Women in the Olympics
Women Reach New Heights in Summer 2004 Athens Olympics
Forty-four percent of all Olympic athletes were women in the 2004 Athens games - the highest percentage ever! This builds on remarkable gains from the summer 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
The 2004 Olympics also had the fewest all-male delegations. Only five countries sent no women athletes to compete, compared to 12 countries in Sydney in 2000 and 26 countries only eight short years ago in Atlanta . Afghanistan , a country previously banned from the games because of its cruel gender apartheid, brought three women runners to compete - even the bearer of the Afghan flag in the opening ceremonies was a woman.
If that was not enough, for the first time ever two women hosted and organized the Olympics. Dora Bakoyianni, Athens ' first-ever woman mayor, is also the first woman to serve as mayor of a host city. As for spearheading Greece's winning bid for the Olympic Games, the credit goes to Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who was later called back to be the chief organizer.
In the United States delegation, we truly saw the Title IX generation at their best. Title IX is the historic federal law of 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs, including athletics. Title IX is the reason women and girls' opportunities in athletics have increased so dramatically. Since Title IX went into effect in 1972, the number of young women playing sports in college has increased by more than 400% and the number of young women playing interscholastic sports in high school has increased 847%.
The payoff was clear in the 2004 Olympics. U.S. women's team sports dominated - with soccer, softball, and basketball taking the gold, and gymnastics taking silver. Without Title IX, we wouldn't have made such amazing gains in team sports for women.
And it is only because of the efforts of women's rights organizations like the Feminist Majority Foundation and other members of the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education that Title IX's provisions for equality in athletic opportunities remains intact. In 2002, the Department of Education created the so-called Commission on Opportunity in Athletics to review Title IX. Stacked with opponents of Title IX, the Commission recommended weakening enforcement of Title IX.
The outcry from feminists and women athletes was so great that the Bush Administration ended up reaffirming Title IX in a quiet announcement in 2003.
However there is a new attempt to water down Title IX. The Department of Education has issued proposed changes to the regulations to make it easier to use federal funding to hold segregated single-sex classes and schools . The proposed changes provide separate education with no guarantees of equality.
Women's educational and athletic opportunities are at stake. We cannot allow Title IX to be weakened, not when it helped women make such astounding gains not only in sports, but also in the fields of medicine, law, business, and more. Help maintain and fully implement Title IX. Join the Title IX Action Network and stay up-to-date and take action on important issues for women's educational equality and althletic opportunities.
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