The year was 1969 and Bernice Sandler was teaching in the economics department part-time at the University of Maryland while working on her doctorate. There were seven faculty position openings in the department; Sandler applied but was not offered any of the positions. So, she asked a faculty member friend of hers why she was not considered for any of the teaching positions. The faculty member told her that it was not her qualifications; they were excellent, “But let’s face it,” he said, “You come on too strong for a woman.”1

Sandler went home and cried. At first, she somewhat accepted this assessment that she was “too strong for a woman” until her husband shortly thereafter helped her understand what the words “too strong for a woman” meant. It was her husband who pointed out to her that she had been discriminated against on the basis of her sex. After some research, Dr. Sandler realized that sex discrimination was illegal in many circumstances but there were no laws prohibiting this type of discrimination in educational institutions.

At the time, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act excluded educational institutions and their activities and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in federally funded programs and did not cover sex discrimination. Furthermore, she came to realize that the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, The Equal Pay Act and other employment laws of those days were not being applied to educational institutions.

Although this information was discouraging, Dr. Sandler continued to research and investigate in the hope of finding an avenue to redress the discrimination to which she had experienced. And eventually she learned of an Executive Order 11246, which prohibited federal contractors from discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion and natural origin.2 In October 1968, President Lyndon Johnson amended Executive Order 11246 to include discrimination on the basis of sex as a criterion for “minority group” representation.3 Sandler made the connection that since most universities and colleges had federal contracts, they were forbidden from discrimination in employment on the basis of sex. She then realized that there was a legal route to combat sex discrimination even though very few people knew this at the time.

Upon her discovery, Sandler called the Office of Federal Contract Compliance at the Department of Labor to be certain that sex discrimination was in fact covered by Executive Order 11246. She was immediately put in contact with the director, and they met and together planned the first complaint against universities and colleges, and the strategies to garner enforcement of Executive Order 11246.

A few months later, Dr. Sandler enlisted the support of the Women’s Equity Action League (WEAL) and began what became a national campaign to end discrimination in education and which eventually culminated in the passage of Title IX. On January 31, 1970, WEAL filed a class action complaint against all universities and colleges in the country including every medical school complaining they had too few women on their faculties. The charges were filed with the U.S. Department of Labor under Executive Order 11246, as amended, and asked for an immediate compliance review of all institutions holding federal contracts. The WEAL complaint charged “an industry-wide pattern” of discrimination against women in the academic community and asked for an investigation in the following areas: admission quotas to undergraduate and graduate schools, financial assistance, hiring practices, promotions, and salary differentials.4

In short, copies of the complaint filed with the Department of Labor eventually made it to the members of Congress. As a result, several members of Congress contacted the Secretary of Labor about the complaint. And, on March 9, 1970, Representative Martha Griffiths (MI) who was on WEAL’s advisory board, gave the first speech ever in the U.S. Congress on discrimination against women in education. Griffiths speech had an impact and three weeks later, the first contract compliance investigation began at Harvard University. In June 1970, the Department of Labor issued its Sex Discrimination Guidelines for federal contractors5 and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued a memorandum to all field personnel to routinely include sex discrimination in all contract compliance investigations.6

As this process began, other things were happening as well. Representative Edith Green (OR), also a member of WEAL’s national advisory board, had long been aware of sex discrimination in higher education. As chair of the subcommittee that dealt with higher education, she was urged by Congressional staffers to use her position to shape new legislation. However, she was hesitant to do so because there was little data available at the time. This was 1970 and there were virtually no books and only a few random articles that addressed the issue of discrimination against women in education. There was no research, no conferences available to examine the issue, no campus commissions on the status of women on their campus or other venues to address the issue. The tipping point for Representative Green that supplied her with the information that she needed about sex discrimination in higher education came from Bernice Sandler in sending her all the WEAL filings and supplying Green with a list of people who could testify and provide the information needed to justify new legislation to prohibit sex discrimination.

The first Congressional hearings on the education and employment of women were held by Representative Green in June and July of 1970. There were seven days of hearings. The widespread distribution of the hearings, the charges against institutions and the letters sent to Congress by women from all over the country set the stage for support of legislation to end sex discrimination in education.7 The hearings probably did more than anything else to make sex discrimination in education a legitimate issue. When administrators or faculty members would deny the existence of sex discrimination in academe, women and men could point out that this was not a frivolous issue and that Congress itself had held days of hearings on this important subject.8

Sandler’s efforts resulted in legislation that was introduced in the Senate by Senator Birch Bayh (IN) who was also a member of WEAL’s national advisory board and Representative Martha Green of Michigan. They co-sponsored the legislation that was signed into law on June 23, 1972, by President Richard M. Nixon. However, before its final form was passed and sent to the President, there were concerns by a few lawmakers regarding whether Title IX would apply to sports. Senator Bayh’s response was that the law was only requiring that men and women have equal access to the education process and the extracurricular activities in a school. He further added that the law did not call for women to play football or require men and women to share a locker room.

After its passage in 1972, the first legislative challenge to Title IX came in May 1974. Known as the Tower Amendment as it was sponsored by Senator John Tower (TX), it called for all intercollegiate athletics to be exempt from Title IX. The amendment was modified to apply to only revenue-generating programs arguing that football provided a significant revenue base for the entire athletic program for many schools and any disruption of that would be extremely problematic for both male athletes already playing and female athletes who were seeking the chance to play.

The Tower Amendment was defeated and replaced by the Javits Amendment, which required the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to promulgate regulations for the implementation of Title IX including the regulations applying to athletics. This made it clear that Congress intended Title IX to apply to intercollegiate and interscholastic athletics.9 The regulations were followed by the Policy Interpretations of 1979, the 1990 Office for Civil Rights Investigator’s Manual, the 1996 Policy Clarification and several Dear Colleague Letters and Q & As to give schools direction and guidance regarding Title IX’s application and compliance of athletic programs in schools.

Bernice Sandler died on January 5, 2019. She dedicated her life to making sure that no one would ever endure the discrimination that she faced in her career as an educator. She knew that the journey would be long and realized that she and many others were trying to change very strong patterns of behavior and belief, and that changes would take more than her lifetime to accomplish. Sandler’s pivotal role in making Title IX the law of the land was a major milestone in the fight for equality in education and beyond. Title IX is truly at the heart of the efforts to create gender equitable schools including ensuring opportunities and equitable treatment for all students who choose to engage in education-based athletics programs in schools. Title IX is about educational leaders and decision- makers ensuring that boys and girls share the classroom and playing fields. 

Suggested Resources:
Boschert, Sherry. 37 Words – Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination. New York: The New Press, 2022.
Melnick, R. Shep. The Transformation of Title IX – Regulating Gender Equality in Education. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2018.
Hanson, Katherine, Vivian Guilfoy and Sarita Pillai. More Than Title IX: How Equity in Education has Shaped the Nation. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009.

1. Sandler, Bernice R. “Too Strong for a Woman” – The Five Words That Created Title IX. About Women on Campus, 1997, p. 1.
2. 30 Fed. Reg. 12319 (1965).
3. Executive Order 11375, 32 Fed. Reg. 14303 (1967).
4. Sandler, Bernice R. “Too Strong for a Woman” – The Five Words That Created Title IX. About Women on Campus, 1997, p. 3.
5. 35 Fed. Reg. 8888 (1970). See 34 Fed. Reg. 759 (1969) these regulations in their proposed form.
6. Ware, Susan. Title IX: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2007, p. 39.
7. Sandler, Bernice R. “Too Strong for a Woman” – The Five Words That Created Title IX. About Women on Campus, 1997, p. 5.
8. Sandler, Supra at p. 5. 9. 40 Fe. Reg. 24142 (1975).