SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) Female pupils receive substantial benefits from participating in athletics, including physical benefits, psychological and emotional health benefits, learning responsible social behavior, and achieving greater academic success. The achievements of women in athletics is demonstrated by their performances in the Olympic Games, women’s professional sports leagues, and other national and international women’s sporting events that receive public attention.
(b) In 1912, only 2 percent of Olympic athletes were women; in 2012, 44 percent of Olympians were women.
(c) Between 1972 and 2011, the number of girls competing in high school sports jumped from under 295,000 to nearly 3,200,000. But the level of opportunity for girls still has not reached the level of opportunity for boys that existed when Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted.
(d) There are more women playing collegiate sports—about 200,000—than ever before. The number of female athletes at National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) schools has increased from less than 30,000 to over 193,000 since 1972, but women still have over 60,000 fewer participation opportunities than their male counterparts.
(e) Despite the fact that millions of women and girls are competing, they are unlikely to see athletic role models of their own gender in the media. Researchers from the
University of California and Purdue University completed a 20-year study of sports coverage that shows the short shrift that women’s sports receives compared to men’s on network news and ESPN SportsCenter: in 2009, women’s sports got only 1.6 percent of the airtime, down from 6.3 percent in 2004.
(f) Unfortunately, Title IX has not managed to extend the social and health benefits of sports to all girls equally. In 2008, a national survey of pupils in grades 3 to 12, inclusive, by the Women’s Sports Foundation found that 75 percent of Caucasian girls play sports, compared to less than two-thirds of African American and Hispanic girls, and about one-half of Asian girls. And, while boys from immigrant families are well represented in youth sports, less than one-half of the girls from those families are playing sports.
(g) The gender gap is also worse in urban schools and among kids
from low-income families. These disparities in youth sports persist at the collegiate level. African American women are underrepresented in all sports except for Division I basketball and track and field, and Latinas make up just 4 percent of the female athletes in the NCAA.