Title IX: Leveling the Playing Field for Women in Sports
By Olivia Schaller
AI Disclosure: AI was used to generate art for this essay. Google Gemini Notebook was used to create images and the podcast below.
Title IX continues to break glass ceilings for female athletes across all sports. But what are the costs of equality?
Hockey has historically struggled to accept women in athletic roles. What is hockey without players like Hilary Knight, who staged a walkout at the IIHF World Women’s Championship to advocate for higher pay, or Manon Rheaume, who was the first woman to play in an NHL game in 1992 for the Tampa Bay Lightning?
Year after year, women in hockey prove their excellence, but Title IX hearings and protests threaten to take away the very standards that allow women’s sports to move forward. Similarly, recent pop-culture shifts challenge the legitimacy of women’s dedication to hockey.
Title IX, in relation to women’s sports, refers to the educational amendments made in 1972 to protect women from gender-related inequity in education and athletics, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Title IX protects education and activities that are federally funded at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. These amendments do not just affect education and sports generally, but more specifically, sexual assault and harassment victims, employees, students, and institutions other than schools, according to Thomson Reuters.
Within the scope of sports, Title IX requires equal opportunities for men’s and women’s sports at all government-funded facilities. While it doesn’t require each team to be identical, it asks for balanced benefits. The balanced benefits and opportunities include the following: equipment and supplies, travel and per diem supplies, coaching and academic tutoring, assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors, locker rooms and practice facilities, medical and training facilities and services, housing and dining facilities and services, publicity and support services, and recruitment of student-athletes, all according to the U.S. Department of Education.
For example, if a men’s collegiate hockey team receives a new locker room, the women’s team must receive the same compensation, though Title IX isn’t as clean as it seems. In the case of the amendment, the locker rooms don’t necessarily have to go up at the same time; the women’s team could wait for years, and it would still be fully legal under the law.
This is where a team could start to fall through the cracks of what’s allowed and what isn’t, and while Title IX amendments affect athletes across the board, they begin to question whether they were ever fully protected.
In 2017, Title IX was brought up in a lawsuit against the University of North Dakota. Four high school students sued the University for cutting the Women’s Ice Hockey Team. The plaintiffs argued that one of them was promised recruitment to the team upon accepting their offer, while the other three claimed they would attend the university if the team were still there. The problem proposed by the defendants was that the plaintiffs weren’t directly affected by the foreclosure of the Women’s Hockey Team, according to Valley News Live.
This case didn’t sit right with athletes and fans alike. While the men’s team got to continue, the university’s first thing to let go was the women’s team, dimming a good option for female high school hockey players.
The culture around hockey is already demeaning for a growing fanbase and sport. In recent years, the hockey market has grown more popular than any other sport, with a 6.5% compound annual growth rate, according to the Business Research Company. While it’s exciting to see the sport thrive, it forces fans to turn an eye to its darker history.
In Heated Rivalry and Off-Campus, two hockey-romance TV series, an influx of popularity brings new fans into the hockey arena, hoping for a safe, inviting environment for female fans, but they are met with discrimination and questions about their loyalty to hockey. This is met at every level, including the collegiate level.
In recent events, the San Jose Sharks’ Macklin Celebrini sat down for an interview with GQ Magazine, where he was asked about female fans’ behavior. Celebrini met the reporter with awkwardness, as reported by GQ Magazine. It has become incredibly normalized to mock and question female sports fans of every level, with a belief that it started at the very root of Title IX and misogyny.
While Title IX protects collegiate female hockey players, beyond that, prospects start to look darker in the face of a professional career worth fighting for. In 2023, the PWHL (Professional Women’s Hockey League) was started by Billie Jean King and sponsors. After years of three leagues that separated Olympic legends in women’s hockey, all players were consolidated into six original teams: Minnesota Frost, New York Sirens, Montreal Victorie, Boston Fleet, Toronto Scepres, and Ottawa Charge.
This new league opened doors for players who had lacked the recognition and platform that they deserved for their hockey accolades. Famously, Knight signed onto the Boston Fleet and gave the team a name and spotlight for a new fanbase. Fans were hopeful that, after years of struggle, women’s hockey was finally having its breakthrough, but it could never quite reach the equality they hoped for.
In 2026, the Winter Olympics were held in Italy. The USA Women’s team had a historic, record-breaking run, taking home gold against Canada in a nail-biting game. The next day, the USA Men’s team also competed against Canada and won gold.
On a phone call recorded in the locker room between President Donald Trump and the USA men’s team, Trump was quoted as saying he’ll “have to invite the women” to the white house following both gold medal wins, which received a laugh from the men’s team present, according to People Magazine.
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This struck a nerve in fans and athletes alike. The women’s team began receiving apologies from players while the men’s team received criticism from spectators. This caused the women’s team to decline the invitation to the white house while the men’s team attended. Knight was quoted in a PWHL press conference saying, “The joke was distasteful and unfortunate. And the way women are represented, I think it’s a great teaching point,” according to NBC Chicago.
This controversial comment led to a significant spike in viewership of PWHL and women’s collegiate hockey, creating a bad moment that had detrimental effects on support for women’s sports. Since then, the fight for equal women’s hockey, especially at the collegiate level, has been under a large microscope. PWHL games began selling out overnight and breaking attendance records at large arenas, according to CBC Sports.
Pressure on female hockey players begins at the start of their careers, however young they may be, and although Title IX is a perceived safeguard, it hasn’t always had their backs. According to Forbes Magazine, women’s sports are still predominantly coached by men, and while this technically follows the amendment’s rules, it’s more of a downside. Being able to see your coach and leader also be a successful woman is an important reason for female coaches.
Title IX does have tremendous positives. Wifi Talents reports that from 1972 to 2020, women’s participation in the NCAA grew by 200,000 athletes. The amendment not only gave athletes the confidence to continue in their sport but also the support and budget necessary to do so without discrimination.
For goalie Kayla Simonson, hockey has always been a part of her life, as she was born and raised in a hockey family in Minnesota. She played for Delano High School and was named captain her senior year, an oddity for hockey goalies. She attended national-level camps in her youth to hone her craft on the net.
She committed to Augsburg University for the Women’s Ice Hockey Team and entered a whole new level of the competitive sport. In her freshman year, she broke records in the net and quickly set herself up to be recognized as a threat on the ice. She’s beginning her Junior year and hopes to keep her streak of success going.
When asked about budget efforts for the Augsburg Women’s Hockey Team, Simonson had many thoughts.
“You start to feel bad for asking for money,” Simonson said when asked about donation efforts, “It has more to do with financially well-off families than actually money from the school.” While Augsburg continues to work to remain in compliance with Title IX, these efforts aren’t always reflected in players’ daily lives.
Simonson recalls when the Men’s and Women’s locker rooms were built at the same time, with some disparities that technically made them Title IX-approved.
“The men’s locker rooms have more storage, like dry stalls, and they are closer to the doors on the ice,” Simonson said.
While it’s easy for players to be grateful for the opportunity to be equal, it’s easy to notice the details that are lacking for female athletes.
“I will say Augsburg does a good job of making sure athletes get what they need from what I know,” Simonson said. “There are meetings I’m not a part of, so I can’t say I know what’s going on completely.”
While continuing the conversation about disparities between the men’s and women’s teams, Simonson had other thoughts about equipment.
“Men break their hockey sticks at a higher rate, but the men’s team gets more equipment than we do,” Simonson said. “They receive helmets for away and home games, and that’s a small thing, but we notice.”
It could be explained as mentioned earlier: the opportunities and budget do not need to be mirrored exactly, but they have to level out in some way. There may be ways the Women’s Hockey team is receiving less than it deserves, but Simonson notes that it has to make a greater effort to raise money than the men’s team does. She mentioned conversations among the male athletes about not fundraising, but she couldn’t tell if that was entirely true, so she let it slide.
There’s an argument to be made that changes in NIL opportunities are reshaping budgets in collegiate sports. Name, Image, and Likeness, or NIL, allows athletes to make money off their brand and claim ownership of it. This has drastically changed how teams and colleges structure their budgets, considering they can now pay players through the NCAA.
There are fewer safeguards for equality through NIL because it is completely up to the players and less involved with the NCAA. Some players skyrocket to the top while others see virtually no money at all, and it is less dependent on their gender.
The changes in climate and the effects of social media have forced Title IX changes based on new arguments being made, specifically about transgender athletes, but it affects more of the amendments than just the ones that are being targeted. Without athletes being fully trans[parent about the effects of these changes, things will keep happening that break down the walls that Title IX built to protect women.
Without Title IX, women’s teams could lose funding completely, lose coaching positions, face equipment shortages, have no place to practice, and lose their ability to balance academics and sports. The amendments withhold more value than they present.
In conclusion, Title IX has been central to many decisions in women’s sports since its amendments were adopted. Even the smallest changes threaten to tear away years of history and connected fan bases. Women and girls deserve equality and access to the same things as their male athletic counterparts.
With threats to break down the systems within the amendments, it’s now more important than ever to stay educated on these changes and how they affect not only women’s sports but also women’s education and assault safeguards. When one amendment is broken down, the rest come down with it until years of protest and fighting are thrown away by one administrative agenda to break down women’s equality in government-funded institutions, a place where women should never feel threatened.
Women athletes deserve light; they deserve to excel in an accessible environment; and they deserve to feel peace within their respective sports. Continuing Title IX means continuing the integrity of women’s sports.
