In 1972, Title IX was passed into law in the United States. Among other things, this civil rights law mandates that all federally-funded educational institutions provide roughly equal opportunities for both men and women to participate in athletics programs. The passage of Title IX caused an exponential increase in the number of women participating in sports in the US, and is widely regarded as one of the most significant milestones in American women’s sports history. 49 years later, during the 2021 Division I women’s basketball tournament–which took place in a “bubble” due to COVID-19–the NCAA was exposed by players for providing laughably inadequate accommodations to its female athletes (including everything from worse COVID tests, lower-quality meals, and a singular stack of dumbbells masquerading as a “weight room”). Amid significant public backlash, an important question was raised: has treatment of female athletes really gotten better?
This project is based on the Equity in Athletics Dataset. Each year, as mandated by the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), the federal government collects data about gender equity and sports from all coed postsecondary institutions that participate in federal student aid programs and have intercollegiate athletics programs. These data are then compiled together. Traditionally they have been used to assess individual schools’ compliance with the equity standards set by Title IX; for the purposes of this project we have combined data about all NCAA schools to tell a wider story.
This graph displays the proportion of a school’s athletes that compete on women’s teams, compared to the proportion of athletic student aid received by athletes on women’s teams. We see that schools with football are more likely than schools without football to have fewer female athletes than male athletes, and the majority of schools with football give less of their overall student aid to female athletes. Additionally, more schools without football are above the equity line (give a higher proportion of student aid to female athletes than the participation ratio), while schools with football are more likely to fall below the line. The distribution of schools has stayed roughly the same over time, which is notable–neither the ratio of female athletes nor distribution of aid appear to have shifted in women’s favor, even with almost 20 years of supposed progress.
Here we visualize the difference between median head coach salaries for head coaches of men’s (in purple) and women’s (in green) teams, separated out by division. The salaries are displayed on a log scale, which allows us to better compare the differences between DII and DIII schools that would otherwise be overshadowed by the sheer magnitude of salaries at DI schools. The biggest difference in average salaries occurs in DI schools with football (both FBS and FCS), but a disparity between men’s and women’s head coach salaries is present at every level of the NCAA and has persisted across time. In fact, the difference between head coach salaries at DI-FBS schools only seems to be widening over time. While the differences are smaller at DII and DIII schools, they still exist, and are much more pronounced at DII and DIII schools with football as compared to those without.
Displayed above is the ratio of operating expenses devoted to women’s teams, with an equal ratio marked at 50%. Immediately we can see that spending on women’s teams almost always falls below that equality line, with the differences again being more pronounced at schools with football. In fact, schools without football all dedicate more than 40% of expenses to women’s teams, while schools with football never dedicate more than 45% of their expenses to women’s teams. DI schools (DI-FBS in particular) display the biggest difference in spending, which is expected, but interestingly DII schools (both with and without football) have actually established more equitable ratios than DIII schools, beginning around 2013. In contrast, the disparity at DI schools without football only seems to be getting bigger over time. There are also significant drops nearly across the board in spending on women’s teams in 2020 and 2021, which means that during a pandemic a disporportionate share of “necessary” operating funds were allocated to men’s teams.
Our final visualization is very similar to that for expenses, except this time the share of revenue generated by women’s teams is displayed (with another line at the 50% mark for reference). The dominant narrative is that women’s sports make no money–the data show this isn’t true. In fact, at almost all schools women’s teams have consistently returned a disproportionate share of revenue across time. This is particularly notable given that these programs are also receiving less investment. DIII schools without football are the only exception, but these schools have also trended down in investment over time and saw the most drastic drop in spending during COVID-19, which suggests that continuous devaluing factors may be at play. It is quite clear that investing in women’s sports can have significant returns if these programs are allowed the time, space, and resources to grow and cultivate an audience.
Leaps and bounds have been made towards equity in sports since the passage of Title IX. However, we have also shown that there is much more to do if the NCAA truly wants to show that it values the athletes competing on women’s teams. As women’s sports grow in popularity across the United States, there is more investment potential for these programs than ever before - but there’s also more to lose. The NCAA is being presented with a golden chance to capitalize on women’s sports while avoiding yet another round of public outcry. It would be a mistake not to take that chance.