Athletics, Sports, Physical Education, and Gender Equity

Gender equity is a term that emerged out of the efforts of U.S. educators and lawmakers in the 1960s to address sex discrimination that prevented girls and women from pursuing certain educational, job, and sport opportunities. As Katherine Hanson, Vivian Guilfoy, and Sarita Pillai explain in their book More Than Title IX: How Equity in Education Has Shaped the Nation, due to prevailing notions that females were the “weaker sex,” women were discouraged from enrolling in degrees that would enable them to become doctors and lawyers. Nor was it considered particularly “ladylike” for women to take their athletic activities seriously at the time.

As it is applied to athletics, sport, and physical education, gender equity can have many meanings. In 2009, Teresa Ross, head girls' basketball ...