Gender equity: Open issue in Big Ten

Editor's Note: This is the second in a three-part series looking at Title IX in its 25th year. Today's story focuses on gender equity in the Big Ten.

In their pursuit of gender equity, athletic directors at colleges and universities across the United States have a variety of options.

Adding women's soccer had been a popular choice. So has cutting men's sports, particularly wrestling. At some schools, women's rowing has become popular enough to support varsity teams with over 100 members.

All of these methods have been applied in the Big Ten as athletic departments work toward a mandated 60/40 ratio of male/female athletes. In June 1992, the Big Ten adopted the Gender Equity Action policy that set the goal of a 60/40 participation ratio in conference varsity sports by June 1997.

At Penn State, this has been accomplished through the promotion of women's soccer to varsity status in 1994. Minnesota has added women's ice hockey, and Wisconsin now supports a 108-member rowing team.

"I think the pool of recruitable student-athletes is growing in leaps and bounds," Penn State Associate Athletic Director Ellen Perry said. "60/40 was a good post set out by the presidents of the Big Ten conference."

During the 1995-96 school year, Michigan, Iowa, Ohio State and Wisconsin already met the 60/40 mandate. Only Illinois was significantly behind the mandated ratio, with 30 percent female athletes. Of Penn State's athletes last year, 38 percent were female. It's a figure Perry said is now up to 40 percent.

The mandate, however, does not take into consideration the ratio of male/female of all students. Only Indiana, Iowa, Michigan State and Northwestern have a majority of female undergraduate students. For the rest of the Big Ten schools, achieving equity in their athletic departments is made more difficult by the numbers of all female students.

"To me, the mandate is really dependent on their particular enrollment," Perry said. "You have our under-enrollment. It's the exact opposite at Iowa, so they really have a challenge and a half."

While equity is being reached in terms of participation, there is still great disparity at every Big Ten school financially. In both recruiting money and total operating budgets, Big Ten athletic departments spent between 21 and 34 percent of their operating dollars in 1995-96 on women's sports. Penn State put a relatively high 31 percent of its athletic budget toward women's athletics.

"Money is a matter of evolution," Perry said. "I think that the women's experience is still evolving. The difficulty comes in the reality of whatever the revenue sports are at a particular institution. There is no easy answer."

In 1995-96, Penn State football earned 62.9 percent ($17,840,445) of the total sports revenue and received 24.1 percent ($2,328,421) of all athletic funding, according to the Penn State Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report. Athletic directors face the challenge of providing equal funding for female athletes without reducing the revenue brought in by sports like football and men's basketball.

"Is an All-American football player more valuable to a university than an All-American female track runner? You could argue that," said Julie Soriero, University of Pennsylvania women's basketball coach and former Penn State player. "It shouldn't come at the expense of male athletes. I think there are solutions."

As the popularity of women's sports grow, revenue has increased. Illinois women's basketball coach Theresa Grentz pointed to Connecticut's women's hoops team as a successful program both on the court and financially.

"I look at it strictly from a business standpoint. People are buying the tickets. That's another form of revenue," Grentz said. "They all become pieces that fit into the finances. If you want to be good, you have to spend money."

The greatest disparity in spending by Big Ten universities occurs in the amount of the recruiting budget allotted to women's sports. Penn State spent 73 percent ($356,882) recruiting for men's teams and 27 percent ($133,392) recruiting for women's teams in 1995-96, according to the Penn State Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act report.

Other Big Ten universities spent between 19 and 32 percent of their recruiting budgets on women's sports, with Northwestern at the low end and Purdue at the high end.

"It's certainly not an Olympic sports problem that this country loves football," Grentz said. "I can't ever imagine a football program being on the decline because of a women's gymnastics program. It goes back to two words -- opportunity and participation."