's and women's sports are being met to comparable degrees, and we have concluded that that is the case," Lewis says.

Star Search

Despite receiving a B+ overall from the Women's Sports Foundation, the University was awarded a considerably lower C+ for equality in recruiting budgets. The study found that, in '95-'96, the athletic department spent only 20 percent of its recruiting budget on women's athletes.

Lewis says discrepancies in recruiting budgets result from regional differences between sports.

"Some sports are harder to recruit for than others," he says "A sport that is played in only a few states does not need as large a recruiting budget as one that is played nationally."

Despite this, women's sports are beginning to recruit nationally. Women's Hockey Head Coach Kathleen B. Stone notes that women's hockey is no longer centered only in the northeast, as it once was.

"If you're going to do recruiting right, you have to go to Canada, you have to go to Alaska. You have to go wherever they're playing hockey," she says.

Figures show that the athletic department has increased funding for women's recruitment drastically over the last year, from just over $64,000 in 1995-96 to more than $130,000 in 1996-97.

Traditionally, recruiting has also been partly funded through friends groups. These groups were established to allow alumni and other donors to fund extra expenses for specific teams, including out of region travel and supplementary recruiting efforts.

In the past, it was common for alumni to only donate to men's sports through these programs.

"You've got these long established, broad based friends groups for men, and these small, relatively new friends groups for women. We saw that these were not equating," Henry says.

So in the early '80s, beginning with men and women's crew, the athletic department has been in the process of combining friends groups for individual sports.

"We've revitalized that effort over the last three or four years," Henry says.

The recently released self-study found that the merging of friends groups will increase fundraising efforts, eventually to the point where these groups will pay for all extra-budgetary expenses for women's teams, as they now do for men's.

But in the mean time, in order to make up for the funds men's teams received from donations, the Harvard Radcliffe Foundation for women's Athletics (HRFWA) was also established in 1981. Today, HRFWA still allocates approximately $40,000 a year solely for women's athletics.

Despite the merging of the friends groups, in some sports it is still possible to earmark funds solely for a men's sport.

A Head Start

According to Stone, Harvard has long been thought a leader in gender equity.

"I think the awareness of Title IX has been sort of a hanging cloud at times," says Stone. "It's been a threat to a lot of athletic departments, but the Harvard athletic department has taken it upon itself to be proactive, to do things before anyone has said they had to."

Harvard athletics has issued reports on women's status within the department every two years since 1976.

"I don't know of any other school that has looked at itself in that sort of measuring way over the past 22 years," Henry says.

Henry says that in the early '80s administrators from other universities would call frequently to ask how Harvard had organized the report.

In addition, Harvard was the first school in the Ivy League to offer women's lightweight crew. The sport is currently being added to athletic departments across the nation in order to increase numbers of women athletes.

"We just looked around our campus, and noticed most of the women here were in the lightweight category," Henry says. "It was totally common sense. Now everyone's waking up to it."

And although some coaches say that monetary inequities do exist, their teams are receiving the money they need.

"I've never been told no," says Susan E. Caples, head coach of the women's field hockey team. "When there are things we've needed to do, we've done what we needed to do."

Stone says she feels the hockey squad receives everything they need.

"It's always been on a needbase. We've always received everything we've wanted," she says.

Nevertheless, the discrepancies still exist. While coaches and teams often receive the needed resources they request, some athletes and coaches say a mentality has existed within the department in which women don't always think to ask for what they'd like.

Sarah M. Demers '99, a member of the women's lightweight crew team, says this was the case when the men's lightweight crew team went to England this past summer after winning the national title.

"When they win something that big, they usually go over to Henley [England]," Demers says.

The women's lightweights also won the national title, but they did not make a similar trip.

"We never even thought of it. We never even asked," she says.

Henry says she worries that misperceptions about equity issues lead students looking only at numbers to see inequity where none exits. "Perceptions feel real," she says.

One recommendation of the NCAA self-study involved increasing communication between coaches, students and administrators, so that "coaches of women's teams are aware of all the resources available to them."

And with this increased communication, the mentality of a double standard is being removed.

Elizabeth H. O'Leary, head coach of the women's heavyweight crew team, says women's coaches are now asking for what they need.

"The group of women's coaches at this university is not a shy group," O'Leary said. "We've all learned, some of us the hard way, that we need to step up and ask for what we need, not because the athletic department isn't receptive to us, just because [before] we didn't know that we could or should ask. Where I had coached previously, you had to go out and hold bake sales for what you needed."

And Demers says that this year the team is thinking of making the trip to England.

In March, peer reviewers from other universities will visit the athletic department, conduct interviews, and write their own report in which they determine whether Harvard complies with NCAA guidelines and should be certified by the organization. As with all studies, this will continue to push Harvard toward self-scrutiny.

Coaches say they are hopeful that, as much progress as has already been accomplished, true equity is just on the horizon.

"It's coming in admissions, it's coming in the facilities. It's frustrating when there isn't more movement, [but] it's an on-going process. It doesn't happen overnight," says O'Leary.CrimsonMelissa K. CrockerUP IN THE AIR: As recently as three years ago, women's voleyball was considered a Level II sport.