Title IX Built Women’s Sports. Now, It’s Time for it to Change.

The law that transformed sports for women and girls is turning 50. 

On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law Title IX, prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools, as part of sweeping reforms to the education system. When the law passed, just over 300,000 young women played college and high school sports. Forty years later, six times as many women and girls were competing at the high school and college level. By 2016, one in every five girls in the United States played sports. The law essentially created women’s professional sports as...