Womenstake, NWLC's Blog

by Neena Chaudhry

Thirty five years after Title IX was passed, women’s participation in college sports still lags far behind men’s, and contrary to what some Title IX opponents would have you believe, men’s overall participation has not suffered but rather has continued to increase.  These are two of the key findings of a comprehensive study of colleges over the past 10 years released yesterday by the Women’s Sports Foundation.

The study finds that even though women are close to 55% of the undergraduate students at colleges, they receive only about 41% of the opportunities to play sports.  In addition, while the number of women’s teams grew substantially in the late 1990s, this growth slowed quite a bit in the early 2000s, with only about one quarter of schools adding a women’s team between 2001 and 2005, as compared to 66% of schools adding a women’s team between 1995 and 2001.

Men’s overall participation has also increased: between 2001 and 2005, male participation grew by about 10,000 athletes, roughly the same amount as female participation grew during this time (11,000 athletes).  Some men’s sports experienced substantial declines in participation (volleyball, tennis, wrestling), as did some women’s sports, but other men’s sports grew by much larger amounts (football, baseball, lacrosse and soccer).

So what’s the bottom line?

by Joan Entmacher

In an op-ed this week titled "The Rise of the Bottom Fifth," Ron Haskins points to a finding in a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office—that the lowest-income fifth of households with children experienced a larger percentage increase in average income between 1991 and 2005 than all other groups except the top fifth—as demonstrating the success of the 1996 welfare law.   

But he doesn’t mention another CBO finding:  that between 2000 and 2005, the bottom fifth experienced a far larger drop in income than any other income group.  (The second-to-the-bottom fifth experienced the next largest drop.)  Even with their “big increases in income,” families in the bottom fifth “enjoyed” an average income of just $16,800 in 2005—less than the poverty level for a family of four in 2005. And it’s strange that he claims that the study shows that income inequality in America is not increasing—when he acknowledges that the study finds that the biggest income gains in percentage terms (and, of course, in dollars) went to those already at the top.  (Their average income in 2005 was $175,800.)

To his credit, Haskins recognizes the importance to low-income families of government policies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, child care, and health care, to improve living standards and make work pay.  But the “trend in federal policy to improve programs that help low-income workers” that Haskins mentions, like the trend toward increased income, largely ended after 2000. 

Since 2000, federal funding for child care assistance has stagnated.

by Jill Morrison