(“There’s no new news. We have a very strong statute, the regulations that interpret that statute are really clear, and we have case law that says unequivocally and repeatedly that equal means equal,” Hogshead-Makar said. “And yet you have, every way you measure it, these great big disparities.”
The question Hogshead-Makar’s organization and others are trying to address now, she said, is how to address the problems on a broad scale rather than on a case-by-case basis. “The idea is, how do you get change to scale?” she said. “We do the one-offs. But one-offs inform the bigger projects of how you get change to scale.” Champion Women and other groups are working to inform schools that are non-compliant of their problems and how widespread the problems are. The hope is to shine light on the disparities not just for athletics officials but for everyone involved on campuses in a way that will drive awareness of the scale of the problem. While enforcement from outside bodies, including OCR, is still necessary, the onus, ultimately, is on schools to follow a law they should already be in compliance with, Hogshead-Makar said.
“There’s nothing to argue about” when it comes to equal opportunities and facilities for girls and women, she said. “The law is not that hard.”)
Think Progress story link: http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2015/05/06/3654567/number-gender-related-athletics-discrimination-complaints-rapidly-increasing/