Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel and Director of Equal Opportunities in Athletics

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

Many of us here had the privilege of attending an inspiring event yesterday at George Washington University, where hundreds gathered to celebrate the release of a new Title IX guidance that reversed a harmful policy issued in 2005 and provided further details about how schools can comply with the law. The 2005 policy weakened the law by permitting schools to claim that they were complying with Title IX based exclusively on the results of an email survey asking female students about their interests in additional sports opportunities. Even worse, schools were given the green light to interpret any lack of response to a survey as lack of interest in sports. 

Vice President Biden, Valerie Jarrett (Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls), and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his staff joined Olympic and professional athletes, local teams, students, parents and advocates to talk about the importance of Title IX and what it means for our nation’s daughters. As the Vice President said, “Making Title IX as strong as possible is a no-brainer.” And he dubbed yesterday Equal Play Day, noting that it was also Equal Pay Day (check out our blog for posts about fair pay).

The speakers recognized how empowering sports are for women and girls and how participating in sports leads to greater academic and employment success, better health outcomes, and countless other benefits. 

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel,
National Women’s Law Center 

As we watch the Olympics, we can’t help but marvel at the athletic abilities of the world’s athletes. But for most young men and women, participating in sports will not lead to an Olympic medal. It will, however, lead to other great and long-lasting effects in the form of greater educational, work and health outcomes. Those are the findings of two separate studies by economists that are profiled in the New York Times.

According to the article, the studies confirm that the benefits of sports that many of us have long touted—better grades, higher self-esteem, and lower teenage pregnancy rates—are a direct result of participating in sports. More specifically, one of the studies isolates the variable of sports participation from other factors such as school size and social and personal factors and demonstrates that Title IX, which led to a tremendous increase in girls’ sports participation, has had a direct effect on women’s education and employment. Another study shows that the increase in girls’ sports participation caused by Title IX was associated with a 7 percent lower risk of obesity 20 to 25 years later for girls who were in high school in the 1970s.