A Rose by Any Other Name? Title IX as a Gender Mainstreaming Model

More than forty years ago US feminists fought for the inclusion of a gender-specific program to protect students from discrimination at all levels from kindergarten to PhD programs. The language of law that was enacted (known as Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972) was intentionally broad, and implementation has taken a variety of forms over the years. The achievement for which it has become best known is the opening of sports programs to women and girls and the legitimation of women as athletic competitors. This paper revisits the history of Title IX to reconsider its impacts on curricula and academic policy. Title IX prefigured gender mainstreaming mandates that spread after 1995: it affirmed a politics of consciousness-building among decision-makers and supported positive action to change key practices of institutions. Although Title IX was not a model for gender mainstreaming, its long history of uneven implementation offers lessons for gender mainstreaming work. Title IX interventions included workshops focused on portrayals of girls as passive and of gender inequality as legitimate; reviews of exclusionary language; programs targeting women and girls at special risk such as pregnant and parenting students; modest funding for active recruitment efforts in vocational and technical education. What Title IX accomplished depended to a very great extent on what issues engaged civil society and drew in mobilized constituencies to press for (or against) the changes it was encouraging. The experience with Title IX as a proactive tool for gender equality suggests considering how top-down enforcement can be enabled by continued (or recurrent) bottom-up mobilizations and how advocates inside institutions are empowered by outsider mobilizations that were dramatic, generated publicity, and changed public opinion. Paradoxically, mainstreaming type interventions may be more effective when presented as part of a conflict over ideas than as scientific knowledge.