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Baker, Katharine K. --- "Sex equality, gender injury, Title IX and women’s education" [2019] ELECD 115; in West, Robin; Bowman, G. Cynthia (eds), "Research Handbook on Feminist Jurisprudence" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 321

Book Title: Research Handbook on Feminist Jurisprudence

Editor(s): West, Robin; Bowman, G. Cynthia

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781786439680

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: Sex equality, gender injury, Title IX and women’s education

Author(s): Baker, Katharine K.

Number of pages: 21

Abstract/Description:

This chapter explores the notions of discrimination and gender injury that have animated the law’s attempt to secure equal educational opportunities for women, paying particularly close attention to the intersection of constitutional law and Title IX of the 1972 Civil Rights Act. By analysing two distinctive features of women’s education in the United States, single-sex colleges and single-sex sports teams, the chapter argues that much of the success of anti-sex discrimination measures in education is attributable to the modest, non-transformational goals that inspired both Title IX and the push for women’s equality generally. The contrast to race is particularly notable in this analysis. Title IX’s rejection of both anti-classification and anti-segregation principles – principles that have come to define how the law understands racial injury – allowed for more capacious understandings of sex equality to emerge. By emphasizing choice and opportunity, and by at times embracing difference, the legislative and administrative (though largely non-judicial) efforts to secure meaningful equality for women in education have been, in practice, transformational.