The California chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) charged UCLA and USC with violating Title IX, a law requiring public schools to provide male and female students with equal resources and opportunities to engage in sports, and filed complaints with the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
CA NOW studied UCLA’s spending on women’s and men’s athletics and found that the men’s basketball team was allocated 1.8 times as much money as the women’s team, and that USC’s men’s basketball team received more than six times as much as the women’s team.
UCLA responded by saying that, since the men’s teams generate more revenue for the school, they should be able to spend more. Linda Joplin of NOW’s Athletic Equity Committee responded by saying, “There’s a lot of cases around the country where women’s teams are filling up the available space in the auditoriums and bring in just as much money. With the proper support, that can happen, and that brings in more money for the whole program.”
