Flashback Friday: False Start

July 25, 2025
By CommonWealth Beacon Staff

For this Flashback Friday, we’re taking a look back at reporter Jack Sullivan’s story on Title IX, the 37-word clause in the federal Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibited gender-based discrimination in education. The piece details how female athletes competing for colleges and universities across Massachusetts lacked funding, opportunities, and institutional support when compared to their male counterparts.

“From tiny Roxbury Community College to the University of Massachusetts flagship school in Amherst, women run far behind men in nearly every measure of equal treatment, despite making up nearly 56 percent of the public higher education enrollment, according to federal data covering the 2008-2009 school year, the most recent available,” Jack writes. “Massachusetts state colleges and universities as a whole spent $29.2 million on men’s and women’s sports, not in­cluding administrative salaries and other budget items unrelated to gender. Women’s sports received 38 percent of the money; men’s sports received 62 percent.”

The state of sports for female athletes has improved since both Title IX was enacted and Jack’s story appeared as the cover in the fall of 2010. There are now more than 230,000 women participating in NCAA championship sports. Before Title IX, that number was closer to 32,000.

As Title IX moves into its sixth decade, it’s important to take stock of the gains that have been made while also acknowledging the stubborn inequities that remain. As Judy Dixon, the former UMass Amherst tennis coach who features prominently in the story, notes, “Every three years I show my kids a film on Title IX,” she says. “They think it’s always been as good as it is, and they don’t realize how much there still is to go.”

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