RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Title IX, recently renamed the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, was adopted in 1972 to prohibit gender discrimination in programs that receive federal funds; and

WHEREAS, Title IX's impact on athletics has led to a vast increase in girls' participation in high school athletics, college athletics, and women's professional athletics; and

WHEREAS, in 1972, fewer than thirty-two thousand women competed in intercollegiate athletics, women received only two percent of schools' athletic budgets, and athletic scholarships for women were nonexistent; and

WHEREAS, today, thanks to the doors opened by Title IX, high school female sports participation has increased eight hundred percent, from three hundred thousand in 1971 to 2,800,000 in 2002; and

WHEREAS, the number of college women participating in competitive athletics is nearly five times as great as it was before Title IX; and

WHEREAS, while sports are the most visible benefit of Title IX, women's gains in college-level academics have been substantial; and

WHEREAS, Title IX's antidiscrimination provisions apply to every single aspect of education, including admissions and recruitment, comparable facilities, access to course offerings, access to schools of vocational education, counseling and counseling materials, financial assistance, student health and insurance benefits and services, housing, marital and parental status of students, physical education and athletics, education programs and activities, and employment, providing a fair and equal benefit for a generation of women; and

WHEREAS, girls and women who attended schools prior to Title IX experienced sex-segregated classes, denial of admissions to certain vocational education classes, lack of access to advanced mathematics and science courses, and overt discrimination in medical schools and other predominantly male institutions; and

WHEREAS, after Title IX women in post-secondary education shot up dramatically, rising from forty-four percent of all undergraduates in 1972 to fifty-six percent of all undergraduates today; and

WHEREAS, since the inception of Title IX, the amount of scholarship money for women has increased from $100,000 in 1972 to $179 million in 1997; and

WHEREAS, woman made significant jumps in areas traditionally thought of as male, such as engineering, medicine, and law: in 1970 women earned 0.7 percent of bachelor's degrees in engineering while today women earn 20 percent of these degrees; and in 1972, women received only 9 percent of all medical degrees and 7 percent of all law degrees, whereas in 1996, women received 41 percent of all medical degrees and 44 percent of all law degrees; and

WHEREAS, the Bush administration has convened a Commission on Opportunity in Athletics to consider changes to Title IX; and

WHEREAS, this controversial commission has made recommendations that would seriously dilute the power of Title IX; and

WHEREAS, proponents of Title IX charge that the commission is an attempt to weaken the law after repeated court challenges over the past thirty years have failed; and

WHEREAS, Title IX is an Act of Congress and should not be subject to modification by an executive branch commission; and

WHEREAS, the people of Hawaii have experienced the great benefits of Title IX, the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, and strongly support its full implementation; now, therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the Twenty-second Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2003, the Senate concurring, that the State of Hawaii urges Congress to maintain Title IX, the Patsy Takemoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, in its original form and to take a firm stand opposing any recommendations that would weaken it; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Education of the United States, President of the Senate of the United States Congress, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, and the members of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Report Title:

Title IX, Patsy Mink Act; Urge Congress to Support