Support Title IX Data Reporting in High Schools Take Action!
Title IX's impact on women's athletic participation is one of the country's greatest success stories. In the past three decades, Title IX has led to a 400 percent increase in the rate of female participation in college sports and a more than 800 percent increase in participation at the high school level.
Despite the significant gains girls and women have made since the enactment of Title IX, a significant drawback to the law's enforcement at the high school level involves the lack of data reporting. The U.S. Department of Education has not required these schools to report athletic opportunity, participation, and funding statistics to any higher authority. As a result, high school girls are likely being deprived of the critical opportunity to play sports. In fact, we estimate that while girls comprise 49 percent of the high school population, they receive only 41 percent of all athletic participation opportunities -- 1.25 million fewer participation opportunities than male high school athletes. Colleges must report this data, it's time our high schools did too.
Early the week of Feb. 5th, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) will introduce the High School Sports Information Collection Act. At the same time, a companion bill called the High School Athletics Accountability Act will be introduced by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) in the House. These important bills will require high schools to report basic information on the number of female and male students in their athletic programs and the expenditures made for their sports teams.
Feb. 7 is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. In honor of this day, AAUW urges all members of the House of Representatives to become original cosponsors of the High School Athletics Accountability Act and to support it once it has been introduced.
AAUW strongly supports both these bills, and will be working for their passage in the 110th Congress. It's time we know the status of Title IX in America's high schools.
Take Action!
To urge your representative to cosponsor and support the High School Athletics Accountability Act, just click on the "Take Action" link in the upper corner, or copy and paste the following URL into your Internet browser, then follow the instructions to send a message to your U.S. Representative: http://capwiz.com/aauw/issues/alert/?alertid=9309496
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Support the Family and Medical Leave Act
Chances are you or someone you know has taken family or medical leave to care for a personal or a family member's illness-or that you will need to do so in the future. The law that guarantees many people to the right to that leave- the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)-is being subjected to a potentially damaging review.
The U.S. Department of Labor has issued a 'Request for Information' on the FMLA, requesting public comments about employer and employee experience with the FMLA. This has raised concern that the Department of Labor may be considering changes to the regulations that would roll back the FMLA's protections or scale back the FMLA's coverage for workers' health and family needs.
Since 1993, the FMLA has allowed roughly 80 million Americans to take job-protected leave to care for themselves or a loved one when they need it most. The FMLA has been a tremendous success: it has made America's workplaces more family-friendly and helped individuals be productive workers and responsible family members. An enormous coalition of FMLA supporters, including AAUW, has organized to respond to the Department of Labor, and many are beginning to submit their comments on the critical need to protect the FMLA.
AAUW has long supported flexible workplace policies to address the family responsibilities of employees. AAUW worked for nine years on passage of the FMLA and will continue to oppose all efforts to weaken our nation's only federal family leave law, limiting women's opportunity in the workplace. For more information, read AAUW's position paper on the FMLA.
Take Action!
To voice your support for the FMLA so that America's families don't have to choose between keeping a job and caring for themselves or a loved one, just click on the "Take Action" link in the heading, then follow the instructions to send a message to the U.S. Department of Labor:
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